On Avoiding Bottles

When a baby is crying, the easiest thing in the world to do is to give him to his mother, because nothing pacifies a crying baby like a mother's breast.

True, as we said before, babies cry for reasons other than hunger — gassiness and wetness — but in my mind those are secondary reasons. Gassiness, especially, because a good burp is only necessary after a good eating. Wetness of course follows (all in good time). But most of the time it seems to be about being hungry.

Which is to say, feeding Animal with a bottle produces more than a little anxiety because I basically, er, suck at it. OK, maybe I'm not that bad at it, but it's way easier to plop the Monkey on a breast than it is to get him to believe that this plastic thing is a decent substitute for the real thing.

That's not to say that it doesn't work, only that it takes a while. The first day Jen left the house, it took approximately five hours to get through one bottle. Clearly I fucked up something. The next couple of times it went better — a good tip is that it's wiser to anticipate hunger than to let it crash down — but it still takes a long time.

A trick to forestall red-faced wailing is to take Squeak out for a walk. Not sure why this works but it does: He can go hours without eating. The only thing is that you can't stop, lest he wakes up and remembers that he's hungry.

So when Jen had to go out for work today, I decided I'd buy myself some time and go for a walk — read: take back the recycling.

I could have taken the recycling back any old time, but the fact is that I don't, and I haven't. When we do go out for a walk, it's not so I can hang out in back of the Key Food, so I've been neglecting the cans and bottles for a while. It's getting to the point where it's starting to look like a frat house on Sunday morning around here. So being that Jen was away, I figured I could take the baby out for a stroll . . . along with 25 pounds of cans and bottles to return.

Taking bottles back to the store is probably my most hated domestic activity. This is for several reasons.

One, the Key Food machines aren't programmed correctly, so many of the cans and bottles that they sell are often rejected. If they are rejected, you have to take them to the customer service counter, where they insist that they are only allowed to take back 20 cans or bottles at the desk. This is bullshit — the bottle law says stores have to take back cans and bottles of products they sell. They'll tell you to come back tomorrow, like this is your job or something. Not a big deal, just tell them to call the manager over and they'll take back the bottles or cans.

Two, because the Key Food machines aren't programmed correctly, it takes twice as long for the machines to accept your bottles. Not a big deal if you have 12 cans to return, but a pain in the ass if you're stuck behind a bottle collector who is unloading a giant trash bag.

Three, it's disgusting to save your cans and bottles, drag them back to the store and hand feed them into a nasty machine. We're better than this.

Now you may be wondering why I would go to great lengths to return cans and bottles. After all, it's only five cents a can — it's just another 30 cents on a six pack, which you're already spending upward of ten dollars on (if you drink good beer). It's because of two things: One, I don't like can collectors sifting through our trash — and they will — they'll walk up to your door and dig through your trash can. Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I fucking hate this. But the thing is that I could perhaps learn to accept it if it weren't for the fact that the people who gain the most from a bottle deposit aren't the ones digging through the neighbor's trash.

That said, it used to be worse. Until 2009, unclaimed bottle deposits in New York didn't go to the state or the store but rather the bottlers themselves. And when so many people don't have the time or inclination to take nasty-ass cans and bottles back to a store that makes it difficult to return cans and bottles, the bottling industry makes a ton of money from bottle deposits. And you know what? Fuck those guys. Fuck them hard. They don't deserve more money. Grrrr.

After 2009, the State forced the bottlers to give 80 percent of the unclaimed deposits to the State. On the one hand, I'd much rather the State have the money than the bottlers. On the other hand, I don't want to give five cents for each beer I drink to the State. So fuck those guys, too.

Which is why I insist on taking cans and bottles back to the store, even though it's a total pain in the ass and even though I'm probably losing money in lost time.

And hey, shitbird, don't try to argue that bottle deposits are somehow better for the environment, because I actually like recycling. And that's convenient especially because we're already required by law to recycle — and lord knows the Department of Sanitation likes to give tickets to people who can't be bothered to sort their garbage. So if we're required to recycle and curbside recycling is so easy, why are we still taking cans and bottles back to the store (don't get me started on plastic)?

John Catsimatidis — who you might know from Gristedes — wrote an excellent op-ed about this back in 2006.

Which is to say, perhaps you saw me earlier today with a child hanging on to my chest and me lugging a large blue IKEA bag with 102 cans and bottles to the rear of the Key Food. And perhaps you looked at the cans of Coors popping out the top and shook your head after you walked by: "That poor child." Well, if we were free of this ridiculous bottle law, I could drink beer in peace and not have you judge me as I dragged my hungry, probably overtired child to the Key Food with 35 pounds of returns.

Of course I was dying to play the baby card. I was dying for a can collector to be there at the machine in the middle of unloading a giant plastic bag of returns and see me walk up with a baby and gesture to me to please cut in front of him. But there wasn't anyone there. There were only a couple of out-of-order machines.

No problem, I'd get to play the baby card again with the people at the customer service counter. So perhaps you saw me in the Key Food, waiting for the man behind the customer service desk to find out from the manager if it was OK to accept 41 bottles because the bottle machine was out of order. It was, though I'd have to use the can machine for the cans. "OK," I said cheerfully, which I meant to mean "Don't you see this baby I'm carrying?"

So maybe you saw me out behind the Key Food again, waiting for the can machine — whose "Error — Call Staff!" warning features an improbable cartoon of nice looking lady talking to a helpful looking lady — to be restarted because apparently someone tried to slip in a counterfeit can of some sort.

And maybe you heard my baby boy start to cry because I'd been standing around too long.

And perhaps you thought, "That poor child."

Well, you're right. It's not his fault. It's the fucking bottling industry. And fucking Governor Paterson. And the do-nothing-piece-of-shit-worthless legislature that actually expanded the bottle law back in 2009.

Simply put, it is because of them that this child must go without a bottle.

And because mean old daddy ran out of Coors and had to buy another 18-pack.

The Origin Myth Of "Because I Said So"

Before Animal was born we had to fill out a sort of questionnaire that the hospital called the "birth plan." The birth plan is meant to get a sense of the parents' wishes and thoughts about some of the basic decisions surrounding childbirth: Stuff like who is going to be in the room, whether or not the mother wants drugs administered and if the baby is male, whether the parents want the child circumcised.

Now I try to live life making sensible, rational decisions. When faced with choices, I weigh options and use hard facts and solid evidence to guide me. When confronted with coherent arguments to the contrary, I am flexible enough to change what I think. I know I have an open mind.

All of this is true and all of this applies to what I believe. Except, that is, when it comes to circumcising my son.

Which is to say, when it came time to decide whether we would circumcise Animal, I was like, "Oh hell yes we are circumcising Animal." And that was before we even knew if he was a boy. I'm kidding.

Now I may sing along to Christmas carols at midnight mass with my in-laws and I may not bother with fasting on certain days of awe and I may not follow the directive to eschew leavening agents for eight days in the spring but there is no goddamn way my son will have a foreskin. Call it "irrational" or whatever. Call it an archaic or even barbaric superstition. Whatever, I don't care: My ancestors were not persecuted so my son could walk around with a foreskin.

I know some fathers in my position feel this way because they don't want their sons' penises to "look different" from their own penises. That's not me. I could not care less what my son's penis looks like. Penises are nothing to be narcissistic about. I can't explain it other than I just don't want Animal to have a foreskin.

Of course when it came time to cut off Animal's foreskin, I got very nervous. This happens in the first day or two at the hospital. At the hospital where Animal was born, a doctor from our OB-GYN's office came to do it. She said that we shouldn't watch, which was fine with us.

Now you may be thinking what a spineless sadist I am for wanting Animal to have to undergo this and then refusing to watch myself. That's fine. Like I said, it may be utterly irrational. I can no more explain this than I can explain why the Yankees are evil or why men are intrigued by lesbian porn — which is to say, it just is and I have long since stopped trying to explain, account for or unlearn it.

So for several hours leading up to the doctor cutting into Animal's dick, I feared the worst. You can imagine. And while we waited for what the nurses cleverly truncated as "the circ," I considered the worst and thought to myself, "And why did you allow this happen? Because of some bozo vestigial irrational idea . . ." Even after the doctor reappeared with the Monkey and said that he was most upset about having to lie still while the procedure took place (is that an easy lie they tell?), I proceeded to worry that gang green would take away my baby's junk.

I dutifully applied Bacitracin ointment until the pediatrician finally told us we were in the clear. Now all that Sturm und Drang is behind us. And I am proud to say that my son's dick looks just like my own.

As the weeks went by, I discerned another great, albeit slightly selfish reason to chop off your son's foreskin, which is that there is less to worry about when you're cleaning. Look, Mr. or Ms. I-Don't-Have-A-Child-And-Frankly-I-Don't-Want-One-But-If-You-Have-One-You-Shouldn't-Brag-About-Cutting-Corners, I know that it may sound fairly draconian to want to cut into a baby's dick in order to avoid more work for yourself, but it is what it is! It was just one less thing to worry about while we figured out how to burp, clean, feed and otherwise tend to Squeak.

And then you read something like this:

The death of a 2-week-old baby boy who contracted herpes following an ultra-Orthodox circumcision is being investigated by the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office.

. . .

The infant had been circumcised in a controversial religious ceremony in which a rabbi or mohel draws blood away from the freshly circumcised penis with his mouth.

I could have gone the rest of my life without ever having to think again about some geezer sucking baby dick, but no, they can't just stop at one. They have to do it again. This after the City Health Department did a flashy public health campaign to educate people about the dangers of allowing an old geezer to suck your baby's dick, er, I mean continuing the practice of metzitzah b'peh which, roughly translated, I believe means "sucking baby dick."

(That these people had the gall to protest the city supposedly infringing on their religious rights only makes it worse. Drawing Nazi comparisons makes it that much worse.)

Look, I don't know what the ostensible religious reason is behind this practice or even what the tradition is about, and frankly I don't care. Babies contracting herpes this way is probably one of the most horrifying things I can think of right now. Babies dying from this is beyond horrifying. It's mostly unbelievable. Think about all the things Judiasm, the Jewish tradition and Jews themselves have contributed to civilization. And then think of a mohel with cold sores sucking on baby dick. To borrow something Rick Santorum once said, "You bet that makes you throw up."

Now you're probably saying something the lines of "Oh, OK, so you having a doctor chop off your son's dick is fine but somehow that guy sucking a baby's dick crosses some sort of line?" Well, yes. So be it. That is what I think.

"Why?" you might ask.

And that's when I reply to you, with a completely straight face, and without a single trace of irony, "Because I said so."

And now you are ready to be a father, my son.

All The Milky Babies . . .

Jen and I have discussed what would need to happen in order to feel comfortable taking Squeak to a restaurant. We haven't done it yet, mostly because it's a little too daunting. What happens if he cries? Needs to be fed? Needs to be changed? Needs to be changed while he's being changed?

If going to a restaurant is anywhere near the same as eating at home, then several things will happen. One, Monkey will immediately start crying. He's not doing this to be rude, of course — he just values the family eating together, which means that Jen has to feed him at the table. Given how much Jen has been feeding Mr. Baby, she has proven very adept at doing things with one hand these days. Unfortunately, this skill has not yet translated to using the full spectrum of flatware. Which means that certain dishes — those involving forks and knives, for example — are difficult. Which probably means that we shouldn't eat at any restaurant that features both forks and knives.

One thing we haven't been able to get on top of yet is instilling certain values in Animal. Chief of which here is the maxim, "Don't Shit Where You Eat." Because he certainly likes doing that — sometimes even shitting while he eats. Which of course means that we need to take time out to change him, he being sometimes fussy — understandably so — when having to eat with a diaper full of milky dookie.

Neither of these obstacles are dealbreakers in and of themselves. I feel that we can get away with taking The Little Emperor to a place that features picnic tables, preferably in a cavernous room that is mostly empty. That way we could walk around to soothe him, not disturb very many fellow diners and not cheese off the waitstaff in case they were trying to turn a table. Jen's thinking we can swing a church fish fry during Lent or something but I'm questioning the sourcing of the fish — just because we look like a bunch of high schoolers dragging around an infant simulator doesn't mean we can't enjoy our first big night out — we still like nice things!

I say this because I was interested to see the news about Jay-Z and Beyoncé's first lunch with their newborn:

Superstar couple Beyoncé and Jay-Z were spotted carrying their little bundle of joy in the West Village today, wrapped up against the cold just weeks after they posted adorable photos of the newborn online.

It was the first time the proud parents and baby have been spotted together in public since Blue Ivy was born Jan. 7. The family was seen heading into Sant Ambroeus restaurant for some lunch today.

That would be four-out-of-five-stars-on-Yelp-not-good-for-kids Sant Ambroeus. How did they do that? Where did Beyoncé nurse? Do they have changing tables?

And most of all, can the six of us do a playdate?