A couple of week’s ago my girlfriend’s baby, Paddy started playing with the clip in his mother’s hair. It was one of those big hair-clips, which resemble if anything the skeletal jaw of a animal with lots of long, thin, pointed teeth. So naturally I took the hair-clip, held it up, opened its jaws and made a scary growling sound. “Grrrrrrr!” Yes, that scary.
Paddy wasnÂ’t sure how to take this. There was a part of him that was certainly immediately frightened by this speaking, disembodied jaw, but he was also quite fascinated. He wanted me to do it again, but each time I did, he looked at me or his mother with wide and vulnerable eyes, as if he was thinking about crying. Then heÂ’d look back at the strange jaw beast as if he wanted to see it speak again, if only to confirm that it was scary. He made his own tentative growling sound in response. So I played along and did it back.
It was only when I put the hair-clip in front of my own mouth and made it roar that Paddy became more scared than curious and began to cry. Understandably Steph was a bit annoyed with me, but I felt I had just been giving the audience what it wanted, even if in the end what I had achieved was to make a one year old child cry. If nothing else it had been an interesting indication of how human beings have a fundamental desire to be frightened. Again, IÂ’m not sure it was worth making a one-year old baby cry to find this out.
In my defence he was egging me on.
Steph has told me that Paddy has seen the clip a couple of times subsequently, lying on the bed or whatever, and has been a bit spooked. HeÂ’s looked at her, with timid eyes, afraid to touch it in case it comes to life again, but has often made the growling sound he now associates with the object.
But time has made him bolder and whenever he sees me now he does a big growl. To be honest with you itÂ’s not as scary as mine, and even if it were the effect would be somewhat diminished as it is being emitted by a tiny, chubby baby, but heÂ’s doing his best. I will come back at him with yet more scary growls. Occasionally he looks a bit shaken, but even when he has registered surprise, he will consider for a second before letting out a bigger and better noise. And then he will laugh.
It is wonderful to converse with this tiny human being in however ridiculous a fashion. HeÂ’s at a frustrating age where he understands words, but can not articulate his thoughts. We are communicating and understanding one another. And weÂ’re laughing in the face of fear. If only all he had to fear in life was a hair-clip.
But itÂ’s a start. Once weÂ’re overcome the dread of hair-clips and other hair-based accessories, we can move on to conquering other demons.
And what is Osama Bin Laden if not a giant, sophisticated, well-armed, growling hair-clip?
