The News

This is Emory. He was born on 08/08/2007.

Michele and I couldn’t be happier.

The Knowledge

Caring for a newborn is a lot of work but we’re working together and I think we’re doing pretty well.

So far, the biggest secret I’ve learned about babies is that they spend all day farting. Loudly. Often with bubbles.

It’s very strange, and I think it bolsters my equalization/neutralization strategy for managing nervousness around people.

Let me explain…

The Stand-By

At some point in my youth, I thought about stage fright, nervousness, and the feelings of inadequacy that can strike someone facing an intimidating observer: an audience, an important person, a hot lady with the boobies and hips and such.

I considered the old cliché of imagining the observer in their underpants, and realized that, for the hot ladies with their boobies and hips and such, this could easily backfire under pressure. It seemed like a part-time solution, at best.

I’m an engineering type, and thus I am bothered by temporary or partial fixes to problems. I’m also crass and unconstrained by feelings that I can ever really be wrong about anything as important as philosophy. And thus, the birth of a new science…

The New Theory

A friend of mine once used the term “lazy wiper” to describe the very prevalent type of lazy person you would never describe as “detail-oriented.” Thinking about it, I realized that the majority of people I encountered on a given day were probably lazy wipers. If not, good for them. Because I’m giving neither benefit of doubt or underpants inspections, I make my assumptions and stick with ‘em.

This realization was the foundation of my own brand of nihilistic confidence: “This person is a lazy wiper. I am not. Therefore, I should silently elevate myself in comparison. Yay confidence.”

Sure, it’s hackish. Sure, it probably works by virtue of exposing the idiocy of feeling like one person can be more important or better than another. I don’t care. It works. And I think my experience with Emory has helped it to work even better.

The Praxis

Now, when I meet an executive of an ad agency, or big shot managers of certain mobile and computing devices, instead of elevating myself only by picturing their skidmarked $200 hand-stitched silk underpants, I can also picture them as babies, lying about for hours at a time doing nothing but grunting and farting, eking out the first hints at that most delicious developmental milestone: the smile.

Folks told me fatherhood would change me. Glad to know it’s for the better.