We drove the boy downtown to the big children’s hospital and the lobby was filled with kids in wheelchairs, kids balding from chemo, and numerous other pale kids with sickly eyes. It was like being inside every public service announcement ever created. I wanted to cry my eyes out after taking three steps inside. The hospital itself was a masterpiece of health care industry bureaucracy. They had a main reception desk that sent you to another reception desk that sent you to a third reception desk. The elevator had a button for the third-and-a-half floor. I wanted to push it just to see if floor 3.5 contained a secret tunnel into the brain of John Malkovich.
After spending ages navigating the labyrinth, we arrived at the neurologist’s office. He ran his fingers over my son’s skull—just like a Third Reich phrenologist would!—and performed a series of mental tests on him. He snapped his fingers to one side of the boy’s face and the boy’s eyes followed. Ditto the opposite side. He checked the boy’s ears. He pulled on the boy’s arms. Then he turned to us.
“Well, his head is a bit flat in the back. But the good news is that his mental faculties seem just fine. He’s not retarded or anything.”
I swear, he used the word “retarded.” I didn’t even know retardation was on the table before he mentioned it.
“You might want to think about outfitting him in a helmet,” he said.
“Does he really need one?” I asked.
“He’s borderline. But you have to decide quickly because after a certain number of weeks, the bones set and the skull’s shape is irreversible.”
“But he wouldn’t have to wear it for very long, right?”
“Actually, the general guideline is three to six months.”
“Oh Jesus.”
We left the doctor’s office.
“Can you believe he actually said ‘retarded’?” my wife asked me.
“I know! I wonder if he meant it medically. He seemed so casual about retardation.”
“Do you think we should get the helmet?”
I had no idea. I looked at my son and his head looked fine to me. Two ears. Two eyes. A mouth. A chin. It was a perfectly acceptable head. I thought about what an incredible pain in the ass the helmet would be if we chose to buy one. Twenty-three hours a day. Several months. God knows if the boy would be able to sleep with that thing on. I pictured nights of endless screaming, with my wife reduced to tears, trying to soothe the baby while it was dressed like a linebacker. And the cost! Baby helmets cost hundreds of dollars. I didn’t want the helmet because I didn’t want to deal with all that bullshit, which is an awfully selfish thing to consider when deciding on the future shape of your progeny’s skull. I imagined the boy turning thirty and having a ski jump head, all because I was too lazy and cheap and afraid of pitiful looks to strap a helmet on him for a few lousy months of his life, months that he wouldn’t even end up remembering.
“I don’t want to get him a helmet,” I said.
“Neither do I,” my wife said.
“He’s got a nice head.”
“He’s got a great head.”
“Yeah. What do doctors know about heads anyway?”
“I think we should check with Dr. Ferris, just to make sure.”
So we did. We got an audience with the big man himself a week or so later. We plopped our son down in front of him and he proceeded to make the boy laugh louder than I had ever made him laugh. That stupid awesome Dr. Ferris.
“Does he need a helmet?” I asked.
He looked shocked by the idea. “What? A helmet? Nah,” he said. “I almost never recommend the helmet. For the child to require a helmet, they have to be really . . .”
“Deformed?”
“The flatness has to be severe. I’m not sure a helmet’s all that helpful anyway.” He turned to my son. “Now who’s a big bruiser? IS IT YOU?!”
The boy squealed with joy, and over the weeks and months his head grew. It grew up and down and out and to the side, in perfect proportion. Soon it was a perfect little sphere smothered in blond hair. No helmet necessary. I look at that head now, and all I think about is getting my co-pay from those first two appointments back. Baby helmets are a rotten lie.
DUI
An old friend was in town and wanted to go to a baseball game, which presented me with a rare chance to get away from the wife and kids for an evening. Any time I’m away from my family for an extended period of time, I lose any sense of common decency and become a vile repository for booze and meat. It’s just ZOMG NO ONE WILL NOTICE ME EATING THIS FISTFUL OF BUTTERSCOTCH CHIPS. It’s a grotesque transformation. One time, I was away on business and I ate three dinners in one night, just because I could. I didn’t even enjoy the third dinner all that much. It was just piling on because I rarely had the chance to pile on, and piling on is fun, like when you empty the entire bottle of hotel shampoo onto your head.
I told my wife I was going out. Asked her, really.
“He’s only gonna be here one night,” I said. “It’s a special occasion.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “Just don’t get too drunk.”
“I won’t.”
“Seriously, don’t get too drunk. Because then you wake up at three A.M. to barf in the toilet and that makes me wake up.” My wife did not like having her sleep disrupted.
“Will you leave me alone? You can’t get on my case for drinking too much before I’ve even had a chance to drink too much. Stop ruining my one night out, lady.”