Improved Clinch

Ya Big Baby

Growing up with five brothers I often heard, and used, the term, “Ya big baby.” At one time or another, each of us brothers subjected the others to some sort of brotherly abuse, either physical or mental, which subsequently could lead to one of us heading for mom’s apron strings wailing out about how the abuser was “going to get it now,” and the typical retort to that little threat was “Ya big baby.”

Fortunately, my mother, who was busy enough running a household of eight kids and a dog, would usually tell the offended one to go work it out with the offendee, rather than coddling us, so we toughened up pretty good and learned to manage our own affairs. Pity that this isn’t more prevalent in life today.

I mention this because I just read an excerpt from Michael Bywater’s book Big Babies (no link at Amazon) which makes for an interesting morning read. From the piece.

Sometimes, things strike you as a bit odd. It strikes you, for example, as out of kilter that between getting off the plane and reaching the outside world at London Heathrow there were, at last count, 93 notices telling you off for things you hadn’t done or which it hadn’t even occurred to you to do.

The plain fact is that you are being treated like a baby. You, I, all of us are on the receiving end of a sustained campaign to infantilise us: our tastes, our responses, our behaviour, our private thoughts, our decisions, our buying habits, our philosophies, our political sensibilities.

The excerpt was published in the Telegraph and is titled We’re all big babies.

Via Arts & Letters Daily.

Posted by on 10/24 at 05:59 AM