Just When You Think It’s Safe. . .
by Richard
It’s easy to become complacent, to rest on your laurels, to relax in the glow of accomplishment, and consider it a job well done and something you’ll never have to worry about again.
You would, of course, be wrong.
Especially if you knew what I was talking about. Which you will. Right now.
I’m talking about making sure your dwelling is still baby proof. That is, making sure there are no obvious hazards in your home that could trip up someone two bottles of tequila into the night, who remembers what vision and hearing sounded like and now things the shakes and weaving and general disregard of the hazards of the exterior world are simply more spectacular than normal hallucinations.
Take that dude, at his worst, and if your home is safe for him. . . it’s still not safe enough for the little dude laying there on the rug. Seriously, it’s like those little dudes are doing it on purpose, finding the one hole in your security net you missed. I’d say they were diabolical geniuses if I didn’t keep trying to remind you that babies can’t actually think. Maybe they’re idiot savants, with powers beyond mortal dudes in getting hurt? That might actually be it.
Anyway.
What I’m doing here today is reminding you that, even if your dwelling was perfectly baby proofed (and nothing’s perfect, just so you know) when your little dude arrived home, if time has passed, the odds of it still being perfectly safe have decreased significantly.
For one thing, we live in an imperfect world. Stuff breaks. Remember, not only will the baby proofing stuff be keeping him out of stuff, you’ll have to be using those items to get into places and things. Stuff will break, and after the first couple of fixes, you’ll probably be like most dudes and think, “Eh, it’s cool. He’ll never mess around (insert item or place).”
For another thing, even if nothing’s broken (hah!), something significant has still changed the equation. That something significant being time. Your little dude has grown up some. As he grows, he’s going to become both more competent and more inquisitive. This is a seriously bad combination in someone who thinks long-term is five seconds from now.
You need to make sure that you take the time, every once in a while, to go back through the safety precautions you’ve made in your dwelling, and see if they’re still capable of keeping your little dude safe. Look for anything broken. Crawl around on the floor to see things from his perspective and see what he can get up to.
It doesn’t take long and it’s a good thing to do. After all, you wouldn’t want to be that guy in the emergency room explaining how you didn’t fix the drawer stop because you wanted to read that article in the magazine.
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