The Manny Tapes: Amnesia

I always thought if I ever had a kid or was involved in the day to day rearing of one I'd be one of those guys that remembers every stage perfectly: you did this at 3 months, you looked like that at 6 months, you lent me $10 at 7 months blah blah blah. But it turns out I'm the opposite: I can't remember what the kid did or looked like yesterday, much less 6 months ago. I look at him now and it's like well, that's how he's always looked and always will. Bam, right there. There he is. I remember the last meal I gave him and I know what the next thing I'll feed him is, but that's it. His mother will come home and ask what he ate earlier in the day, and my brain freezes. "What the fuck...did he have....rosemary flan with tempered pomegranite drizzle...?" Same thing with any activities we do; I know we've gone around the city on a couple of adventures just this week, but I have no idea what they were. I'm sitting here scratching my head "what the fuck...where'd we go on Monday...I have no idea...which day was my dance recital?" Is this normal? I usually have good recall re: shit I do on a daily to yearly basis. Maybe it's a survival thing, you're hyper-focused on the kid's present state and that's it? Or am I just a fucking idiot?

The kid's amnesia is at least a lot funnier. Typical case is today. He's in his plastic chair with tray combo chowing away at lunch when all of a sudden, fuck that! Blows up into a rage, smacking the chair, howling. Has to get the fuck outta the chair, and now. I pull him out and he gives the chair a look that tells me he expects me to throw it off the roof while afire, never to be heard from again. Dude looks like he's possessed; I half expect a priest to walk through all of a sudden "get rid of that chair!" And maybe stop for a make out session (say, why don't they make the whole plane outta the stuff they make the black box with?) So I start to take him over to the living room to play and goof around when I'm like shit, I gotta take care of something real quick in the kitchen. And I don't wanna leave him alone in the living room for that long, so I step back into the kitchen. What am I gonna do with him? Obviously he now hates the chair forever and will never sit in it again. I'm looking around; I guess I could just let him on the floor, but of course that's covered with the 40 pounds of food he tossed while "eating" a minute before. I'm standing there thinking when GUESS WHO all of a sudden is like "heeeeeeeeyy, look! a shiny, plastic chair! that I can sit in! this is great!!" and practically hurls himself outta my arms and into the chair, where he has the time of his life for the next twenty minutes. This, mind you, about thirty seconds after he was acting as if the chair had popped him in one of his nuts. Go figure.















"Hey Xmas, guess what I DIDN'T forget? That's right,
get the baby wipes you stupid fuck!! hahahahahaaha!!!!