Where's the Baby?

When the baby starts to walk that's gonna be a trip. It's a real crossroads. The baby legit has the choice to get up and walk the fuck away from you. Like, in theory once the baby starts walking it could just be like "Peace!" and be out. But then where would it go? That brings us to the question of "Where's the baby?" Your job is to channel that baby's restless energy and get-up-and-go attitude into the baby walking to the 7/11 to get a pack of Newports for you. Then, when you look up from your phone hella panicked like, "Where's the baby?" You can relax and rest assured that the baby just stepped out for a pack of smokes.

Another aspect of "Where's the baby?" is peek-a-boo, a game where you're literally asking the baby itself, in the third person, where it is. So you ask the baby: "Where's the baby?" and the baby, who is having a hard enough time learning how to say basic one syllable words, now has to imagine itself as some sort of objective third party? An avatar of itself? And then locate that avatar in a space whose parameters are completely unspecified? That's a lot to ask of the baby. Pretty trippy little game if you ask me.

Speaking of trippy baby games, put a baby in front of a mirror, see what that baby thinks about that. A dude name Jacques Lacan wrote about that and you can google it if you want, but if you have an actual baby at hand you could just look at what the actual baby does when it looks in the mirror, cut to the chase. One of the many questions that will arise when the baby sees itself in the mirror is "Where's the baby?" The question applies to both the baby looking into the mirror and the reflection of that baby. Say the mirror is two feet away from the baby, the baby in the mirror doubles that space and the reflected baby looks four feet away. That's an illusion and life is full of them. The reflected baby is just reflected light entering your eye. But then again, so is the actual baby, so there's that. Don't get too caught up in this trippy baby game though. Everything is an illusion but the baby is real enough and will be your guiding beacon in regard to what the collectively agreed upon objective reality is being that it's some of the newest eyes and ears on the case. But yeah, another aspect of "Where's the baby?" is where, geographically, the baby is. My baby, for example, is geographically close to what's colloquially called the Pacific Ocean. I believe the native trees around here are Oak, Pine, Redwood, Sequoia, you got some palms and willows and Sycamores and even Eucalyptus. While it's technically in a zone designated as the "United States" I'm not hellof into titles. If anything it's Ohlone, Pomo, Chochenyo, and Navajo land, and prob a few other peoples they don't cover in school. We're on Earth and that's in the universe and the universe is supposedly hella big or maybe infinite. So basically the day I can say "Where's the baby?" and she answers back: "Geographically close to what's colloquially called the Pacific Ocean. I believe the native trees are Oak, Pine, Redwood, Sequoia, you got some palms and willows and Sycamores and even Eucalyptus. While it's technically in a zone designated as the "United States" I'm not hellof into titles. If anything it's Ohlone, Pomo, Chochenyo, and Navajo land, and prob a few other peoples they don't cover in school. We're on Earth and that's in the universe and the universe is supposedly hella big or maybe infinite." That's when I know she's old enough to go to the Sev' Elev' and get me a pack of Newports.

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