Nathan is constantly amazing me. It hasn’t been long since he was completely immobile. Now he crawls quickly across the floor, stopping periodically to clap his hands and cough, “haqck, haqck”. (The ‘q’ is of course there to imply the gutteral quality.) There is, of course, nothing wrong the silly fellow. He just knows, inately, that noise is the way to get attention. Right now he says, “haqck”. In a couple months he will say, “momma” and “daddy”. Though he won’t know why we are excited and giving him attention, he will know that we are. There is a progression there.

I’m sure it is much the same with most boys.  First you have gutteral noises, and then words, and then back and forth for different periods of time. Boys make no random noises. They are all calcualated to achieve maximum attention. Eventually the noises get strung together, as sentances are found to more affective, if not repulsive (repulsion is one of the highest forms of attention giving). But still, boys always fight the temptation to growl, roar, or walk into a room and blurt out the biggest word they know. “Anti-oxidant!”

I myself am subject to the same urges and instincts.  Why, only yesterday I was standing around, with no one to listening to me, and I had to fight the urge to just scream, “Super-lapsarianism!”