Confession Of an Ramirez Nair

From the moment I achieved consciousness I knew that I was a genius. My very first thought was "I am the smartest person alive." This discovery was immediately succeeded by my second thought: "I have just completed one entire thought, which seems to be more than most people have." Feeling pleased with my intellectual superiority, I was somewhat surprised by my third thought, which was the realisation that I needed my diaper changed.

For days, weeks even, I was patronized by my parents, who insisted upon having entire conversations of "goo goo, ga ga." I also found the television programmes I was forced to watch to be highly condescending. Was I to be intrigued by the seemingly challenged dinosaur bumbling across the screen? Was I to care whether or not Steve was able to locate all of Blue's Clues? He'd have to be blind not to. My mother once asked which programme I wanted to watch. Finding them all equally banal, I replied, "I don't give a damn," but as my vocal abilities were still in a most primitive state, it was interpreted as "Mama."

Within a month of my birth, my parents began to parade me in front of other babies. I found the others of my age, I avoid the word "peers" for obvious reasons, to be frightfully stupid. I was plopped beside another infant to whom I said "Salutations, fellow baby." Despite my more than adequately polite greeting, he began to weep. Over the next few years this situation repeated itself myriad times with various babies. I would greet them politely, and they would begin to bawl. Sometimes I would be visited by my grandmother, and despite her advanced age, she was not significantly more intelligent than my infantile acquaintances. Much like my parents, she too had a vocabulary seemingly comprised entirely of goo's and ga's. It was enough to drive a baby mad.

Before bed, my parents would read to me from the most dismal books imaginable. Goodnight Moon was not an uncommon reading. The book is essentially, as the title implies, the writr saying goodnight to the moon. Thrilling, I know. I wished desperately that they would, just for once, read to me something of interest. Proust perhaps. But no, night after night it was Goodnight Moon.

It was all becoming too much to stand. One day after my nap, I swallowed my batman toy's grappling hook in an attempt to take my own life. My effort was unfortunately foiled when my visiting aunt performed the baby-heimlich on me, and the small, plastic tool was hastily dislodged from my throat.

Towards the conclusion of my second month, I fell in love. I was taken to a day care centre and placed beside the most beautiful girl I had ever beheld. While she had not yet grown hair, she had a perfectly shaped skull with very little in the ways of a soft spot. I was taken aback by her glamourous clothing, which was pink, and had footsies built into the pants. To her I began reciting Byrons "Don Juan," which I had, by this point, committed to memory. She did not respond, and to this day I am uncertain whether I was spurned, or if she was simply not yet able to comprehend language. Either way, I wouldn't see her for some amount of time, and that was fine with me. Bitch.

At some point, my parents purchased for me a series of videos entitled "Baby Mozart," intended to educate babies on the topic of classical music. I could not imagine any of the babies I had met being interested in Mozart; they all seemed too intrigued by the sounds of their own whining. I thought it was a nice gesture on my parents' part, but I was quickly bored with Mozart's predicatable melodies and inflexible diatonism. I remember wishing that my parents had bought "Baby Wagner."

At seven months of age I was introduced to sports. I did not have the inherent aversion to sports possessed of most of those of equal intellect except for football ofcourse. I was restricted to rolling a rubber ball across the parlour floor. It required no coordination or skill and was a waste of my time, but still I was forced to partake, lest I become lazy, according to my parents.

After an entire year of being treated as a pet more so than a human, it was the time of my first birthday. My parents said that they would arrange a party, and though I was well aware of their questionable taste, I was looking forward to this soiree. Of course there would be guests, but I wondered who they would be, as I had no friends to speak of. I pondered my upcoming ball. Certainly I would not be hobnobbing with the socialite elite, but perhaps at least enjoying hors d'oeuvres with others of at least moderate intelligence. This would be my opportunity to show my true genius to others who could appreciate and understand me. Or so I thought, at least. Nothing could have prepared my for the grotesque bash that ensued.

On the first anniversary of my birth I was set at the head of the kitchen table. I looked to my right to see who was seated at the place of honour beside me. Fathom, if you can, my terror when I turned my head to see the tearful child of my first acquaintance, who spurned my salutations with cries. To my left, the heartless harlot who had so coldly ignored my Byronic recitation. Perhaps the food would be good, I told myself. This last hope was shattered when I was presented with the gaudiest cake ever to soil an oven, and on top of the cake was that horrible, purple, bumbling dinosaur I so despised from television.

My throat tightened. My hear pounded. My parents said "We have a very special guest." Was this all a joke until now? Who could the guest be? Perhaps a great innovator of the arts or sciences. I was excited. Through the door, however, walked the dinosaur, from television and from my cake. He spoke in his slow, dumb voice, and bumbled about, precisely as I'd noted before. "Well who's the birthday boy?" he muttered. I remained silent, but my parents gave me up. He approached, and I cringed with every step he took. He began his awful, cacophonous rendition of "Happy Birthday." My brain-dead guest screamed with glee. I took my head in my hands and waited for him to leave, and tried to figure out how many more years of this I needed endure before succumbing to the sweet release of death.