Head Coffin

Having a child for the first time is a lot like taking a homeless person into your home for the first time. Most people already know that babies and homeless people have a lot in common. In fact the similarities are quite shocking to realize.

You can be sure that when we first where preparing to become permanent parents, the suggesting to practice first by taking in a homeless person was mightily scoffed at in this household. We had heard all sorts of horror stories regarding the homeless, things like they are awake at all hours of the night, are messy, noisy and smell, and we didn’t want to let that kind of element fester in our humble sweet home.

However, we were eventually persuaded to take one in, as the experience and knowledge we would gain would vastly outweigh any inconvenience. Plus if we utterly failed, at least it was just a homeless person and nobody really cares about them anyways. Just load em in your car and drop em off in front of a freeway onramp and drive off quickly and you are free and clear. If you are extra nice you can provide them a sharpie and cardboard for use.

So now that we have a son, the similarities are very much in focus, and the lessons we learned from our homeless person staying in.. well our home, have paid off. I thought I’d share some of these gems of wisdom with others, so that they can be better prepared for child rearing.

First and foremost, babies, like homeless people, have an intense addiction to the bottle. That’s right, if you deny either a baby or a homeless person their bottle, they get set on by waves of melancholy, anger, frustration and possibly hatred. Remember new parents/homeless person taker careofs, you are not AA, leave the bottle kicking to the experts and let them have their sauce.

Secondly, also like homeless people, babies have an annoying habit of pooping themselves. One needs to be ever vigilant to keep a “pooped pants free” home if that is one’s desire. Though at times I find it easier to just let the baby, or homeless person for that matter, wallow in their own filth. Usually one should wait until the poop holding receptacle reaches a maximum level to save on water, soap, and diapers in the case of homeless people.

Also babies, like homeless people, have an intense and fierce addiction to crack cocaine. My advice, if you find yourself with a baby or a homeless person, is to just refuse any kind of crack in your house. While the baby or homeless person will try to convince you they don’t have a problem, via sweet coo’s or smiles you think are just for you, DON’T BE FOOLED. Once that baby or homeless person gets some crack in their system, there’s no going back and you might as well just drop either off on the freeway onramp.

Babies, again like homeless people, are naturally stinky. If untreated, an odor of unpleasant feet and sour milk will build up around them, making at times any kind of contact difficult and darn right scary. Bathe your baby or homeless person often to prevent this kind of stink from overwhelming your home.

Babies and homeless people tend to not have any teeth. This isn’t too much of a problem unless you are serving beef Jerky for dinner, something homeless people and babies absolutely love, but it can take them hours to eat just a tiny piece and they absolutely will not go to sleep unless they’ve finished it. It’s best to avoid solid foods for a good long while. (*note* babies will get teeth eventually, where as homeless people will not)

Babies, just like homeless people, cannot go more than 5 days without pooping. If your homeless person or baby is reaching this mark, you are going to need to intervene. The methodology for both is the same. Simply grease up a cotton swab with some Vaseline and gently touch the inner hole. With babies it’s a good idea to have a diaper under them, cause the flood gates open and the poo comes a poring. With homeless people, it’s best to have your wife do it.

The similarities between babies and homeless people are both ways, and it was surprising to learn how many traits homeless people have that remind us of our baby boy.

For example homeless people, much like babies, love raspberries on their bellies. You can get a homeless person giggling for hours by simply spluttering all over their little funny swollen bellies.

Also, homeless people are easily pacified by the sound of a vacuum cleaner. Why whenever our homeless person would get surly and upset, we would just run that thing around the room a couple of times, and our homeless person would be passively sleeping away.

Homeless people, like babies, are easily mistaken for chew toys with dogs first exposed to them. Our dog would constantly try to chew and worry our homeless person, and only the homeless persons cries of terror would alert us as to what was going on. Oh you can bet our dog got a good talking to for treating the homeless person that way, but to be fair, homeless people and babies tend to smell like dried pig leather if not cleaned regularly.

Homeless people, like babies, also have an unnatural fear of tub drains. Both our boy and our homeless person would get terrified seeing the water run down the tub drain. Regardless of how many times we assured them that no alligator could ever crawl out of the tub drain they just wouldn’t listen. However babies and homeless people, probably due to the whole poo in the pants thing, have no problem with toilet snakes. Go figure.

Homeless people, much like babies, have trouble holding their heads up all the way for the first little while when you get them home. You need to keep this in mind, because you don’t want to go to jail due to shaken homeless person syndrome. It’s a serious offense. If you find that you’ve accidently shaken your homeless person to hard, best to start up the car and dump them off on that freeway onramp, no one the wiser. Unfortunately the same does not work for babies, so just avoid shaking the baby all together.

Homeless people, much like babies, are deceptively cute around strangers. Once the stranger leaves the wailing and crying begins, but as soon as someone is there that they don’t know, they are all adorable and sweet. I suspect this, on the babies part, is to perpetuate the species. Fooling others into thinking that babies are a good thing to get. DON’T BE FOOLED, IT’S JUST AN ACT.

Finally, while babies and homeless people have huge similarities and common traits, don’t get them mixed up, as it can lead to disastrous results. For example, while babies are not a big fan of rectal thermometers, homeless people are downright violent about it. Babies also wear diapers but the goal is to potty train them, the best you can hope for with homeless people is that they go out on the lawn. Babies have soft spots that do weird throbby things when you poke them, homeless people may give you lice if you poke their head, or ticks, possibly even fleas, mites and earwigs as well, depending on where you got your homeless person. Finally, babies make extremely creepy but easily handled zombies, homeless people make the normal kind that could potentially murder you in your sleep if you pick one up that’s infected. So check your homeless person for bites and scratches, before you take them home.

It may be a good idea to click these pics if you want a more accurate rendition of them. All where taken with the Nokia N95-3 phone unaltered or doctored. As you can probably tell from that realistic evil gleam in Vinny’s head. There is a larger description about each pic as well once clicked.