Parents are ready for about anything
The Little People polar bear scooted across the dining room floor, his smiling, toothless face bouncing off a chair leg and disappearing into the hall.
The baby giggled and ran after it, picking up the miniature plastic version of one of nature's greatest killers and tossing it over his head. I heard the child's fist-sized toy bonk against hard wood and find its way onto some part of the floor I'd later walk over in the dark.
In Toddlerland, I'd always find the baby's toys later, and always in the dark. It was some Hitchcockian thing for people who weren't afraid of heights, or birds, or knife-wielding maniacs dressed up as their dead mother - they were afraid of stepping on toys.
Toddlerland can be a scary place because nothing is safe in Toddlerland _ not even _he "_" key on my compu_er.
But the baby has better prepared my wife and me for life under a potential post-World War III martial law than people with Secret Ops training. Our now-instinctual overturned toy box lunges, Groin Protection Kwan Do and our ability to disarm a scampering two-foot-tall target clutching an ink pen have prepped us for any attempted takeover of this country by La Petite Academy.
And they're the ones who'll start the revolution. It's in the Bible, I think.
But more than preparing us for life in a post-apocalyptic war zone, being a parent has taught us babies are nature's most clever monkey - even more clever than chimpanzees and maybe tech support.
Babies are not only adorable, charming and covered in their own spit, but they can fidget their way into any high security area_ such as the kitchen or bathroom _ operate remote-control devices to the extent they screw up last Wednesday's programmed recording of "Lost," and survive off nutrients collected from under their spot of the table _ no matter how often we clean or how many times we tell them "no, it's yucky."
Yes, babies are smarter than us _ we can learn from them.
By stalking the baby through Toddlerland, I've learned to hunt like a wild animal, assemble an M-16 out of Legos in a minute and half and to decode secret baby messages from their guttural "nang nangs" into such phrases as "more milk, please," "I hear a truck," or "I want to watch 'VeggieTales.' Why can't you understand me, you idiot?"
And I can kill a full-grown man.
OK, so maybe not, but I can put a diaper on anyone if they're not squirming too much. Don't make me demonstrate.
Yes, Toddlerland is a dangerous place for the weak. But we've learned to survive amongst its overturned wastebaskets, random sticky spots and the DVD remote hidden in places a sane person would never look.
Parents are the heroes of the future. Just hope we're on your side when the toddlers strike.
