Getting Rattled

By G. E. Shuman

            I’m sure that, when I was an infant, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and rocks were soft, I must have played with rattles, just as babies do today. Of course, my rattles probably were nothing like those clasped in the tiny hands of babies now. Mine, if not made from gourds or pterodactyl eggs, were probably at least made of hard, quite breakable plastic, and filled with small pebbles, rattlesnake tails, or whatever else the manufacturers in Hong Kong were allowed to put in baby rattles at the time. I don’t think anyone thought about child product safety laws back then. I know I didn’t, but then, I was a baby.

            Several evenings a week I get to take care of Nahla, my seven-month-old granddaughter, and I love the times that I have with her.  To me she seems very advanced for her age, and she is beautiful. (After all, she’s my grandchild, so you already knew those two things.) It is good that our living room floor has become filled with infant toys, because Nahla is also quite active, and, although she can’t walk yet, and doesn’t really crawl, somehow gets around and plays with most of those toys, every day.

            One recent night the aforementioned intelligent and beautiful young child was in my lap, and had her own rattle in her hand.  This rattle bears no resemblance at all to one I would have played with, those many years ago. Yes, it is made of some type of plastic, as mine must have been, and as almost everything is today, (including most parts of your car), but hers looks like it would survive being run over by a bulldozer.  I think it would be easier to cut a granite block from a Vermont quarry with a butter knife, than to get the small plastic balls that bounce around within Nahla’s rattle to ever come out of it. That baby toy, being military-grade tough, also has three large plastic handles evenly spaced around the center of it, for the baby to conveniently grab. 

As we sat there together, Nahla began vigorously shaking the rattle up and down.  Her excitement grew as she shook the toy harder and harder.  Suddenly, the rattle stopped shaking, and Nahla started. This was followed by a loud cry, and a look of great pain on that pretty little face. My granddaughter, in her excitement, had whacked herself in the forehead with the very toy that was supposed to bring her happiness.

            Soon Grampy had her calmed down, but then made the mistake of giving the rattle back to her. I don’t know why I thought that was a good idea.  I realized it wasn’t, after she had succeeded in whacking her head two more times with the rattle, with the same painful results as the first.

 I comforted her again, after moving the stupid rattle out of her sight. (I don’t know why I call something stupid after it makes ME look stupid.)  I then began to think about what had just happened.  It came to me that Nahla had been put in charge of, had been given the use of, something she was unable to handle. Although the item was made to be perfectly safe, it was not safe for her, at least not quite yet. It was harmless, but had still harmed her, I realized. Worse, perhaps, than that, and this thought made me feel terrible, she had been given the object back two more times before a ‘responsible’ adult who loved her decided that she shouldn’t have it.

That very moment Nahla taught her old grandpa something that he hopes he never forgets. That is that there may be things in life, both in yours and in mine, that we might be better off without, until and unless we can handle them. Those things may be habits, attitudes, ambitions, or even worthwhile projects. They could be anything that we keep hitting ourselves in the head with and not understanding why this happens, or why we just keep going back for more. Maybe some of those things should be stopped, or taken out of our hands, before we hurt ourselves or others with them, again.

I’m not sure why the idea for this column came to me as it did, but I hope it helps someone out there. I do know that I recently learned a lesson from a seven-month-old baby. It is one that I should try to apply to my own life.  I learned that it is wise to put down harmful things, and to not get rattled.