Life's Little Baby Truths

I'm listening to This American Life. I'm really getting into this show. It's just so gosh darned neato.

It accomplishes something I always strive for. The show takes what appears on the surface to be an ordinary topic, and then they draw you in with a unique perspective on said topic.

They appeal to the average audience listener's short attention span too because every minute or so, there's a change-up. Something audibly different happens on the radio show. Might be something simple, like they put music in the background or go to a tape of something different happening, or the person who's been talking about their old beat up convertible suddenly makes a startling realization about how their old beat up convertible is just like their life in some outlandish but not too far-fetched way. And so on.

In other words, they simultaneously enlighten and entertain, and I'm always trying to get that to happen in my own writing. Maybe I'll actually make it there someday. In my own writing I mean.

Public Radio International is what carries them for public radio stations throughout the world. Check your local listings, or if you have Real Audio, you can go to their website. Most of their previous shows are archived online. Right now as I type this, I'm listening to a This American Life episode about a ''dirty little secret''.

Baby talk.

It's amazing! Bizarre! They do a twelve minute piece about Baby Talk, and the way they approach it is so out of left field and yet so right on the money.

But I want to repeat that again, just in case I just said something that made your brain fart.

Back last spring they did a twelve minute piece about baby talk. Baby talk! You know, where loved ones talk in little high pitched voices or just make their tongue lazy and screw up their eyes with mischevious smiles. Then they coo and tickle each other in public and get so googly and syrupy that anyone around them just wants to vomit.

Who would bother to waste public radio airtime and pledges rambling about baby talk? Ira Glass, that's who. And with very good reason.

I know you are but what am I?

It's the name calling that always bugs me the most about baby talk. Ooh, you're my widdle piddle bear. Or Oh my sweet honey bunch. Somebody give me a tetanus shot please. Ironically, I have had a nickname for all of my own past relationships. Kinda makes one wonder. Maybe that's why they're past. Maybe it's time to grow up?

The basic approach that This American Life took to the subject of baby talk is this: when you and your significant other were first going out and you were getting to know each other, you had to build up to the intimacy. Okay. In most cases. Most people don't just jump right into the sack. There's a serious courting procedure. Until everything clicks and you two have passed each other's unconscious ''tests'' and stuff.

Linus and his security blanket

The more time you spend together, the more these intimate moments become ingrained into your mutual psyches as special precious moments that help to mold and define what you mean to each other and what you are becoming together. You're playing around.. maybe in the kitchen.. maybe in the bedroom.. and the two of you share moments that no one else knows. And sometimes couples revert to a curious, strange form of communication. Where you both have weird words or phrases that are only of any importance to the two of you. And it becomes a learned reaction.

Then, as time goes on you're both busy or something unspoken develops between you or you just want a shortcut to that intimacy. Maybe you're both working fulltime and you only have fifteen minutes where you're truly alone this week and you both know it.

So you schedule the rendevous and soon as you're in sight of one another from across the room and you've managed to get everyone in your mutual lives to be out of your lives long enough for a quickie alone, she calls you her little bran muffin and you do a terrible impersonation of W. C. Fields ''my little chickadee'' and you hop into each other's arms as if there's a third person somewhere ready to catch you both.

It's a short cut to the intimacy.

It's a safe haven for the relationship. ''oh don't go to sleep mad when ah wuv yew sooo much it hoits wite her! Kiss me wher it herts baby!'' and so on.

As TAL producer Nancy Updike once put it, it's a planned routine. You say your lines and he says his lines and everybody laughs and it's just like it's suppose to be.

Only, it's not.

It's a facade. A masquerade designed to shield ourselves from the fact that something very important is missing. Now don't get me wrong. A little of this baby talk behaviour can be healthy.. and there's no doubt that it's fun to have in a relationship, but it can become a downer if it goes too far.

If you habitually start to do it at any time the two of you are alone and sometimes when you're not alone, all to the chagrin of family and coworkers, there is a problem.

Breakdown in Communication.

You're opting to talk in silly talk, hoping it will reinforce the past 'precious moments' you've shared, without the risk of further intimacy based on real shared experiences and feelings. Instead of facing the fears in the relationships and working together to get past those obstacles that we all find in relationships... obstacles that are natural to overcome.. they instead just get avoided. Baby talk allows you to pretend those obstacles aren't even there.

The Baby Talk feels like it's special and precious, but it has no substance in and of itself.

Wasn't I talking about This American Life?

Like the couple they interviewed for that piece, I've been in relationships like that too, and eventually you learn its a facade. There's something missing and empty in the relationship but both of you cling to the security blanket.

Hoping it will help you remain in that warm and happy place, which you hope you share with that other person, you try not to think about it. You just try to feel it and pretend it will never change, because there was a time when you knew for certain your significant other was, without question, feeling the same thing you felt. At a point, that becomes less certain. In the end you realize, you have no idea what that other person was feeling, you never did, and you never will.

All this psychobabble? About BabyTalk??

Yeah. I can't believe it either. They came up with all that, from something as simple as baby talk. Admittedly, I'm paraphrasing. I mean you should really listen to the piece. It's Episode 123. It's called High Cost of Living. The week of February 26, 1999 was when it was actually broadcast.

And whether you agree with it or not you have to admit it gets the blood in your brain a pumpin'. And I think they can do this with anything. Any topic.

This American Life is able to take any topic from armageddon to poultry, and bring a refreshing perspective to the subject. In fact, they have. Yes. Even poultry.

Taking any topic, describing it, rolling around in it, citing examples, and somehow coming up with a unique and imaginative new way of looking at it.

Sounds kinda familiar, doesn't it? :-)

You can do that too. Right here. In h2g2.com.

In fact, that's what you do every time you submit a guide entry. Or at least, I hope so. Because that's what I've been looking for as a Sub-editor for The Guide. Pieces that approach a subject that on the surface seems rather obvious, and while describing and defining it, brings about a fresh new perspective.

And sometimes maybe others will find that perspective to be wrong, which will encourage them to leave their own perspective in the forums. And in theory, eventually by working together, we'll help to uncover life's little baby truths, from Arthur to Zaphod.

Or from armageddon to poultry. It's all up to you.