All in the Family
It’s amazing to me how many characteristics you’d think would be learned behaviors actually turn out to be hardwired into our genetic code.
Talkativeness, for example.
When I wasn’t quite three, my parents took me on a road trip up the Pacific Coastal Highway. They figured I’d sleep the whole way. It seemed a safe assumption to make, as most kids sleep in cars.
I, however, was not most kids.
Not only did I stay awake the entire drive through California, I talked the whole time, too, earning myself the nickname Chatty Cathy.
My mother also wished I would have a chatterbox child when I grew up. She has amazing power. (I’m terrified about the karmic retribution I’m in for after The Playground Incident.)
Though the Burt Squirt, of course, has never been called Chatty Cathy, he has been dubbed Jabberwocky. He’s nowhere near three, but any time he’s in the car, he’s awake and talking.
For that matter, any time he’s awake, he’s talking.
And as of 4:30 this morning, he doesn’t even have to be awake to be talking.
That would be the Bond coming out in him.
You see, the Burt Squirt comes from a long line of sleep-talkers. My shining moment occurred on a family vacation, when my father, up late reading, heard me say to my brother in the other bed, “Don’t tell Dad!” Dad once freaked my mom out by suddenly sitting up in bed one night and whacking the foot of the bed, saying, “It’s in the sheets!” Mom never was sure of what it was; maybe the same it my brother was talking about when Dad caught him sleep-walking one night and Greg mumbled something unintelligible before slugging Dad on the shoulder and saying, “Psst! Dad, pass it on.”
But it’s Mom who has, fittingly, the mother of all sleep-talking stories. It was Dad’s turn to get a little surprise the night Mom sat up in bed, grabbed his hand, brought it up to her lips, and planted a smacking kiss on it. When he asked her, bemused, what she was doing, Mom replied, “It’s a handshake–a friendly gesture!” and promptly lay back down.
I’d be more surprised if the Burt Squirt didn’t talk in his sleep. Though I thought we’d at least get through the baby monitor years before he followed in the family footsteps. Which was how I witnessed this milestone: Mr. Burt was putting the Burt Squirt back to bed after I nursed him at 4 AM, while I tried, unsuccessfully, to fall back asleep due to the stream of baby babble emitting from the monitor on my bedside table. I was feeling rather sorry for Mr. Burt, thinking he’d be in there a while if the Burt Squirt was that wide awake, when suddenly he was crawling back into bed with me, laughing.
“He was talking in his sleep!” he said, and I realized the baby monitor was silent.
“Aw, he said dada in his sleep while you were patting him,” I said, thinking of how my brother and I always had that uncanny ability to sleep-talk about or to my dad when he was awake to hear it.
The Burt Squirt’s sentience would have been more impressive had I not earlier that day witnessed him look directly at the cat and shriek, “Dada!”
In fact, dada seems to be the Burt Squirt’s word of choice for describing anything that makes him happy, as you can see in this video in which he is clearly not asleep.
…or is he?
