Babies are Reptiles; ask Jesus, he was Breastfed
by Arthur King

So it’s Easter and I have a six-week old baby to write about (The Wife and her friends are insisting that I blog His Majesty). So I’m going to try and blend the two into one blog. I’ll warn you ahead of time that this is going to get random, and offensive, so if you believe in God – do read on, won’t you?

So it’s Easter and you’ve got your Rising from the Dead to complete the process of your Supernatural Life. It all falls into place at Easter, doesn’t it? Immaculate Conception, followed by Death, then Rising From Death and Life After Death. Finally, you’ve got your Eternity (in a place that sounds rather dull, but you have to be dull to gain entry; so Heaven is a bit like a golf club?). So far, so suburban.

Right, I’ll grant you the Immaculate Conception bit, if only because it isn’t worth arguing over. You can have that. So we’ll assume the Hand of God pointed at Mary, and Mary (poor girl) got really really large and started baking an awful lot of chocolate-chip and blueberry scones and getting up frequently at night to pee.

Next thing you know, Mary’s dad is over at Joseph’s dad’s having a word.

So Joseph had to marry Mary.

I’ve always wondered why. Was he the only available chap? Was the Immaculate Conception the progenitor of an early gay-straight arrangement? Did Joseph say, “I’ll cover for you Mary, but only if Bob can live next door”?

I mean he might have been her boyfriend, but I’d do a runner if my girlfriend told me she got pregnant “by God” and insisted I had to be hubbie. I’m sorry, you won’t even let me sit next to you, but you’re in the Bun Club, you say it was God, and you want me to marry you? Yeah, right. You’re having a laugh, ain’t yer?

Or, maybe Joseph was a bit of a thickie, and you can see I’m just stretching this out looking for a connection here. Maybe he believed that girls could get pregnant if you sat next to them? I think I’ve found my connection, and here’s what it is.

I always wanted to ask Ms C, my Catechism teacher, about all this, but I was worried it might kill her. She was old-school Catholic and did believe you could get pregnant by sitting too close to people: to avoid pregnancy, she’d say, always keep the width of a telephone directory between you. (Because I couldn’t ask Ms C any really good questions, I have no clue what she would have said to my old beau Patricia’s question: “What if he’s longer than that?” But then, what do you say when Convent girls ask such things? Nothing: giggle and have done in my experience.)

Ms C wore only brown tweed, and in a more enlightened age might have been a Women’s Studies teacher. Or openly lesbian. She wasn’t, and there’s a sadness.

Immaculate conceits
Ms C didn’t get pregnant by god, and neither did my wife, at least not as far as I know. Sometime in May 2006 The Wife came home from work at around 4pm. At around 5pm we gazed up at the ceiling together. The sperm charged forward, and the egg, for once, was not otherwise engaged (doing its hair, talking to its girlfriends on the phone, and so on).

Next thing you know, sperm meets egg, sperm buys egg a drink, sperm and egg find a mutual passion for early 60s Britpop, sperm and egg go back to her place, smoke pot, perform oral sex, adopt multiple positions, sperm disappears, egg starts to subdivide (feminists will recognize a familiar pattern in those final moments).

If you’ve ever seen a sub-divided cell it looks a whole lot like, well, a sub-divided cell. It doesn’t look human. It can’t walk, talk or accept your offer of a drink and invite you back to its place for oral sex. It can’t get pregnant or insist on its opinion in stentorian tones after one vodka too many. It’s a sub-divided cell.

According to the Catholic church though, when sperm meets egg, human life is already fully present. Clearly the Catholic elders have not met my son.

He is a full-blown six-week old external foetus. I call him the Reptile among other names. I love him to bits, and he’s mine. But he is a Reptile.

Reptiles need breastmilk
So my son’s a Reptile and he can’t fend for himself. All he can do is cry, pee, barf and poo. Sometimes he can cry so much he goes purple. Sometimes he can do all these things at once, usually when mummy has just gone out for two hours, but that’s another story for another day.

We breastfeed our Reptile, for all sorts of healthy reasons. Like, breastmilk prevents allergies and passes on the mother’s immunities directly to the child; breastmilk alters in composition according to the age-specific needs of the child; breastfeeding helps contract the uterus after pregnancy; and so on. (Baby formula does none of these things.)

So here’s the deal. What you have to realise when you start breastfeeding a child is that breasts, and especially women’s nipples, are very very dangerous. So dangerous, that in Memphis (where my wife is taking our Reptile this summer, hence the interest), a woman breastfeeding an infant over 1 years old in public can be arrested.

I’ve been thinking about why this should be, and I think I’ve come up with a reason.

Savage French Witches Nipples
As we know, Adam and Eve were nudists until they ate an apple. Not sure how that works, but stay with me here, okay? Nowadays, as we know, only Savages and Frenchwomen have nipples. God-fearing Christian American Women (about 84% of the population) don’t usually have nipples. Take a walk through any American city, stare at women’s breasts, I challenge you to find a single visible nipple. This is why they have to feed their babies with bottles. It’s true that a minority of American women (about 16% of the population) do have nipples, but these women are usually Witches. Even if they are not Witches, they are not allowed to breastfeed their children in public after one year, because at that point they automatically become Witches in league with the devil, and Witches Tits can paralyse Christians.

So much for Memphis.

But now I’m really puzzled.

You see, I’ll give you that the Infant Baby Jesus was conceived by the Hand of God (not you Diego, sit down). But you can’t tell me Jesus didn’t eat. In fact, he seems to have done rather a nice line in catering with fishes and loaves.

So, in the absence of Ms C, my old Catechism teacher, could someone please explain this to me: given that Mary lived in Palestine 2,000 years ago (sorry Zionists, but it’s true), and even Nestle was not around then ramming formula down babies throats, surely Jesus was breastfed? If so, did Mary have nipples? And if so, was she a Witch?

Where’s a Catholic priest when you need one? What’s that? Oh.

Right then, off to the pub.

Happy Easter.

socalledarthurking@gmail.com