For Parul and Adi

In a recent post, Parul talks of Adi's first baby steps.
I quote, "Yesterday, I came across a Johnny Walker ad somewhere and instead of conjuring up the intended image of an inviting glass of pure alcohol, all it brought to the mind was a toddler walking up and down the house."
Parul, our old friend Ogden Nash has apparently had several thousands of bright ideas long before anyone of either your generation or mine was anywhere on the scene, and this particular idea has been expounded brilliantly in his poem " It Must Be The Milk" ( from The Bad Parents' Garden of Verse, 1936). With great pleasure I dedicate an excerpt from this poem to Adi and Parul, and all the tiny toddlers staggering around the planet.


There is a thought that I have tried not to but cannot help but think,
Which is, My goodness how much infants resemble people who have had too much to drink.
Tots and sots, so different and yet so identical!
What a humiliating coincidence for pride parentical!
Yet when you see your little dumpling set sail across the nursery floor,
Can you conscientiously deny the resemblance to somebody who is leaving a tavern after having tried to leave it a dozen times and each time turned back for just one more?
Each step achieved
Is simply too good to be believed;
Foot somehow follows foot
And somehow manages to stay put;
Arms wildly semaphore,
Wild eyes seem to ask, Whatever did we get in such a dilemma for?
And their gait is more that of a duckling than a Greek goddessling or godling,
And in inebriates it's called staggering and in infants it's called toddling.
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So I hope you will agree that it is very hard to tell an infant from somebody who has gazed too long into the cup.
And really the only way you can tell them apart is to wait till next day and the infant is the one that feels all right when it wakes up.