There’s a new baby on the block — so new, in fact, that he doesn’t have a name yet, although his five-year-old sister told me very sincerely that “Burpkins” was in the running, adding that he’d be called “Burp” for short — who arrived this weekend. To the surprise of few, he was the talk of the neighborhood this weekend, with all of us marveling in his very existence, or at least the speed of his birth (Labor lasted an impressively short amount of time, under an hour). While we’ve been breathlessly sharing stories and speculation about his arrival, his potential name and everything else about him, meanwhile, his parents have been slowly recovering from his arrival. Watching them look (understandably) sleepy and dazed about the entire experience, it struck me that while the news of Burpkins’ arrival is a communal experience, the reality of it is an intensely personal thing that we can’t really share in. The difference between a minor meme and a human being, perhaps.
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