DISCOVERY

“Babies are meant to lie on their backs,” Ben’s great-grandmother would have said. “they develop faster when they can see the world.” Ben’s great-grandmother had experience with babies. “babies must be placed on their stomachs,” his Granny said to her mother, when she was raising his mom. “all the experts tell us it’s safer for them. On their backs they can’t so easily choke.” “Babies must be placed on their backs,” his mother says with conviction. “Studies show they will be at reduced risk for crib death.” So much conflicting information. How is a fellow to know whom he ought to trust? So ben has taken matters into his own hands. After five-and-a-half months of listening to the opinions of experts, he has developed a system for flipping himself from stomach to back, back to stomach. No more staring at that boring ceiling! no more flattening the nose against the mattress! It’s the new freedom, the final proof that babies know best, the revolutionary discovery that changes everything! Perhaps ben will take out a patent some day, sell the knowledge to other babies. He’ll call his discovery ‘The turn-Right system’. With so many babies out there wondering whom to believe, he’ll be rich in no time. But all the work of that will have to wait. For Ben is, at this very moment, hatching and testing the validity of a new theory. If babies can turn themselves, he reasons, might they not also be able to move from family room to kitchen by placing hands just ahead of the shoulders and then bending the knees up under the torso, thus advancing the body forward, a little at a time?