The Gay Uncle wrote about sticking his big Gay nose into other people’s business this week in his Yahoo! Parenting column tackling the subject of disciplining friends’ and family members’ kids. Surprisingly–given his status as a know-it-all/butt-insky–he generally advocates keeping his ideas to himself, particularly in moments of conflict, as outsiders making suggestions often confuses kids, raises parents’ hackles, and ends up exacerbating situations. (Of course, he doesn’t always succeed in staying silent.) Instead, he recommends discussing the situation later, after the fact. And obviously, he’s not about standing idly by if a kid is doing something that might result in injury to themselves or others.
Well, just after he sent this column to his editor, he had a chance to put his advice to the test. He was at a party at a stranger’s house in L.A. and there were a few parent couples with toddlers present, including one pair with a particularly adorable young boy. Though this kid was probably around 14 months old and a fully functioning walker, because his mom was only about five feet tall, he appeared…shrunken, like he’d been washed in cold instead of dry-cleaned. He was, however, just the right size for investigating things close to the ground like people’s shoes, dropped tortilla chips, and the cat’s tail. He was also properly heighted for exploring the cabinets under the kitchen sink, where the G.U. noticed him handling various exciting objects like: a bottle of ammonia, a can of Easy Off, and a box of what may have either been Clorox wipes or toilet-cleaning wand refills. Gunc was fully tempted to go running into the room and gently explain to the boy that these items were dangerous, and redirect him toward some mildly less harmful playthings, like a steak-knife or ball-peen hammer. But then the Gay Uncle noticed that the kid’s parents were standing right nearby–calm as everyone in California pretends to be–and he supposed that if they weren’t concerned, then his own attempts at intervention would probably go over about as well as the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He hopes they at least rinsed the kid’s hands off after he finished playing.