This morning I woke up to something incredible: leftover chocolate cream pie in the fridge. But also, news that Kate and William (my close personal friends) had welcomed their third child. We don’t know his name yet, we don’t know his favourite hobbies, and we have no idea what he’s currently wearing, but I don’t care. I am here for this Royal Baby, and I don’t care what you think about that. It’s April. I need this.
We know the winter’s been terrible, and that the last few months have felt like what happens when you find out you have to walk up an escalator while carrying bags and bags of your personal belongings. And, because we’ve all learned never to trust anything ever again, we’ve also learned that a few days of sun and reasonable warmth isn’t about to cancel any of that. So will a Royal Birth? Absolutely not. But it might help us forget. Here’s how and why:
Immediate effect: made me forget about last night
I woke up sometime between 3 and 4 and reached for my water, forgetting I’d put it on the floor. So I kept reaching around, thinking my water was hiding amongst my bottles of perfume because I was half asleep and incapable of actual thought. Seconds later, I woke up after spraying myself in the face with whatever perfume was closest, found my water, and fell asleep concerned that I was going to die from whatever poison is in perfume.
But then I woke up, read the news about the Royal Baby and forgot about all of the above immediately. There was a new baby on this earth, and I had to make jokes about this event on Twitter.
If he’s not named after me I will never watch The Crown again. https://t.co/57KXlAI9Ae
— Anne T. Donahue (@annetdonahue) April 23, 2018
Fleeting effect: we can laugh on the internet
None of us are going to meet this Royal Baby. He doesn’t care what we’re up to. He’s busy, and we have nothing in common, so it’s not like a friendship would last very long anyway. This is why I don’t feel bad making jokes about his name being Chad or reading other people’s jokes about his name being Chad. He will never read these tweets. He doesn’t know. He can’t hear me laughing. He can’t see me gingerly touching my computer screen and whispering “Chad” as though I have bestowed a destiny upon him.
Longterm effect: more pictures of small children with purpose, wearing dress shorts
Prince George legitimately looks like a small man who could fire me in a heartbeat, should his own heart desire it. He walks with purpose, he wears dress shorts, and at one point he was photographed wearing a bathrobe as though meeting President Obama was an inconvenience and took him away from a very important meeting he had to push back a few minutes. These photos bring me happiness and now we’ve just been guaranteed even more thanks to his tiny baby brother. I want more knee socks, and I want them now.
Misc. effect: he may be the next Boss Baby
He may be. Don’t discount this.
Forever effect: we are so unaffected by this, it is a true escape, we are blessed
As mentioned previously, none of us know this small child. And truly, we will never know him. Plus, I’ll put it this way: outside of his marriage to/divorce from Fergie, Duchess of York, do you know anything about Prince Andrew? The third son of Queen Elizabeth? Of course not. Why would you? He’s out there living his own life, and good for him, I think. Thus, enter: the new Royal Baby. He’s just a baby! And again, the third in line! Which means that unless he does something absolutely terrible (or great — but honestly the odds of anybody doing anything great at this point feels far-fetched and unrealistic), we won’t hear a ton about him, and bless us everyone, we have nothing to lose in our “Congrats on the child!” sentiments.
Because ultimately, Prince Baby #3 is the royal equivalent of our friend from college who just had a kid, and I mean, look: it’s great to see them on Instagram, but she and us ran out of things to talk about sometime in 2010 and it’s not like I’m going to add her son to Facebook even if we reconnected. We just get to be like “Oh sweet, congrats!” That’s it. That’s all. We have no responsibility here. We just have to look at photos sometimes.
Also, it’s sunny finally. So if you don’t want to look at photos, we can just spend time outside doing anything else. Their parenting style is their business. I just want to see more shorts and knee socks.
