2007-01-01

The Perpetual Baby

Wired's Table of Malcontents writes about a 13 year old that looks and acts like a 6 to 12 month old baby. It's a medical mystery, but clearly something that triggers the baby's development isn't happening. Amazing.

--YY

2 comments:

yitz said...

one might also say, 'really really sad' instead of 'cool' ..
just a thought..

YodaYid said...

You're absolutely right (and my mom said something similar to me), but I didn't actually use the word "cool".

On the other hand, severe mental retardation is characterized by a person staying at a very young mental age while getting physically older. It's much easier for us, psychologically, to cope with a perpetual baby, than to see an adult with the mind of a baby.

The other positive aspect of this story is that it appears to be possible to freeze someone in time. Obviously 6 months old is not where most of us would want to stay, but in American culture at least, people would kill to be twenty forever...

Anyway, I agree that the story is sad, but most "normal" instances of severe mental retardation are much sadder.