OPEN LETTER TO BABY DON CHEADLE

Dear Baby Don Cheadle,

We are so seriously excited about your imminent arrival. Every one tells us not to worry and to disregard what every one else says. This can get rather confusing as it forces us to cancel everyone's advice by canceling everyone's advice. After tabulating with this algorith, we are inevitably left, once again, with your undisputed interger (1, of course) and very little viable intelligence.

If I get to speaking about you as if you were a meteor I apologize in advance. It's just not every day that two adult humans get to welcome a new member of their family. If you haven't figured it out, yet, you are a newborn male human infant. So, there are some things we would like to square away with you before you come in and completely wreck our lives by giving it some meaning.

We are not pedigreed people and we are not independently wealthy. We are hard-working and tempestous, and we like to bicker when it suits the situation. Your mother and I chose to teach people how to be better people, which is not necessarily a lucrative endeavor. You can live comfortably, but you will have to work and study and amass credentials if you are to acquire any of the luxury items your friends and acquaintances possess.

We are perfectly imperfect and realize this might not jive with your clean-slate consciousness. We understand that no matter what precautions we take we are going to screw you up good. And I have already come to terms with this. It is written. The good news is that we will undertake screwing you up with the best of intentions; the bad news is that everyone is screwed up in their own way. In many ways, how people are screwed up is like a inherited fingerprint, a DNA heirloom.

But hold on. You probably think that I am being disparaging or humble when I say that your mother and I are going to screw you up. You don't know me yet so I will let it slide, but just so you know I am a primate with moderate abilities when it comes to contradictions and verbal architecture. When I say screw you up, I mean in the good sense that our parents screwed us up, in the good sense that all children are the result of some deficiency passed down ad infinitum.

Please do not take this as facetious batter from which you will draw large pancakes of reasoning. I am being completely literal when I say that inevitably your mother and I will imprint you with some kind of tick that other might people might call a personality or temparament. We are just getting started.