I’m not really the most knowledgeable person when it comes to babies. I’ve never had any, nor have I been tasked with caring for them as part of my vocation. Here are some things I know: They are delivered by a stork (that is actually not true unless your OB GYN’s last name happens to be “Stork”).

The Stork brothers in the 1986 movie One Crazy Summer. Do you want EITHER of these guys delivering packages – let alone babies? You might recognize the guy on the right as being actor Bobcat Goldthwaite…

What else do I know about babies? Well, they need to have their diapers changed until they learn to use the toilet like the rest of the civilized world, they have to eat super mushy stuff (like the food Robocop ate in the first movie) until they get their teeth in and can start eating steak, eggs, salt water taffy, bacon, pork rinds, bourbon and other grown-up food; they keep their parents from getting enough sleep, and you have to like…watch them all of the time. If you don’t, they will surely get the jump on you, look straight in your eyes and say “The jig is up. Hand over the remote. Enough of this kiddie crap! NO MORE PIXAR FILMS! I’M deciding what we watch. And I’ll take the car keys, too.”

Then you look on in awe as what you thought was your utterly helpless baby fixes himself a bourbon and soda, gets comfy in your recliner and starts watching Orange Is The New Black, Legion, Bojack Horseman or whatever it is babies like to watch (I told you I don’t really know that much about babies). Then you look on in even more awe as your baby tries to reach the gas pedal to drive your SUV (or minivan, or whatever cars people use to drive babies around) and tells you to ride shotgun while he drives to the strip club. That is, if you’re lucky. Chances are your baby will tell you to stay home so he can go pick up his “boys.”

All of that said (ahem), I happen to work in a store that recently started selling an increased selection of  things for babies. Our store is located in one of the areas that used to have a Babies R Us store, so our store was picked as one of the “target” stores to start selling things for babies as an effort to get those customers. One of the items I saw was a “swaddler.” And I was puzzled about what it was for… At first glance, it looked like a straitjacket for babies. And by “straitjacket” I do not mean a jacket specially designed for George Strait…

Country music artist George Strait had a whole mess of #1 hits on the U.S. country charts in the 1980s. His highest-charting hits on the Billboard Hot 100 charts were both from 2002 – She’ll Leave You With a Smile (#23) and Living and Living Well #27). I’m going to pretend the first hit is about having a “happy ending” at a massage parlor (LOL)!

Now that I’ve gotten this George Strait distraction out of the way, let’s get back to straitjackets for babies, shall we?

A “swaddler” (aka straitjacket) for babies. I don’t know what to make of the look on this baby’s face…

To learn more, I did what just about everyone else does when they’re curious about the answer to a question. I posted it as a status update on Facebook. I asked parents to chime in about the merits of “swaddlers” for babies…And I learned that babies really seem to enjoy being wrapped up like a burrito. It’s comforting to them because it’s like being in their mother’s womb – with beef or chicken, lettuce, tomatoes, refried beans and sour cream (upon request). And the parents who commented referred to the swaddlers as “straitjackets.” Though none of them spelled the word correctly (tsk, tsk)…

But I had to ask some riveting questions and go right to the source! I called my parents’ house and talked to my dad. My mom was my first choice to pose this question, but she was at an executive board meeting for the thrift shop in which she works as a volunteer (it has basically become her second career). Although when I was a baby, my dad spent his days working on the assembly line in the Buick City factory complex in Flint  – and my mom handled most of the parenting duties, he still managed to answer this question for me – “Did I like being swaddled as a baby?”

‘You liked it,” he told me. “Once you were all wrapped up, you were out just like that.” And since this is me we’re talking about, I HAD to turn it into a joke.

“I’ll bet you guys liked that when I was all bound up like that I couldn’t reach for a knife,” I said to my dad.

“Or try to push the red button,” he quipped back.

All funny banter aside, it turns out my dad was WRONG. It was my older brother who enjoyed being swaddled, not me. My mom said that I was not a fan of being all bundled up. Figures – my brother and I seldom agree about anything now, why wouldn’t that start when we were babies?

Stimpy in Ren and Stimpy tries to keep from pushing the red button that will destroy the world

Very cursory research by reading the Wikipedia article tells me that straitjackets used on mental patients also have a similar effect. Calming. And most importantly, they keep the patients from hurting themselves – or others.  More from Wikipedia: “The straitjacket is described as early as 1772, in a book by the Irish physician David Macbride, though there are claims an upholsterer named Guilleret invented it in 1790 France for Bicêtre Hospital. Today, they are typically made from cotton duck cloth.” Please note duck cloth is just a term for heavy, durable cloth and is not made from actual ducks.

A couple of people commented about “Thunder Shirts” for dogs. Yes, straitjackets for canines! Rover nervous about fireworks, thunder or you playing Baja Men’s Who Let The Dogs Out one too many  times? Strap him in! Rover will be just fine!

Still, the whole thing just makes me think of Alice Cooper and his song The Ballad of Dwight Fry, which is about an inmate in an asylum. It’s a really cool song with sweet acoustic guitar riffs (not to mention some brilliant vocal stylings by Mr. Cooper himself). When he performs this song live, he typically wears a (you guessed it) straitjacket! One of my co-workers today said she saw Cooper perform at a state fair years ago, and he wore the straitjacket while doing this song. Which makes it really, really difficult to play guitar 🙂

Did you know Alice Cooper’s real name is Vincent Damon Furnier? Best remember that, because it will surely wind up in a trivia game someday in the category of “stage names” (don’t say I didn’t try to teach you something useless today)! His highest charting hit was School’s Out (#7), which was released in 1972. This photo is from the 2012 movie remake of Dark Shadows.