There was a brief fit of madness at the school where I work today. Mostly from the women, but a couple of the men got involved, too.

Luckily, I knew what was about to happen and got to watch the madness unfold, albeit after briefly suffering because of it.

This only happened because I found a discarded or dropped memory stick in one of my classrooms and delivered it to the student office to be added to the surprisingly large pile of lost goods. (The pile is large enough that it reminds me of the large warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant is secretly being stored.)

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get immediate service as one of the teachers had just brought his child to school. This teacher is currently taking paternity leave after swapping with his wife. (He wisely waited until after 2:00 a.m. feedings and the toxic Velcro poop phase were finished.) However, clearly being bored, he brought the young one to school. The staff at the student office both looked at me once, determined I was not carrying a child and quickly shifted their attention to the young one and adored him with squeaks and koos that reinforced my notion that babies make people insane.

(Note: the insanity is much different for the casual viewer than the actual parent. More on that later.)

After pretending to play along by making faces at the child, I was treated as a member of the tribe and finally able to deliver the lost goods. I went back to the office an mentioned to a couple people that the room was about to explode. (More specifically, I mentioned that the teacher was visiting and “with child” so to speak.)

Soon the child arrived and there was squeaking and kooing and the crowd gathered and even women who already have children were saying how awesome it would be to have one.

This, is the first form of insanity: mother’s, upon seeing someone else’s baby, immediately remember the cuteness and how adorable the clothes were but forget the 2:00 a.m. feedings, the toxic Velcro poop and, more importantly, the Terrible Twos.

Even She Who Must Obeyed goes through this. When she enters this phase, I play a recording of our youngest letting out a blood-curdling scream that sounds like it belongs in a scene from a horror movie where the baby suddenly stands up in her crib, lets out a blood-curdling scream and then eats her entire family who are so stunned by what’s happening they either freeze or run down into the basement.

If you think I’m joking, here’s the actual recording:

The men also found the baby cute and a few played with it.  This is the second form of insanity: playing with a child and thus exposing it’s undeveloped immune system to the germs of dozens of strangers.

In the end order was restored.

NOTE: Edited for clarity on June 2, 2015.