Bite club －バイト・クラブ（かみかみクラブ）－

“The first rule of Bite Club is, you don’t talk about Bite Club.”

Toddler Durden might be angry if he finds out that I am talking about Bite Club.  But to be honest, I am not too worried.  He doesn’t read my blogs.

In fact, he can’t read.  That’s because he is only one year old.

But he is a very strong one year old.  And he likes to bite people.  He bites people when he is angry.  Even more so, he bites people when he is happy.

“When he bites you, it is because he wants to tell you something but doesn’t know how to say it.”

Someone gave us this advice about babies who bite.

So just what does he want to say?  “I’m so hungry that I could eat you”?  “You had better entertain me or I will hurt you”?

Perhaps he wants to say something more complicated than that.  In the 1999 film with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, Tyler Durden formed an underground club for men to fight each other.  Like the earlier movies “Rebel without a cause” and “The Graduate”, the theme of the film was young people (young men) rejecting the society of their parents’ generation and its rules.  For the men to fight each other expressed their hatred of the shallowness of modern consumer and advertising led society.  When they hit each other, they were really saying, “I don’t want to live in a fake world.  I don’t want to have to suppress my primitive male desires just to fit in any more.”

Perhaps when Toddler Durden bites his parents, he is rejecting their society and rules too.  He is saying, “I don’t want to have to suppress my babyish desires any more.  I don’t want to change from milk to solid food.  I don’t want to sit in the high chair at meal times.”

And how can you stop such a baby from biting you?

I asked an older relative for advice.  She said that I used to bite her when I was a baby too.

“And how did you deal with it?” I asked.

“I used to bite you back.”

It is probably better not to tell people that.  These days, they will have you arrested.  The second rule of Bite Club is, you don’t talk about Bite Club!

Vocabulary:

a toddler – a baby who can walk a little

underground – about a society, movement etc., hidden or not well known

shallowness – a lack of depth or real substance

to suppress – to hold back or not allow to be shown

primitive - unsophisticated; having existed for a long time and being simple