RICHMOND, Va. – A Richmond man found himself puzzled Tuesday by the question, “whose baby?” when posited by his eccentric uncle.
“He just came out of the bathroom and said it,” Jim Callahan, a Richmond SEO analyst, said. “He said, ‘whose baby?’ And I didn’t know what to say.”
Dr. Angstrom H. Talkenlaut, professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT, said the question goes back to mankind’s earliest communication fundamentals, the call-and-response.
“Whose baby?” – similar to questions, “Whose buddy?” and “Whose boy?” – begs the question, to whom does one belong? That is to say, who is your main man, who is your boy, who is your buddy, and who is your baby? To which the response, in every case, is unanimously, “Yours.” — Dr. Talkenlaut
Callahan recalls that he paused in reflection of the question.
“I thought, ‘Whose baby am I?'” Callahan said. “I just couldn’t answer the question. I asked him, ‘Am I supposed to say ‘yours?'”
Callahan said the uncle laughed and said, “Well, we’re still two pretty good old boys, aren’t we?”
Talkenlaut could not defend the exchange, and went home early. Callahan’s brain exploded, and the uncle proceeded to watch YouTube videos of ‘old sawmills in action,’ and ‘old dirt bikes.’
