Woodstock, NB – Local uncle Grant Newsten, 32, has been reported by witnesses to be handling his newborn niece, Amelia Newsten, as if she is a rickety and highly explosive crate of long-abandoned explosives.
“Careful… careful…” Newsten reportedly whispered to himself at a recent family dinner as he cradled the sleeping infant while visibly repressing his own panic. Eyewitnesses describe the recent uncle as “frenzied”, “petrified”, and “painfully over-worried about what will happen even if he does waker her up.” It was at this point that the ‘nitroglycerin handling’ description took hold.
“Grant kept trying to awkwardly hold the baby away from him, and I think I could see beads of sweat rolling down his forehead,” explained sister-in-law and recent mother Jesalyn Newsten-Clarke. “You could just picture him doing the exact same thing with a long-abandoned crate of railroad explosives that he stumbled on in a dusty cave.”
“Except it’s just a sleeping baby, and he needs to chill out,” added the sleep-deprived newborn mother.
Forced to watch this ridiculous display, witnesses could only speculate as to what the terrified uncle imagined if he were to wake the baby up. “Worst case scenario, she cries and then goes to bed a bit earlier tonight,” added new father and Grant’s brother, Dave. “It’s like he thinks he’s in that Canadian Heritage Moment with the Chinese railroad workers.”
In addition to treating a sleeping infant as it it were a deteriorating explosive from the 1850’s, Newsten reportedly expressed other inaccurate beliefs, including “babies’ heads are as soft as sponges” and “they don’t have spines until 6 months old”. Grant then desperately tried to slow down his own breathing, while demanding other family members keep a 10 foot radius.
“What if I drop her, and that’s what makes her become a serial killer,” Grant worried aloud as his family members insisted he let them see the baby.
“Do you remember that episode of LOST, where they find the old dynamite and the professor guy handles it wrong and it instantly explodes and kills him,” said Margie Newsten, Grant’s 58-year-old mother. “I’m honestly convinced that that’s exactly what Grant thinks will happen if he wakes Amelia up from her nap.”
While Newsten’s paranoia is exhausting, the family agrees it is preferable to how he spent all 9 months of Jesalyn’s pregnancy treating her like an unexploded WWII depth charge.
