I’m Pretty Sure The Boy’s Not A Loser.

For months, Jack has been crawling like he’s in training, skittering around our house with the speed of a movie Alien, the one that burst out of that dude’s chest and clattered out the room.

The problem, if you can call it that, is there are all these other kids, smaller kids, younger kids, who are walking. And not that unsteady, end of a long St. Patrick’s Day drunk walk.

They’re strutting. A little bounce in the step. I swear I saw a ten-month old shoot off the finger gun and wink at me.

Thankfully, Jack has finally gotten off his ass and started walking.

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So Jack’s around a group. Some little dude starts walking, smiling, waving his hands around. Someone asks, “How old is he?” (I hear in my head, “How old is he, this little marvel of motor coordination? This future Olympian?”) “Nine months,” the parent beams.

Then the group looks at Jack, crawling around, happy, oblivious as only an almost fourteen month-old can be. Someone will give me a sad Muppet look, big eyes above a pushed-out lower lip.

“That’s OK.” “He’ll walk when he’s ready.” “The longer it takes, the more coordinated they are.”

WTF? It’s not like he’s six.

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The wife and I went to see Joel McHale, he of The Soup and NBC’s Community, this past weekend. At one point, he started riffing on fatherhood.

“One minute, you’ll watch your son put a puzzle together and think, “He’s a genius. He’s going to be the President.’ Thirty minutes later, you’re watching him try to keep drool in his mouth and think, ‘There’s a good chance he’s retarded.’”

In the cab, we both said how true that feels. It’s the constant, rarely spoken swing between the two extremes of parental certainty.

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There’s nothing wrong with Jack, of course.

But get together with some new parents with their kids. Adults start saying some truly bizarre things.

Jack started crawling well before other kids his age (my boy!). But we intentionally didn’t say anything about it or try to call more attention to it. Because there were parents who’d watch Jack crawl and say, “Oh, my son is lazy. That’s why he isn’t crawling.”

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I have a younger brother. Growing up, I was pegged the smart one. He was the cute one. So I grew up thinking I was an ugly nerd and he grew up not trying in school.

Sure, there’s other factors that formed our self-image. But hear yourself compared to someone else enough, you start to believe where you sit. Even if it isn’t true.

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It’s hard to focus just on your kid and not let people’s comments or judgements or opinions or observations, no matter how innocuous and well-meaning, affect what you want for your kid.

Jack, I try to remind myself, defines his own normal. Granted, his normal can be pretty weird, with these animal noises he makes — he sounds kind of like a Gremlin — and his tendency to mimic our dog and crawl around with stuff in his mouth.

He’ll walk, for real, when he’s ready. I just hope he starts talking pretty damned soon.