When Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, gets up to talk about product safety, there’s one certainty: young Jack Kevin Barton will come up. 

There have been dribs and drabs of talk about the toddler at previous Capitol Hill events about unsafe toys, but the floodgates opened wide on Tuesday.

During a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing where other lawmakers assailed the acting head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission for trips made at industry expense, delved into how trace amounts of lead are calculated and other weighty matters, the 58-year-old Barton told anecdotes about his son.

Here’s an excerpt from the folksy Texan’s opening remarks at the hearing, which his staff also distributed to reporters at the hearing and e-mailed as a press release:

I think everybody on the subcommittee knows that I have a two-year-old son, Jack Kevin Barton. … These little tykes are so inquisitive and so adventuresome that you really have to be smart to keep them safe.

I’ll give you an example. … Last weekend my wife had to go run some errands and while she wasn’t sure I was capable of taking care of Jack by myself, I was given that opportunity since we couldn’t get a babysitter. He brought me a bag of microwave popcorn that he had gotten out of the cupboard. I was watching a football game. I said, ‘No, Jack, your mother doesn’t want you to have popcorn. Put it back.’ He toddles off.

I’m watching the game and all of a sudden I hear this ‘beep, beep, beep’ coming from the kitchen. He had taken the popcorn back into the kitchen, got a chair, pulled the chair over to the built-in microwave, which is about six feet above the floor, climbed up on the chair, opened the microwave, put the popcorn in, figured out how to hit the ‘popcorn’ button and pushed the darn button. Now, it was in the cellophane and the cellophane started popping and burning so I rushed in and of course he was just proud as punch that he had figured out how to do microwave popcorn, even though he didn’t know that he was supposed to undo the cellophane. 

He’s also brought me a childproof medicine bottle that he’s taken the cap off of in the last two weeks. He was pretty proud that he was able to do that.”

During Barton’s rambling comments, the faces of other committee members were impassive — likely a skill honed during many years of graduate school, law school and congressional debate.

But Barton wasn’t done.

When the testimony turned to recalled cribs, Barton took the opportunity to let the committee, a panel of expert witnesses and the bored press about how difficult it was to keep his son in in bed. “He’s just like a little eel getting out of that crib.” 

– Reporting by Diane Bartz

– Photo credit: Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi