Black Friday

Dec 12, 2007

The first time I realized I wanted a baby, I was abandoned at college over Thanksgiving break. My parents had decided that year to take a couples-only trip to Plymouth Rock so they could “get right in there and experience Thanksgiving first hand,” and though they bragged they’d be eating flame-roasted turkey with the few remaining members of the Sioux tribe on Thursday, I had no problem being left out of their plans. I was excited to spend a relaxing weekend catching, cooking, and consuming my own turkey because I was in college, and therefore independent.

However, I failed to realize that while all my friends would be at home eating mom-made turkey over the break, I’d be stuck in my dorm room playing solitaire by my lonesome. And so, around my third game and second Hungryman™ Roasted Turkey with Garlic Mashed Potato Dinner Pack, I had an epiphany: I was bored as shit. A normal college student would kill boredom with masturbation, pot brownies, and guitar hero (or some combination of the three), but I was no ordinary college student. I wanted something new to play with. Something that I could hold in my hands, something that could be easily amused and easily amusing, something with soft skin and big eyes—I had a second epiphany: I wanted a baby.

How to get a baby, though? I didn’t have the patience to wait nine months for one to form, grow, and pop out of my girlfriend's uterus. I didn’t really want to wade through lawyers and paperwork so I could adopt one from Africa. And I definitely couldn’t borrow one—none of my friends were loose enough at this point, and my only baby cousin lived on the west coast. I had no option but to steal one.

Stealing a baby seems incredibly easy. They are, after all, quite stupid and easily distracted. Their muscles are too weak to fend off your thieving hands, and their whiny voices are easily muffle-able. So if you were to just put one in your arms, give it a goofy smile, and sing it a few rounds of “Jimmy cracked corn and I don’t care” while whisking it off to your apartment, the thing would be too distracted to make a fuss, or even realize what’s going on. And so, with thoughts of a chubby infant dancing around my mind, I set off Friday morning for Central Park, hoping I’d score one that afternoon.

I wasn’t prepared for the insanity that was Central Park’s Play Area—it was like an Ikea warehouse of babies. There were millions spread across the grass, sandboxes, and plastic animals. They came in twenty different shades, shapes, and sounds. It was overwhelming. I sat down on the edge of a sandbox and took a long look around, soaking it all in. When I was finally used to the giggles and burps, I took a closer look, eyeing out the perfect one.

There it was, riding a plastic turtle. I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl, but it was gurgling in the cutest, most babyish way possible. I fell in love instantly. It was wearing light up Keds and a lime green hoodie that screamed Baby Gap. Spit was bubbling out between its lips, and it was making little fists in the air, rock-out style. I had to have it. There was one problem, though—its mother wasn’t leaving its side. She just squatted there, in her pearls and sensible Eddie Bauer knit sweater, hands protectively gripped around her child’s waist. Understandable enough—there was no way that kid could balance on its own—but it frustrated me. Here was the most perfect baby I had ever seen in my entire life, and it was being constantly attended to. There would be no easy way to steal it, unless I threw a punch or drugged the mother. And I wasn’t in the mood for violence. Instead, I tried a straightforward approach.

I walked over to the mother. “Hi.”

“Hello.” She glanced up at me and quickly shot her gaze back to her drooling, teetering child. “Can I help you?”

“Yes, actually. Your baby, there. What is it?”

She looked up at me, raised an eyebrow. “It’s a girl.”

“Ah, a girl. Good.” I stood there, hands in pockets, staring at the baby. Now that she mentioned it, there seemed to be a curl to the kid’s lashes. A minute passed by awkwardly. The mother looked up at me. “Uh… is there something else?”

I nodded. “Is she messy?”

“What do you—“

“Does she poop a lot? Throw up? How messy would you say she is, on a scale of one to ten, one being Martha Stewart, ten being Public Enemy.”

The mom frowned. “Well, she’s…she’s a baby, so… she’s messy.”

“So like a 10.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far—“

“I see.” I squatted down next to her child and made a closer inspection. The baby had really clear skin—no acne, no scars, no potholes. Almost like porcelain, really. Her hair was golden and shiny. She seemed to be of decent weight, and she was nicely squishy. “Well, I like what I see. I guess messiness can’t be helped. I’ll take her.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’d like that baby. Is $100 enough? She can’t be worth much more—I’d pay off the wall for blue eyes, but this has a weird murky brown going on, which definitely depreciates her value.”

The mom’s jaw dropped open. The baby played with her hair.

“Cash or check?”

She stood up, grabbed the child, and walked away from me. If all mothers were this uptight, maybe a baby wasn’t the way to go. Maybe I needed to upgrade to a toddler. Now, I knew that toddlers were more sophisticated than infants—they had the power of speech and organized thought—but their mothers didn’t follow them around everywhere. I’d probably be able to steal one from the bottom of a slide, or a treehouse, or something. Plus, they were still cute, precious, and fun to play with.

And so I set off to get me one of those. But first, I needed to buy some candy, puppies, and a van.

***

I showed up at Ford General Motors the next morning with a litter of puppies in tow. A peeved salesman walked up to me, nose visibly turned up at my furry toddler bait. I handed him a Charms Blowpop. “Hi.”

“Hello.” He wrinkled his nose and turned down my candy. I unwrapped it and shoved it in my mouth. “Can I help you?”

“Yes, actually. That truck there.” I pointed to a white van—simple, elegant, effective. “What is it?”

He looked up at me. “It’s a van.”

“Ah, yes.” I led my puppies over to it and started to open and close doors. The salesman followed.

“Would you like to know more about it?” He sneered.

I nodded. “Is it safe?”

I could see his nostrils flaring a bit. He resembled a bull. A bull with a skinny rat body. “How do you mean—“

“Does it have padding in the back? If I were to sit there while the van was moving, would I be smashed around a bit? My injuries, how harsh would they be—one being Tony Hawk getting a papercut, ten being Tony Hawk falling off of a tenth floor.”

The salesman picked at his nails. “The back doesn’t have any seatbelts, it’s more for loading. So you really wouldn’t be safe back there—“

“So you’re saying a 9. Okay.” I opened up the driver door, threw the puppies in the passenger seat, and put my hands on the wheel. It seemed fine. “Well, I’ll take it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, will $100 be enough? That’s all I have, you see, and this fine piece of equipment seems to be worth the bill.”

The salesman opened the door. “I’m afraid this van retails for $15,000 dollars.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“So you can’t sell it to me for $100.”

“No.”

Out of ideas, I decided to head home. I walked through Central Park and passed the playground. All the babies were still out, but there was no sign of mine. I must have scared the mother away. I released the puppies by the baseball fields—with no van, I had no trap, and with no trap, there was no point for bribes. The candy I decided to keep for myself.

On my way out I ran into an old acquaintance. Reed was standing underneath a tree, listening to the Dead on headphones, hands in his pockets.

“Hey, man.” I handed him a Charms Blowpop.

Reed opened his eyes into little slits. “Hey.”

“What’s new?”

Reed shrugged, slowly opened the pop, and tossed his long bangs off of his face. “Nada. What’ve you been up to?”

“I’ve been trying to score a baby.”

Reed narrowed his eyes a bit more, and started licking the blowpop pensively. “Righteous.”

“Yeah, well, it didn’t work out so well, so I’m going to have to resort to the old standard.”

Reed nodded. “How much?”

I handed him the hundred. Reed tossed me a bag. “Thanks, broseph. Nice seeing you.”

I headed out of the park and back into the subway, ready to go home to an empty dorm.

I had a long day of masturbation, pot brownies, and guitar hero ahead of me.