I’VE AN IDEA WHERE TO PUT THE BABIES - ADAM PETERSON
February 14, 2024
I’ve an Idea Where to Put the Babies
It’s a very comprehensive plan, so I want you to listen carefully when I tell you what I think should be done with all the babies—
Step one—we put the babies on an island.
There is no step two.
I knew it was the perfect solution to our baby problem because the instant I thought of it I could breathe for the first time in years. I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t shaking. I calmly started packing tiny baby socks.
Before you can object, here’s why the baby-island can’t fail—
The babies will have a puppy on the island. In fact, I’ve already got a puppy, and I sent him ahead. And I know, I know, puppy is just another word for baby, but this puppy is responsible. This puppy gets it.
His name is Max. The babies have many names, and we’ll no longer have to apologize for the ones we forget. In fact, maybe it’s even better this way, confirmation of the idea that there are things we need to keep and things we need to let go.
Babies and history—let go.
Freedom and adult situations—keep.
So we’ll charter a ship. We’ll cram it full of babies and send it to the island. There, Max will welcome the babies with wet puppy kisses. There, the babies will grow up far away from our world, the world where I will almost certainly be regarded as a hero for solving our baby conundrum.
There’s no other option. We’ve tried everything else, and there’s simply nowhere we can put the babies where they won’t continue to ruin our lives.
They wail when we show them French cinema. They roll into the street when we set them outside. They destroy our credit when we rent them apartments.
Even the wolves won’t raise them, not anymore, not after the horrors those last babies wreaked upon this Earth.
But Max—
He’s a good boy.
Probably.
I assume.
And it’s not like the babies will be gone forever. Someday, surely, they’ll learn to swim and return when we’re shriveled and grey. It will be so good to know them then when they can help us work our phones and tell us the names of celebrities we don’t recognize but hate all the same.
Only then will they understand why we did what we did. Only then will they know what they must do themselves.
Because the world has many islands.
Someday, darling, we’ll find ourselves on one, sent away by those we once sent away ourselves, those who’ll swear—
This is the only one of our sins they will ever repeat.
Adam Peterson’s fiction has appeared in Epoch, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. He can be found online at www.adampeterson.net