They Crawl Among Us

A new class of criminal is lurking in the shadows of organized society looking to take advantage of those who have been lulled into a false sense of complacency.  The most effective criminals are often ones who can appear innocent.  Their innocence gives an unsuspecting victim a feeling of security, and then, when their guard is down and they are at their most vulnerable, these criminals will strike.  Babies are often thought to be the most innocent among us, but upon closer consideration, this façade of innocence quickly fades.

The other day I was walking around the local Target and a family shopping with an adorable little child who had to have been about a year and a half old sitting in a shopping cart.  I immediately became fascinated with this family and began following them around the store.  While they were in the toy aisle and the parents were distracted, I watching this “harmless” child reach out of the cart and grab a small toy car.  He played with the toy car for the rest of his time in the store continuing to play with it as the parents moved through the checkout aisle and out of the store.  This baby had just committed the crime of shoplifting.  What disturbed me about this was the joyful, guilt free expression on the child’s face and the ease with which he pulled off this little heist.  Many of you are apathetic to this sort of crime.  You may wonder why it even matters. You may think that this sort of theft is a victimless crime.  According to research done by the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office in Olympia Washington, shoplifting costs American businesses 16 billion dollars per year.  Yet babies, who commit this type of felony with impunity, are rarely held accountable for their crimes.

Recently, I watched two babies fight over who was going to get to play with a Fisher Price Little People Happy Sounds Home.  One of the babies pushed the other baby to the floor and snatched it up into its sinister little hands.  If this had taken place on a street corner and it had been a mugger throwing an older woman to the ground and taking her bag, people would have been horrified and the mugger would have been jailed for several years.  This baby, however, was merely put in timeout for 2 minutes.  After this so-called punishment, the baby returned to the toy room to no doubt continue its violent, plundering ways.

By the standards of any civilized society, babies are immoral little creatures.  Let’s measure the actions of most babies against the golden rule:  do unto others as they would do to you.  This is a maxim that has showed up in different forms in many major world religions.  Babies are often willfully negligent of this idea.  If you were to rip a toy out of a baby’s hand, it would scream and cry for mommy or daddy to make things right.  Clearly, babies value possessions and feel as if their rights to property should be protected.  But babies will clumsily grab an item that belongs to another child without a moment’s thought.   When the size two Hello Kitty slipper is on the other foot, they feel no remorse or empathy.

If this argument sounds absurd to you, it shows how deeply you have been conned.   They look back at us with those darling little eyes and make those cute little sounds and we are ready to forgive almost anything.  But we must not be fooled.   The impact of baby kleptomania is a massive drain on our economy. Baby on baby crime has reached near epidemic levels.  The sociopathic, inconsiderate nature of babies is an issue that has strained our great nation to its breaking point.  As a society, we must band together and take a stand against them…before it’s too late.