The future for babies

by Member Louis A Coutts

Just before Christmas I was in the car park of our local shopping centre. I had a Woolworth’s trolley and was looking to redeem my two-dollar coin, but Woolworths have so many models of their trolley that not any of them fitted and I was about to leave my trolley with my two bucks. I was then confronted by a guy who was modestly but neatly dressed and a diminutive woman with a lovely face. The guy told me a story that he and his wife had been sleeping in their car for three months and wanted to spend a night in some accommodation that cost $85.00. He wanted to know if he could retrieve the two dollars from my shopping trolley. My immediate reaction to these importunities is that these people are on the make. But somehow or another I rejected that reaction. I have spent too many days of my life in Court, listening to witnesses, cross examining them or listened while they are being cross examined. I have interviewed thousands of people in my work and somehow or another, I have developed a sense about people. Either rightly or wrongly I decided that these people were genuine. I had about ten or eleven dollars in change in my pocket and handed it to the lady who graced me with a lovely thankful smile. The guy took my trolley in the hopes of finding its mate that would release another two dollars and I walked off. As I went back to my car, I passed a new Porsche and a new Bentley SUV. Collectively worth perhaps $700,000.00 and I reflected on the incongruity of people who didn’t need money and those who did. That evening I was overcome with remorse. That couple only wanted $85.00, and I had three hundred in my wallet when they approached me. I could have given them a fifty dollar note and wouldn’t have missed it. But I didn’t and I felt terrible and still do. A couple of days later I set off with one of my sons to join the family at a place I had rented on a bay some couple of hundred kilometres north of Sydney. On the first day out, we stopped for lunch at a place which promotes itself to sell health food. While sitting waiting for our lunch a young woman turned up with a pram and as she turned the pram around, there sitting contentedly was one of the most beautiful babies I had ever seen. She wouldn’t have been twelve months old. Her large deep blue eyes examined the world and settled on me. Hell, I had goose pimples and we made faces to one another. But then we moved on. The next day we stopped again for lunch at a place called Picton and sat outside the café to have our lunch. Nearby was a table and benches at which three young ladies were sitting. They were so young that I would have called them “girls” but I was reminded that my wife used to chastise me for using that term to describe young women. There was a pram next to the table and one of the young women reached in and lifted out an almost newly born baby and cuddled it while she gave it a bottle. The scene of those young women, rejoicing in one another’s company and expressing delight about the tiny child sucking contentedly on its bottle sent more goose pimple down my spine. A little while later, all those scenes of the destitute couple and the mothers with babies Kaleidoscoped in my mind. There was something wrong and I couldn’t put my finger on it, and it kept troubling me. The scenes were all different, but they all troubled me, and I kept trying to get the Kaleidoscope to focus. And then it did. I am sure the destitute couple would have been loved as babies. Certainly, the woman knew love as she expressed it to me when I handed over the small change from my pocket. But they ended up begging for a few dollars and I wondered what cruel fate life had handed them. I then turned my mind to those lovely babies and wondered what life holds for them. I know they are going to grow up in a planet that we have messed up for them. But what worried me most is that gradually they will become part of our consumer society. In this bazaar that we call the economy, these babies are potential consumers. In fact, they are already consumers for all the baby stuff that is being sold in the marketplace. There is no love in the marketplace where money is the currency. How will these lovely babies cope as they gradually become full paying member of the consumer society? Will they have a Porsche and live by the sea or will life be that grind of finding the next dollar to keep a roof over their head? I suddenly felt that everything was so unequal. There is so much inequality where decent people are doing it tough on homeless streets and billionaires can spend billions on a space flight. I was saddened to think that there is not enough love in our world of commerce, and I felt for those lovely babies who sooner or later will have to find their way in this society of inequity.