My niece Madison just turned 3 years old.
This is a big step for toddlers on the long road to maturity.
Everyone is familiar with the final rites of passage to adulthood: discovery of masturbation, a driver’s license, the right to vote, alcohol, loss of virginity (usually in that sequential order), wisdom teeth extraction, lower car insurance, buying furniture that isn’t from IKEA®, and finally throwing away that $20 dorm-style upright halogen light.
However, no one remembers the monumental jump from infant to toddler.
For nine months, you are trapped in your mother’s cocoon. Once pardoned from the solitary confinement of her womb, you then have to endure a 35 month sentence in a caged-environment known as a crib.
Millions of innocent 2 ½ year olds around the world stare listlessly through the bars of their cell.
They have to wait until they’re 3 years olds to be exonerated from their cradles and be allowed to sleep in their own beds.
Well, little Maddie turned 3 and got a twin size bed and new sheets.
The sheets were adorably decorated with a design called KIDPRINTs® which could be described as: a white sheet with a disorganized array of polychromatic, painted handprints of various small children or Jackson Pollack’s kindergarten project.
She loved them and played patty-cake with the handprints.
Since the sheets were new they were a little itchy. I suggested that we wash them with some Snuggle® fabric softener.
But when I grabbed the sheets in my arms, my pseudo-Spidey-Senses went off. I have a very keen ability of detecting evil. Its aura glowed red in my mind’s eye.
EVIL!
I threw it to the ground as a vampire would a clove of garlic or a vile of holy water. The sheets existence repulsed me. I reviled the very fabric that Madison revered.
My cousin didn’t understand why a freaked out and calmly asked, “Why did you throw it on the ground?”
“Because, it’s Eeeev-all!”I said.
“What the fuck are you talking about? Pick it up!” he yelled.
“I can’t,” I replied.
My cousin screamed, “You are out of your fucking mind!”
As I looked at the crumpled mass of linen, I kept envisioning the factory where it was made. I saw a long conveyer belt with thousands of blank white sheets, empty canvases waiting to be painted. Then I could see the factory workers, a handful of poor, little Malaysian kids standing in front of buckets of paint. Their shift started and the foreman began to bark out, “Faster…faster!”
Then I heard one of the small workers grumble underneath his breath, “Stupid capitalistic pigs, I’ve never even take a shower before!”
I looked at the sheets again and saw some of the handprints were missing fingers and one little guy actually was able to scrawl out, ‘H-e-l-p-m-e.’
Against my cousin’s wishes, I ran outside with the sheets and burned them.
Just because Nike, Martha Stewart and Kathy Lee condones child slavery that doesn’t make it right.
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