Bake Sale Babies

On my Sunday walk in the park, I pass a lot of strollers holding babies of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Their doting parents walk languidly together, enjoying the brief peace of a child absorbed by the passing scenery.  Occasionally, the parents glance down adoringly at the chubby little face that resembles their own and think:  "My Precious, you're worth $50,000 to me, but...(brows wrinkling)...but I need a little more," where upon the parents saunter towards a sale being held down the street.

They talk about what they'll buy, forgetting that their stroller is made in China and so is everything else that they own.  To them, life is good (although never quite good enough).  Each day they decide to spend a little more to be paid back tomorrow.  With each outlay, they fail to notice the voracious shadow that is following them, that other Big C, Credit.  What matter a little more borrowing, they think?   Money flows. It always does.  Or does it?  Bills demand to be paid, just ask Dorian Gray.

The haunting novel, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" is a case study in the costs of paying back tomorrow what is gained too easily today. It is the story of an extraordinarily handsome young man who gave away his soul in order to retain his youthful looks forever.  He lived a life of constant debauchery and excess which should have robbed him of his looks very early, but someone else was paying.  The past several generations in America have done the same thing:  bought excess in order to feel endlessly young and powerful, paying with the souls of their children and grandchildren.  Think of the bargain with the Devil that they've made: coitus is no longer a loving act that confirms hope in the future.  Rather, it is the subjugation of someone else who will pay the current generation's exorbitant loans.  In that reality, there is no future.

Now our strolling parents reach the bake sale room and look in.  Foreign buyers flush with American cash from earlier loan repayments peruse the goods, all the while murmuring to each other and nodding knowingly.  American adults frantically and loudly hawk their children to whomever has the cash to quell their spending addiction.  Debt wrapped up as home-made sweets in shiny cellophane and colored bows is still debt, and the children will work it off like serfs.  As the debt owed rises, an ever-increasing tinkling noise drones in the background.  Look down and see the leg irons of the profligate bound to the lending table.