Serial Baby Killers

Another Tale Of Scholastic Assholery

There was a news article in the local fishwrapper recently about realistic infant dolls being given out to preteens in hopes of preventing pregnancies. The dolls are programmed to fuss & squall like a real baby, and the theory is that after caring for these dolls 24/7, and learning what a PITA a baby can be, the preteens will choose oral sex or handjobs as opposed to the Big Kahuna.

I was reminded of a similar scheme that was taught while I was in high school. One of the elective classes was an offshoot of Home Economics called Child Development, where students learned about caring for newborns and children.

Every semester, there was a 6 week long segment where they had to care for a "Baby". In place of today's high-tech programmable dolls, they used 5 lb. sacks of flour swaddled up to look like babies, and the students were required to carry these things everywhere. Other students and teachers were encouraged to rat the "parents" out to the Home Ec teacher if they left the "babies" laying around, and points were deducted for any mishaps.

So, for 6 weeks, these kids carried those flour sacks everywhere. And for 6 weeks, the various trolls, griefers and assholes in the student body made their lives as miserable as possible.

Some of the hyenas liked to abduct the flour sack "babies", demanding ransoms for their return. Once or twice there was a blatant infanticide, where the flour sack was gutted with a blade, or stolen and dropped off the second floor balcony that ringed the school's inner courtyard, to explode in a puff of Pillsbury.

The "parents" learned that the most important baby care device was not diapers or bottles, but a roll of adhesive tape to patch up leaks in the "baby".

If you think that I, your humble narrator, was capable of brutally murdering a flour sack, well, you're absolutely right. My favorite method was the stealth stiletto. A highly sharpened #2 pencil could be used to poke nice leaky holes in the flour bag.

I later refined the technique by borrowing a length of brazing rod from Metalshop class, and grinding the end to a needle point. That was used for the ultimate assassination job, the face-to-face perforation. During lunch hour or between classes, you'd engage the baby's "parent" in conversation, and bemoan all the violence occuring to the other flour sacks. While you're pointing out the various offenders to the victim, as they glance around and not at you, you'd be merrily sticking the flour sack repeatedly. This could also be done as a team sport, where one party distracted the "parent", while the other performed mayhem on the flour sack.

There was one or two occasions where a babykiller would be discovered in the act, and the distraught parent would pelt the offender with handfuls of the dead baby's innards.

I don't think kids can get away with this sort of thing anymore. In this day and age, a knife in school will get a kid expelled for life, and any hijinks at all seem to result in a judicious application of handcuffs, pepper spray and tasers.