12/08/2006

When I am King: Baby Labels

When I am King...

Hospitals will provide a gender-labeling service for newborns.

Most babies look like variations on the same blob theme. Hence, most people have difficulty distinguishing the gender of these blobs. Some parents are (for reasons that elude me) mortally afraid of someone guessing the wrong sex of their child. It's as if someone saying that your little boy is a cute girl will cause irreparable emotional damage and possibly a strong attraction to musical numbers.

So the parents staple a pink ribbon to their girl's head. Or put a blue baseball cap on their boy's head. They dress the girl blobs in painfully frilly pink things, and the boy blobs in denims and truck shirts. They basically do everything shy of mounting a billboard on the kids' heads saying “This is a boy!” or "This is a girl!".

So why not provide exactly that service for the parents?

Prior to releasing the baby, a hospital will offer parents the option of having the sex tattooed on the baby's forehead (in the language of their choice, although sign language may be problematic). The tattoo ink will be specially formulated to disappear within one year, which is about the time it takes for most blobs to actually develop some sexually distinguishing features, like pot bellies or hair buns.

The program will allow for some customization, where parents can choose from a select set of pictures or phrases. For example, we expect cartoon syndicates to do well in licensing various characters, and there will be popular use of such catchy phrases as “Baby on board!”, and “666”.

There will also be an opportunity for high-end parents/customers to have a more dynamic and customizable system. This will entail installing a color display on the baby's forehead (for removal at any time, although medical experts suggest this should be done before the skull's growth starts tearing the mounting screws). The display can be dynamically programmed to display whatever words, phrases, and pictures the parents want. In fact, the system can also be programmed to show movies. This feature is appealing to families with older children that might otherwise pay no attention to their new sibling. This way, the infant will feel loved and admired by their family as parents and siblings spend hours staring in rapt attention at the baby's forehead.

Working parents would also benefit from our Date-Care(TM) options packages such as an appointment calendar, address book, and speaker phone (part of the BlueToothless(TM) package). No longer will these important people forget their devices and lose track of their hectic schedules; as long as they remember to bring the baby, they'll always have what they need.

1 comment:

Laureen said...

Well, Chet, you've finally done it. Gone from "humor" to "flat out terrifying". Thanks for the Orwellian flight; I'm gonna go put a baseball cap on my kid now...