Sign # 784 Of Imminent Human Extinction

Today's "Creepy as Hell" item- Reborn baby dolls.

Yesterday morning Ward called me from the bedroom- said, "You've gotta see this".

(Inserting that we don't have a TV in the living room- the boys are the ones who watch it, so they each have one in their own space. I'd be happy to be completely TV-free)

(Also, that Ward never uses the, "Honey, c'mere- you've gotta see this" line as foreplay. One of the many reasons I love Ward.)

Anyhoo.

He said, "They're called Reborn Babies- they're dolls".

All I could think of were those hideous Cabbage Patch Kids that were the craze when my daughter was little. My mother-in-law literally physically fought off a mob of other grandmothers to score one for Christmas. My daughter (aged about 4) opened it up and asked, "Why is it so ugly?"

The Cabbage Patch Kids came with some sort of adoption papers and other stuff supposedly telling their individual brief make-believe history, but I couldn't quite get my head around what a "Reborn Baby" would look like or come with to make it special.

All I could think of was "reborn" in a religious sense and I asked Ward if they come with a list of sins they'd committed and now been absolved of as I walked into the bedroom to the tv.

Oh no. It was FAR creepier than that.

I mean, have you SEEN these things?

Seriously.

And there was not a little girl in sight- every one of these things was being not held, but lovingly cradled by women about my age.

Women are not collecting them like other dolls- they're treating them like the uber-disturbing level up of a Pound Puppy (remember those?). Clothing, toys, cribs, CAR SEATS, taking them out in public for realsies. Like babies.

I'm trying to think of one healthy reason a grown woman would do this.

.

..

...

Nope. Can't think of a one.

Even if a woman has suffered the terrible loss of a baby (and I've never had to suffer that) and holding some sort of surrogate at home, in private might aid the mourning process...taking the doll out in public as if it were a real baby?

Not healthy.

Dressing up a poodle or chihuahua and carrying it around with you in your purse?

Semi-creepy, but still caring for and about a living thing.

Ward said, "Well, this is appealing to women with kids who are grown and who miss having a baby to hold".

I understand that. I love babies. Given the opportunity, I'd have another baby in a heartbeat. There is nothing as powerful as that tangible connecting heartstring thread between your eyes and the eyes of a baby, nothing as soothing as holding a tiny breathing person close to you and realizing that your breathing and theirs has synchronized magically.

And there's the thing.

The Reborn Baby dolls and the women who shower them with affection and attention are canaries in the coal mine- our society is so fractured, so broken, so "stuff" oriented and "humanity" deprived that a grown woman can actually take comfort in and normalize cradling an inanimate object

When what her soul craves is to nurture a life.