You really hate to see it, don’t you? A new mom still aglow from pushing a human through her birth canal, her baby riding around in the overpriced stroller destined to be regifted to her least-favorite sibling…and then our villain comes creeping around the corner. He spots something in the baby’s hand: a lollipop! A plan forms in his mind. He knows exactly what to do.

When mom stops to listen to yet another passerby tell her how her life will never be the same again, the dastardly villain sees his chance. With the stealth and agility of a cat wearing cement boots, he races for the stroller. In one fell swoop, he snatches the lollipop out of the baby’s hand and fades into the shadows like a candy-stealing ninja.

The baby’s bawling his eyes out. Mom doesn’t know what to do—none of those overpriced parenting books destined to be regifted to her second-least-favorite sibling prepared her for this scenario! The gathering crowd whispers amongst themselves, quietly judging her for allowing this ruffian to rob her baby of his sense of safety and entitlement. As she whirls around, she sees the same look of disappointment in their eyes as she did when she told her parents she was starting her own business, only to pull out a brochure for an MLM.

You pity her, no? You feel sorry for the baby, now lollipopless and crying his little eyes out. But wait! Before you close the book on this tableau of heartless theft, let’s rewind. Remember what I said in the beginning? Mom had only just given birth to her baby. He’s a mere two or three days old—far too young to be given a sweet treat that, while harmless to the rest of us, would prove deadly to a two-day-old baby!

That’s right, folks. We just flipped the script. That villain wasn’t there to selfishly steal candy from a baby. He was selflessly saving the baby from a choking hazard that would have surely ended the poor thing’s very brief time on this Earth. He was a hero, I say! The sort of hero that doesn’t wear a cape, but instead sports a unibrow and uncomfortably tight sweatpants.

The real villain of this piece is the mom who callously shoved a piece of hard candy into a baby’s sausage-fingered mitts and expected him to instinctively know how to eat it without getting it caught in his throat. And it was a Tootsie Roll Pop too! This baby is still trying to figure out what his arms and legs do. He doesn’t have teeth. So how did she expect him to bite it and get to the Tootsie Roll at the center of the Tootsie Roll Pop???

If I was in charge of law and order, mom would be in jail and her baby would be right there in jail with her. He was aiding and abetting her crimes. Sure, she handed him the lollipop, but did he shake his head and tell her, “No thank you, mother. I have not the teeth to bite such a delightful confection.” He most certainly did not, the little juvenile delinquent.

So that’s why you can’t be mad at me if you were near the corner of Third and Main at 1:57 yesterday afternoon and saw me steal that baby’s lollipop.

-Ashton Rook, Lifestyle, Emerson Valley Gazette