I Steal Babies

I do not steal babies. You know that (I hope) and I know that. Unfortunately, there is now a carriage full of people that think that I do in fact steal babies. All because I was being helpful.

I was on the train home today. I've waxed lyrical many times on how I hate the rush hour so I'm not going to go into any detail here about it but imagine this: Every seat taken. Almost all standing space gone. Not too much to hear above the odd mp3 player spitting out tinny baselines, newspapers being rustled and the monotonous clackety-clack of the rolling stock ferrying us all home.

My stop arrives and I stand up from my seat and wait for various sets of legs to make enough space for me to first emerge from the little set of seats I have been sitting in and then for the standing commuters to give me enough space to get to the doors. As I struggle through my supremely uninterested and dour looking peers I get to the doors and see a middle aged lady struggling to get off with her pram. It looked like one of these only bigger. Seriously, a few pieces of drywall and plasterboard and you could plumb the fucking thing into the mains and live quite happily. I noticed the doors were about to close and she was still no nearer to getting off. I was fucked if I was going to miss my stop so I did what any self respecting gentleman would have done. I grabbed her pram which had a multitude of shopping bags dangling from it and lifted the whole thing off the train and onto the platform just as the doors closed. The middle aged mother turned to me with a look of utter horror on her face and I quickly smiled at her to allay any fear she may have had about me and said jokingly "Don't worry, I'm not going to steal your baby". Still looking horrified she said to me "No, but I think you might have just stolen someone else's. That's not my pram, my jacket was just caught on the handle and I was trying to free myself!"

Oh shit. I had just stolen a fucking baby.

I looked into the carriage as it began to slowly pull away and didn't see any commotion at all. I slammed hard on the window and mouthed for someone to pull the emergency cord. I got a few weird glances but no one seemed to understand what I was on about and turned away from the nutty man slamming train windows and turned back to their respective newspapers and mp3 players. Now it was too late and the train had pulled out of the station and I definitely had stolen a fucking baby!

It was only then that I actually looked inside the pram to have a look at my new baby that I realised that there wasn't a baby in there at all. All I had actually stolen was a massive four wheeled and seemingly fuel injected pram dripping with various shopping bags and baby accoutrements.

Middle aged woman was looking at me now with a look of almost cartoon-like relief. Fuck this I thought to myself, your problem. I walked off as quick as I could leaving her asking after me what I expected her to do with a stolen pram. I paid no attention at all and quantified that if she hadn't been flapping about like a drunken mackerel, I wouldn't have stolen the pram in the first place.

Some poor mother is going to get off the train and realise she has been royally fucked over.