The Baby Bandit

 

I am the Baby Bandit. 

Those two words in conjunction may evoke a lot of emotions, but I promise isn’t as bad as it sounds. In fact, I’m not taking babies away so much as giving them to people. 

But not real babies! Please, don’t think that I’m handing out real live human (or otherwise) babies. I’m not that type of person, I swear. I’m talking about these babies:

The prevailing question upon seeing the Bag of Babies that I carry around everywhere is, quite naturally, 

“Why?” 

There’s no easy answer for how or why I became the Baby Bandit. Perhaps I was born to be the Baby Bandit. Perhaps it was simply a cruel twist of fate. I can, however, say with confidence that the seeds were sown in high school, when I was sixteen years old and a friend handed me a sleeping plastic baby—one of many that her mother had been using to taunt her following a baby shower they hosted for a different family friend. 

That baby slumbered peacefully on the dashboard of my truck for several years until disappearing mysteriously after a carwash. Reasonably distraught at losing my child, I requested another baby from my friend. That baby was not granted to me. That may have been the moment that my path turned to villainy. 

During her freshman year of college, when she was feeling homesick, I had a package of two hundred babies delivered to her. I don’t know what happened to those poor, sweet plastic babies. I may never know. I can only hope that she found it funny. 

Regardless, it awoke something inside of me. Something dangerous, something that—three years later—would explode into a whole new facet of my personality. 

Senior year of college, with eight months left to graduate, I realised that I had yet to make a real, lasting impact on the culture of the School of Writing, Literature, and Film (pronounced “swilf”, like “milf”, an altogether unfortunate situation). I remembered that you could order packs of hundreds of plastic babies online. I thought of all the nooks and crannies around Moreland Hall. 

I knew, then, what I had to do. 

With the help of several accomplices, I hid over one hundred plastic babies around that building. They blended in with the old wood; they perched on windowsills, out of reach of the casual observer; they sat at arms-length on rooftops. 

When I graduated, it all could have stopped. 

There was a moment, standing in the rain, listening to “Time to Say Goodbye” (performed by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman) for the eight-hundredth time, when I could have stopped myself from placing another baby. 

And yet… I couldn’t tell you why I didn’t take the plastic babies out of my school bag. 

It could've been that they weighed so little, occupied such a small space. It could've been that I didn’t want to let go of the fond memories of slipping packs of babies from pocket to pocket, of casually reaching in and placing them as though I were just another bystander. It could simply have been that the hunger that had arisen in me had yet to be satiated.

In the postgrad room in 50 George Square, I found the babies again. It had been only a few months, and yet they brought back a flood of memories. I knew, then, what I had to do. 

    

The babies haunt me still. Every Tuesday morning during workshop, I see them perched where I left them around the room and wonder what the staff must think. A few tutors have caught me in the act of placing the babies. Some have dared to ask the painful, whispered question: “Why?” Others have given an incredulous—and perhaps scared—laugh and refused to pry further. 

They’re out of control, really. They've taking on a life of their own. I’ve gotten good at slipping babies into pockets. Friends have sent me pictures of babies that I forgot I gave them, weeks after it happened. My flatmate and I are constantly engaged in a classic game of “Find the Baby”. 

I’m a tyrant. 

During my early weeks in Edinburgh, when I was still introducing myself to others in the writing programme, I would be greeted with the words, “Oh, you’re the one with the babies!” In return, I would laugh, show them the little bag of babies, and offer them one. Some would take me up on the offer; most were content simply knowing that the babies existed. 

I had become, in a few short weeks, something of a legend in the cohort: a menace, certainly, but something more. My bag could contain anything, my peers thought; I could reach in and pull out a plastic baby, or a plastic goat, or a foam grow capsule sea creature. 

Perhaps it could, once again, have stopped there, if only I didn’t carry my school bag with me everywhere. 

You see, you can draw a line of places I’ve been, and retrace my footsteps by the babies that are now all over Edinburgh. 

They peer down from shelves in café basements, cling to the walls of pizza places, hide in the darkness behind books yet to be purchased from hundred-year-old bookshops. 

“I certainly hope a crime doesn’t happen here,” a friend joked once, as I placed a baby with the utmost care atop a light fixture. I had to stand on the seat to reach the hiding spot and my companions were serving as spotters, ready to tell me if the server was returning. 

The implication was clear: once one baby was found, they would find more, and more, and more… 

Of course, no crimes have been committed. 

The babies, for the most part, have gone untouched, residing where I left them. A few have disappeared. But the real joy of being the Baby Bandit for me isn’t in the act of placing the babies; it’s easy enough to disperse hundreds of plastic babies in a major city. 

No, the satisfaction comes from the creeping horror of knowing the babies are there. There's an indescribable–and unparalleled–feeling that comes from watching others discover them “for the first time”, only to look back at previous pictures they’ve taken and see that they’ve been there all along.