'Passing the baby' was the chief custom
of the Hahananawup people. A Hahananawup child would be born and held
and caressed by its mother before being passed to its father who
would cuddle the infant and then pass it to its grandparents who
would cradle the little one before passing it to its uncles and aunts who
would display affection in the usual way and then pass the newborn to
cousins who would say 'ahh would you look the darlin little thing' or
whatever before passing it to their friends who would show an
obligatory amount of enthusiasm before
passing the baby to friends of theirs who would display customary
endearment and then pass the youngster to others who, by this stage,
would be complete strangers to the infant's parents. The baby would
continue to be passed from one person to another until it vanished
from the lives of its mother and father completely, not to be seen
again for at least four decades.
This would happen with every baby born
into Hahananawup society, resulting in a whole population of people
passing each other around. Of course, as a baby grew to adulthood the
reactions of those it was passed to would change. Instead of pinching
the baby's cheeks and saying 'coochie coochie coo', the Hahananawup
people would offer polite conversation and ask the former baby how
things are going or maybe say something about the weather.
It is thought that the custom of
passing the baby brought about the end of the Hahananawup people.
Hahananawups were not able to incorporate careers into their lives of
being passed around so any chance of forming even the most
rudimentary economy was remote. Consumption of food must have been
difficult too but that matters little when one considers that there
was no food to consume. Farming and hunting were close to impossible
for a people being perpetually passed around and passing around
others, to say nothing of attempts at procreation. The Hahananawup
civilisation was a short lived one. As a
people, they were just a throng of bodies jumping in and out of each
other's arms, growing weaker all the time and suffering from the
contagious conditions that the baby passing tradition facilitated. It
is thought that the Hahananawup people only survived for two
generations after adopting the custom of baby passing. We can work
out what happened from the records of other societies who observed
the Hahananawup at the time and from the remains of the Hahananawup
themselves. Ah yes, ...the remains. A troglodyte city, empty but for
a meshed heap of skeletons. The birds don't sing in the home of the
Hahananawup but the wind whistles eerily as it moves through that
colossal lattice of bones.
When the Hahananawup people and their
custom of 'passing the baby' comes to mind, we are forced to consider
the consequences of doing something just because everyone else is
doing it. Some of our most treasured and adhered to customs might too
be nothing more than really really really dumb fucking ideas. I
suppose that's the moral of the story. Not that stories should have
morals. Stories should just make people think and let them decide for
themselves. But that's a story for another day. Until then, keep
passing the baby.
And now a short film...
