Smile! You’re on camera, says US based writer Lynn Ruth Miller

The “in” thing these days is to turn a baby’s birth into a photoshoot. I cannot think of anything more horrifying for the mother, more humiliating for the baby, and more American for the revenue it creates.

Americans just love money. If we can charge for it, we are there. It all began with dog walking… why take out someone’s puppy for fun when you can get them to pay for it? If Fido (who frankly doesn’t give a tinker’s damn if you are in the room as long as he has his food and a place to poop) might get lonesome while you are out earning his kibble, why not pay five times as much as his daily scoop to have someone take him to the park?

Then there are the cat hotels. Why should your cat, who obviously has good taste (he hasn’t run away from you, has he?) suffer in an empty house without you? So to ease your conscience, and keep him from scratching the furniture, you decide to pay more per diem for Fluffy to get stroked, fed and pampered than you paid for the flight and hotel package for yourself.

Ah, but that is not all. What about the people who charge you for petrol because you are sitting in their automobile going to the same place they are? Or the ones who make you pay a rental for a sweater you wanted to borrow for the dance? They have figured out how to make capitalism pay and every one of us buys into it.

Now we have the photographers who figured out how a random picture can catapult them into the big bucks. What with cell phone cameras and Polaroids, instant photography is at our fingertips. Nothing is sacred. Look at Facebook: pictures of a mutilated doll, a sunset in a place you would never go, a wounded toe… all there to share with your friends who couldn’t care less about your toe, your doll or your sunset.

I simply cannot imagine having a photographer I barely know staring at body parts that I had kept concealed in my underwear, watching me heave and moan through one of the most painful though gratifying human acts. Remember, once the photographer snaps that picture it is frozen in time. Why pay someone big bucks to record a moment that you want to end as fast as possible so you can get on with life?

Imagine how your little boy will feel when he introduces you to the love of his life and you whip out a picture of him wrinkled and covered with blood and say, ”That’s how he looked when he was born!” followed by the inevitable: ”Wasn’t he precious?”

“If I am going to record a birth, I want it to look gorgeous”

For my part, I want the kid cleaned up before I look at him. I want my forehead cooled, my stitches done and a good mop up job before I smile and say “cheese.” I may be in denial but if I am going to record a birth, I want it to look gorgeous. I want to remember the life I created, not its cost. The good news is that I will never have to make that choice. That is one of the true joys of ageing.

Being born is like being kidnapped. Then sold into slavery. – William Shakespeare

Chapter one: I am born. – David Copperfield

Look who’s talking
Tillie was pushing a baby carriage with triplets. Joan saw the babies and smiled. “Triplets,” she said. “What a miracle!”
“Yes,” said Tillie. “The doctor said it happens only once in 1,500 times.”
“My God, Tillie!” said Joan. “How did you have time to do the housework?”
(Leo Rosten said it first).

I visited my friend Sarah to see her new baby and I swear it was the homeliest thing I had ever seen. Sarah smiled a beatific smile: “That’s Beatrice,” she said and she waited for me to respond. I didn’t miss a beat. I picked up the child and I said: “Yes sir, that’s a baby.”

I have always wanted a baby. I figured now that they do all that in-vitro business, maybe my time has come. But I don’t want to go to those fertility clinics. All those babies look like the doctor.

See more of Lynn Ruth Miller on Brighton Lights at www.thelatest.tv