The Fran Lebowitz Reader by Fran Lebowitz Read Free Book Online Page A

to have children that made mere unnatural childbirth look like eating your own placenta. This set had entirely dispensed with bodily function and were obtaining their children in bars.
    The most popular of these bars was called Chicken Little and was located in a brownstone on a fashionable street near the East River. Prospective parents on the prowl would arrive at this establishment by taxi or private car, knock smartly on the lacquered chocolate-brown door, and present themselves to a deceptively kind-looking septuagenarian known only as the Grandmother.
    Upon passing muster, they either sat at small tables or leaned against the bar and tried to look loving as they cruised the children. They talked very little and then only to remark on the quality of the trade with such comments as “Think he looks like me?” “There’s a student council president if I ever saw one,” and “Do you think she’ll make her bed?” The most aggressive were known to sidle right up to promising-looking tots and murmur, “Like to play catch, fella?” Or to take particularly blond little girls aside, slip them homemade chocolate chip cookies, and let them know in no uncertain terms that there were plenty more where those came from.
    The children were not without ploys of their own and some of the little tykes would stop at nothing. As the evening wore on and most of the really permissive-looking adults had been picked off, it was not uncommon for the desperate unadopted to be seen furtively applying calculatingly cute arrays of freckles across the bridges of their little noses with cleverly concealed brown eyebrow pencils, or announcing in loud, bound-to-be-overheardvoices that when they grew up they wanted to be doctors.
    No careful observer of this scene could help but notice that certain patrons bypassed the main area and headed immediately for the back room. The back room was reserved for those with more specialized tastes. Here the toddlers would leave one of their overall suspenders unbuttoned to indicate their special preference. An unbuttoned left suspender meant: I talk back.… I don’t do my homework.… I will wet my bed until I am fifteen.… I will make your life a living hell.… You won’t know what you did to deserve me. This group quickly gravitated toward the adults who carried their cigarettes in their right hands, which meant: Don’t worry, we’ll work it out.… How can I help? … I didn’t mean it that way.… Where did I go wrong?
    An unbuttoned right suspender meant: It was my fault.… I’ll try to do better.… I cannot tell a lie.… I guess I’m just no good. This gang invariably found their way to the adults carrying their cigarettes in their left hands, which meant: No dessert.… Go to your room.… I threw them away.…
We
don’t have Christmas.
    As you can well imagine, a situation such as this could not go on forever. Other unnaturally inclined parents began to flock to Chicken Little. Soon they were coming in from out of town. “The weekends,” said the cognoscenti, “are absolutely impossible. I mean, did you see those children in there last week? Strictly Remedial Reading, I mean really.”
    Finally all this activity attracted the attention of the police and late one Saturday night Chicken Little was raided. “Up against the wall, mother luckers!” shouted the cops to a group of children holding tightly to the hands of suspiciously aproned women. “Hell no, we won’t grow!” the children screamed back. Suddenly a little boy broke loose from his newly acquired mother,ran to the bar, and grabbed for a bottle of milk. “Hold it right there!” yelled the officers of the law. Their warning went unheeded and the little boy was quickly joined by three other children of the sort who don’t know when to stop. They all drank greedily from their respective bottles and fixed the police with impish grins, flaunting their milk mustaches. The boys in blue, pushed beyond their limits, let loose