2001-12-16 - 10:15 p.m.

I can't get over this image. We were shopping in the grocery store for our ultra-fab vegan pizza we were going to make - and we came across a site we can't justify in our minds. I pointed it out to the boys with my scissors-finger motion.

A man, probably a little younger than us, was wearing his baby in a papoose on his stomache. The finger motions, you may suspect, is our symbol of castration.

You don't see it too often. Maybe you don't think about it. You see men with strollers, maybe even carrying babies. But, for some reason, the papoose makes it all the more feminine. The more submissive.

He didn't look happy. How could he be? What brought him to this lowly state where he is wearing a quilted, flowered baby containment system that is designed to bring the baby closer to the mother's heart and womb?

I guess the saddest thing was that he was alone. I've seen men with this contraption and the women aren't far behind with the whip. For this gentleman, the whip's range was quite extensive. Somehow she forced him to wear the baby when she wasn't there. Don't think that this was his choice! You know he'd rather be watching the game with the boys throwing back a few. What made him decide to be humiliated in public like that? I saw it in his eyes. Perhaps he was eyeing the corners, hoping his buddies weren't buying chips and cheeze-whiz in the next aisle.

Which made me then ponder - what will the rest of his life be like? Will he always become a slave to the desires of others, then becoming miserable and resentful? Or, will he rebel one day, leave and start his new 2.0 family?

And, maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps he likes Junior close to his womb and is proud to wear his child. The gurgling, baby spew, and soilde diapers are perhaps comforting that his sperm has finally landed in the correct egg. What a man!