Oblivious people claim they know the process of being born. The naive say that before we turn from cells into a thing with a beating heart, we are nothing. An empty nothingness without feelings or a soul. Oh, how ignorant those poor people are. The truth is, babies play in a land of freedom with pure minds and an open heart. We lurk around in this Dreamland that no one on Earth remembers. We all wait for our turn to choose our parents and transform into a human. When this happens, we are kissed by the fairies of life who erase our memory completely, and we go on to live a splendid life. The difficult part of this process is that once we discover it is time to come alive, the fairies tell us we can choose our families from the huge variety. The catch is that we only have seventeen days to do so. There are thousands upon thousands of babies born all over the world every hour or even minute. We can choose if we want a typical Christian family with three dogs and a successful lawyer as a father. Or we can be daring and choose the couple that travels the world and does not have any worries. We can even pick the teen pregnancy that was unexpected, but the foolish babies tend to choose that situation.
For me, my time in this beautiful land is running out. I have been selected by the fairies today. I will slowly relocate into a world filled with opportunities and sometimes tragedy. The problem is that I am extremely indecisive. Maybe I want to be Jewish, or become a girl, or be a spoiled, only child. The list goes on for years. Though I will surely miss my time here in Dreamland with all of the other unborn children. Life is so luminous and carefree here (well if you consider this a life.) Don’t get me wrong, I am truly excited to live, but what if I don’t choose the right family? Or what if tragedy strikes like a lightening bolt? The complications are mind boggling. This is going to be seventeen days of torture.
The way the system works is there are pure white cubicles filled with flat screen televisions and an empty, red-velvet chair. When your number is called, because we do not have names here, you go into the screening room and sit down comfortably to begin your prolonged session of choosing. You use the remote control to flip through families from all over the world. We get as much time in the room as we like. This process repeats itself for sixteen days until the decisions begin. Once the nerve-racking day arrives, you scribble the name of the family down on a blank and unforgiving sheet of paper. This one word will determine your future. Once all of the papers are collected, the council records which family you are destined to go to. On that sixteenth day, the council reveals if the family you have chosen is appropriate. If the answer is yes, you are sent to your mommy’s stomach. If the answer is no, the process starts from scratch until your time comes again.
Right now, I am taking my walk of angst to the only theatre in town where the screening rooms are. The theatre is a beautiful gold building with the words “Your future begins here” inscribed on the door in sophisticated cursive. Steadily, I open the gold door trying to contain myself and not reveal my trembling hand to the others in the lobby. I shouldn’t be nervous because once I am born, I will forget that any of this ever happened. But for the time being I can destroy my future, or create a beautiful one. “Number 1,865! Please come forward to cubicle C to make the biggest decision of your nonexistent life!” His humor should’ve been funny right? Instead it filled me with even greater shock. I did the popular walk of angst to the couch where millions have questioned themselves while watching live home videos. I lift the remote into my soft, baby hand, and click the on button while one of the council member locks my cubicle and mumbles an insincere “good luck.” I started scrolling through families based on whether I liked their last name or not. This was notably easy considering I was not going to willingly choose Finklestein as my last name. Once I got to common last names like Davis and Miller, I started observing the level of beauty the mothers had, and the handsomeness of the fathers. None stood out to me so I grew frustrated. I watched broken marriages, depressed teenage girls, and even families that just lost a family member. “This is really hard to endure,” I whispered to myself. I had never witnessed a crying person. Everything is so happy here in Dreamland. If this is what the world is like, I don’t want a spot in it. But I do not really have a choice. I stood up and trudged out of the cubicle back to my home. Fifteen days left.
Today is day fourteen. I have watched so many videos and somehow nothing seems right. Today is basically my last day. I have tomorrow, but by day fifteen everyone is in a panic so the line to get into a cubicle is never ending. I creep into screening room F and begin to watch hundreds of people living their lives with rules and regulations. My heart suddenly feels a warm ticklish feeling that I have never experienced before. What is this? Then it occurred to me. I have heard people talk about it, but I never understood. This is love. As I watch the Stevens family play with their three-year-old daughter on their new swing set, I felt this lust for a life with these people. The mom is named Charlotte and the dad is named Greg. Their little girl has rosy cheeks and beautiful locks of yellow hair. I want this. I know I do. Without hesitation, I write down “Stevens” in my childish handwriting. Two days, and this will be my future. Seventeen days and no regret.