PEOPLE WHO lived for a short amount of time tend to have heads that are humorously disproportionate to the rest of their bodies.

When presented with a baby, otherwise healthy adults are overcome with the impulse to assume a series of funny faces, and to then make strange gurgling noises. In this way they work themselves into a mad frenzy that culminates in the desire to love, feed, and possess the organic mound of flesh that has just drooled, vomited, and peed on their laps.

Because of the unnatural attachment that adults have for children, babies have always been a valuable economic commodity. In the dark ages of America's history, however, the marketing of babies was puritanically frowned upon, and honest baby sellers were forced for many years to stalk the nights like common criminals.

Respectable pimps were forced by the law to wander as outcasts, calling out their wares nervously as they paced the lonely city streets: "Pot. Coke, Watches, Babies, Mescaline..." Customers interested in procuring a baby followed the pimps to dark abandoned buildings where lines of women waited to be chosen according to the specific genetic qualities desired by patrons. Customers indicated their choice, left a little sperm, and returned nine months later to pick-up their custom-made babies from the pimp.

"O.K., man, I've got the goods--it's got an extra large head, and it drools a lot, just like you wanted. I used Big Bertha for this one, man, I think your gonna like this baby...now scram I think I see a cop!"

THIS DARK time in the history of America, when a woman could not make an honest living by contracting out her body, finally came to a close with the legendary "Baby M" case in 1987.

Mother: Sure I sold it, but once I saw how cute it was with that disproportionately large head and all that drool, it caused me to make funny faces and gurgling sounds. I decided then that I just had to keep it.

Father: She signed a piece of paper that says that she must give me her baby in exchange for money. Where is that paper...I put it here somewhere...oh, just give me that damn kid! Look, woman, lots of nice clean money...mmmmm...

Baby M: You guys are starting to annoy me. Decide soon so I don't have to spend the rest of my life being teased for having such a stupid name.

THE JUDGE ruled that everybody even remotely connected with the trial was a nimrod, and that Baby M should be put to death so that no one would have to deal with the whole muddled issue. Then he said that he was just kidding, and that in fact the mother would have to give up her baby in exchange for some money. While many of the more intelligent spectators waited around after the judge's decision to find out if he was still kidding, the world rejoiced immediately.

At last, after years of foolish restrictions, pimps no longer had to run their baby selling operations covertly. They were able for the first time in history to offer customer service benefits such as 30 days return policies for children who prove defective.

The pimps opened large and beautifully decorated houses, and while prostitutes used to stand immorally in lines waiting to be contracted, now they sat in nice cushiony chairs. Customers were free to enter and choose women as they pleased without bothersome societal constraints.

With babies now legal commodities, the business of baby selling boomed nationally. Congress decided to abandon the clumsy old-fashioned monetary system in favor of straight baby trade. Gold prices fluctuated wildy, but a baby's worth was always assured because of its strange appearance that caused people to lose their minds in happiness.

Secure in the knowledge of a baby's steady value, people traded them freely for gas, food, movie tickets and large popcorns--with or without butter--and often sent them off to the IRS for tax payments.

ACKNOWLEDGING THE frequent complaints by consumers that babies were too cumbersome to carry in wallets, Congress issued a new currency. The Baby Bill of The United States Treasury was issued as redeemable for one baby from the Fort Knox Nursery. The system made transactions much less complicated than the unwieldy act of trading huge numbers of babies back and forth for every deal--especially on Wall Street where the cost of shuttling thousands of babies back and forth every time the Dow Jones shifted was excessive.

Soon it was deemed hypocritical to maintain the illegality of purchasing a woman's body for an hour, while condoning the purchase of her body for nine months. So prostitution was officially legalized on a national level. The expanding whorehouse business combined with the already existing men's sperm industry.

Poor men and poor women now had marketable skills without need of an education. The American dream became a reality as jobs were at last truly available for anyone out of puberty. All of America was happy, except for certain immoral businessmen, such as the Cabbage Patch Doll manufacturers, who were indicted for selling counterfeit babies.