Recycling Children -Part One

Look, don’t get me wrong - adoption, for me, has always made sense. I never wanted to make any more me’s. Ask my partner - one is plenty enough. He has to deal with a mixtoe, an in-betweener. Mixed heritage, mixed sexuality, mixed gender, mixed neuro, so I go off on tangents (be warned). And, being a mixtoe, ask me a question and you will always get more of me than you EVER wanted or needed. So, no, I have never wanted to make any more me’s.

First of, I can’t sit still long enough. What can I say? I was the kid of two migrants – Indian Father, Italian mother, met in Cricklewood, always on the move – immigrated to Canada, the USA, back to London. Seven schools later and I could talk myself out of a fist fight anywhere. Or run fast. Nope, I never wanted to make any more me’s. No staying power for shagging or shooting one out.

Secondly, as a tall in-betweener, living in England, I’m just really busy responding to the gazillion questions that come at me. ‘Where do you come from? Do you burn? Where do you really come from? ‘What’s India Italy like? Can I see your passport? Mistri? Misseri? Why are you so spiky? Are you part lamppost? I’m told by some good books on culture that these questions are kinds of ‘micro-aggressions’. Micro-aggressions. Look, I get it. It’s not the National Front violence of the 70’s that my Dad experienced: ‘Fuck off you Paki go back to where you came from’, rejected for housing and work. 'Micro' means smaller, minute, teensy-weensy and being small, they can just get into those gaps in the conversation, moments when I am off guard, defences down, smiling over a beer and they gently scramble my brain.

One example.

My friend, Tracey, (not a close friend) but someone I gig row with, asked ‘Do you burn? Coz I just thought, with brown skin and the like, you wouldn’t.’ Cue - brain scramble. Oh, right. Right. So light brown skin means its a super-leather, anti soleil, non-crisp, non-penetrable coating that fights electromagnetic radiation, infrared and ultraviolet light. Like the black bits of a giraffe’s tongue which don’t burn, not like the pink bits, which do. Or maybe my brown sweat is like the goo that hippos emit, which has natural sunscreen in it. That’s what we’re like, mixtoes, like hippo sweating brown tongue giraffes. Well I said I was tall. So, sun won’t touch us. Ultra violet radiation won’t touch us. Weather just doesn’t touch us. No touching, no touching, don’t touch. Ooh touchy aren’t you, touchy touchy, it’s micro aggressions, not really racism. But Tracey, who is white, Tracey, didn’t think about the logical extension of her micro -suggestion, did she? If we brownies are all protected, like rhinoceroses, then, come the temperature rise, the great burn, all white people will be gone. All of you, BURNT TO DEATH my friends, in the hot hot midday sun, crrrrrrrrrrispy. One answer to the overpopulation problem. Crunch crunch

So all these micro questions take up a lot of time. I get sidetracked, distracted. Too busy trying to explain my own existence to actually create yet another one.

And then, re. reproduction. Look, don't get me wrong but there is a strong eco argument. We are using up stuff, going through it all too fast. We know it, don’t we? The house is crowded. There are so many of us. Black, white and we from Beigestan. Its not like there’s plenty of room. We’re full up. UNICEF estimates that there are 4.3 births every second, somewhere in the world. That’s 4 scissors snips every second. Crowded into hospitals, pouring out from them onto the roads and bridges and clinging onto trees and ledges, benches and billboards, hills and dales.

So, in that last sentence, 20 more babies arrived.

Don't get me wrong, we can, and we are, starting to do things about this. We are starting to REUSE and REPAIR, RECYCLE. Boxes and cans and tins. Squashing them up, making new things. We are putting in control measures – as Responsible Adults. But what about putting some control measures on us?

My friend Tracey, (not a close friend), told me what I should do, to help save the world. She said, that like her, what I should do was recycle my cans. I told her to recycle some children. She went to call social services. Look, don't get me wrong - I'll explain next time.