Alternative Fun Facts: Friendship Baby
A “love child” is so twentieth century—welcome to the era of the Friendship Child! | Fiction | Fresh Soup
Is there someone you’d love to sleep with but would never, under any circumstances, have a child with? Of course there is! How about a person you’d love to raise a child with but wouldn’t go to bed with if they were the last person on Earth? No? That’s just because you’re not open-minded enough. Close your eyes and think about some of the people you know: that finicky hairdresser at the salon down the block, the witty pharmacist at the drugstore, or even the tall guy with the kind eyes at the food truck. Each of them is a potential co-parent. All you have to do is choose one.
In the year 2048, the world celebrated the birth of the first-ever Friendship Baby. His mother was a 34-year-old visually impaired Somalian poet married to a firefighter, and his father was Pope Philip I. They’d met nine years earlier, during the Pope’s official tour of Mogadishu, when he visited the fire station where the poet’s husband worked. They remained friends ever since. In one of the many press interviews, the pair reported that every Sunday, for years, the poet used to send the Pope a poem she’d penned, and he would reply with a relevant New Testament verse.