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| - In 1968, just before an important person's birthday, a woman had a baby. To be accurate, she had two babies, but this article deals with only one in any detail. The woman was Poxilla Muckerbag and we will begin with the account of the birth of her sons. Poxilla was pushing her shopping trolley and tandem stroller toward her home, a snug, cheerful retreat beneath a concrete flight of stairs that had once been the emergency exit from an illegal gambling house that had been demolished some time ago. Due to the overloading of these carriages with a fascinating variety of articles gleaned from the streets that she wandered, she could push only one at a time. Thus her progress was oscillating and rather leisurely. On this particular afternoon, she approached her domicile even more slowly than us
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| abstract
| - In 1968, just before an important person's birthday, a woman had a baby. To be accurate, she had two babies, but this article deals with only one in any detail. The woman was Poxilla Muckerbag and we will begin with the account of the birth of her sons. Poxilla was pushing her shopping trolley and tandem stroller toward her home, a snug, cheerful retreat beneath a concrete flight of stairs that had once been the emergency exit from an illegal gambling house that had been demolished some time ago. Due to the overloading of these carriages with a fascinating variety of articles gleaned from the streets that she wandered, she could push only one at a time. Thus her progress was oscillating and rather leisurely. On this particular afternoon, she approached her domicile even more slowly than usual, for she did not feel her usual self. The fact that her usual self was only capable of a slow motion shuffle may convey the glacial rate of her movement. She wondered whether that half of a family size Supreme pizza that she had eaten for breakfast might have been in the dumpster for a bit too long, or the numerous swallows left in the accompanying cans and bottles that had washed it down had contained other than leftovers. No, it was the miracle of life, for Poxilla was about to become a mother. She sank onto the bench of a bus stop as what she thought were stomach cramps became sufficiently grievous to stay her journey. Miraculously, a person who seemed to be an environmentally conscious obstetrician taking the bus home appeared. In fact, this person was another bum, but Poxilla's revelation that she was not in the throes of gastrointestinal distress strongly inclined her to the former interpretation. The other bum, when apprised of her state, was willing to play the part, for he had always thought that some unlikely event would occur that would remove him from the life of sloth and bad intent that he had grimly pursued. Relying only on those primal instincts that saw our distant foremothers through the gauntlet of parturition, these two unfortunates became three. Poxilla clutched her offspring and asked her saviour to name the newborn. "Julius!", he cried, "And he will be a hero!". The euphoria that was produced by this exclamation faded as Poxilla realized her ordeal was not at an end. A second neonate rapidly increased the ad hoc family to four. Although they did not know this at the time, they were witnessing the exceedingly rare phenomenon of asynchronous pregnancies, for the second baby was rather small and immature. The obstetrician (for let us be generous and consider experience to be a qualification) was not up to a second christening and threw up. So Barf Muckerbag came into the world.
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