Angry Children
Told by Debbie Zandar in 2046

I want ask for your help.  The help wouldn’t be for me.  It is for other people born in 2017.  I don’t usually tell people I was born in 2017.  It makes them uneasy and it colors whatever relationship we might have going forward.   People my parent’s age can get very upset being reminded of that year.  Most people born that year have dropped out of sight.  But a few of them are now being brought back into society.  That is why I want to tell you my story and ask for your help.

I wasn’t saved by a miracle.  I was saved by my parents’ lack of cash and their infatuation with each other.  They moved to the ranch in the summer of 2016.  I still live in the same house overlooking the pond.  They loved the view of Mt. Bachelor and the sunsets.  They were in their early twenties and had spent more than they should have on the house.  My father worked on software development contracts from home.  My mother had her art.  He was just getting his business started and they were struggling to pay the mortgage.  They couldn’t afford to go anywhere or do anything.  Except what they could do for free. 

They had the house, they had each other, and they had time.  They went on long walks at all hours of the day and night.  I was conceived in August.  My mother doesn’t know where.  It was somewhere on the ranch or some room in the house.  I haven’t asked her to catalogue the possibilities.  But I’ve seen some grassy glades under the trees when I’m out riding.  I wonder if this one or that one could be the place.  Maybe other spots were more romantic looking back then.

There was an unusual flu going around in 2016.  It came in the summer, it spread very rapidly, and it caught the whole world unprepared.  By December, most of the world had caught it.

It wasn’t anywhere near as fatal as the “Spanish” flu ninety-eight years eaerlier.  And by the time they’d found a vaccine, they didn’t need it.  So many people had already had the flu that most of the world was immune.  Even if you weren’t immune there was nobody around you who had the flu to give it to you.  The flu disappeared as quickly as it had come.

My parents didn’t catch the flu because they hardly ever went out and hardly ever saw anyone.  They had no money and did not know anyone in the area yet.  When my mother was five months pregnant, my parents went to Bend to see the obstetrician.  Dr. Rosenschein looked harried.

“This month all my babies want to be born in the middle of the night.  I’m short on sleep,” she said.  She told my mother her baby was doing fine and so was she.  She told my mother to eat lots of fruits and vegetables. “Broccoli and oranges,” she said.  They stocked up on the way home.  They bought lots of apples because the apples would last a long time. 

A week after the visit there was a news story about how many babies were being born in the middle of the night worldwide.  Parents said the babies cried more than they should and cried with a particularly loud shriek that their older siblings had not.  One editorial said the parents were spoiled brats who needed to stand up to what their forbearers had accepted as part of the process.

I was born at 2:45 AM.  Of course, many babies had always been born in the middle of the night.  Dr. Rosenschein said I was healthy.  And I hardly cried at all.

My father read a story on the Internet about what doctors were calling “angry child syndrome” or “ACS”.  Babies all over the world were more difficult than earlier babies had ever been.  They cried.  They fussed.  They demanded milk or they refused it.  When they nursed they bit their mothers frequently.  Within a month, researchers in Beijing had linked ACS to a genetic error that affected the orbital/medial prefrontal cortex in the brain.  A month later investigators around the globe linked the error to mothers who had the flu while they were pregnant.  Over ninety percent of the planet had had the flu. 

My parents had me tested.  My brain was normal and I didn’t have the genetic error.  They were relieved, of course, but had no way of knowing what a difference these results would make. 

By the middle of 2017 it was the parents of these children that were making the news.  There was an onslaught of shaken babies, abused babies, and accidentally drowned babies.  Abandoned children showed up daily at hospitals, churches, and even fire stations.  The county and state were not prepared to deal with all these children.  Neither was any other organization.  There were too many ACS babies and they were very difficult.  They resisted any kind of control. 

When the children turned three they started injuring their siblings, their playmates, and any small animals they could get their hands on.  A few even managed to kill their parents.  Books were written on ways to handle them - from excessive kindness to clear rules strictly enforced.  But nothing worked except heavy sedation.  When the sedation stopped they were worse than ever.

I had no friends my own age.  Nursery schools wouldn’t take any children born in the first nine months of 2017.  

The people with affected children were desperate to believe the kids could lead normal lives.  My parents found a couple in Sisters with a girl my age who they said was unaffected and very much needed a playmate.  When we got there the girl seemed non-threatening but a little dimwitted.  She had been sedated.  She had five dolls, all new, and didn’t mind, or didn’t notice, when I picked one up.  My parents say I was polite and considerate, trying to engage the other girl in play.  They were very proud of me, especially since I’d met so few other children before.  Then the girl turned from trying to pull the hair off her doll’s head to go for the doll I was holding.  My parents said they saw her little legs under her skirt as she fell back.  They were bruised.  I picked up another doll.  The girl wanted that one too and started to hit herself in frustration.  Her parents watched nervously but didn’t go near her.  They begged my parents to stay but we left.    

These kids were going to grow up to be criminals.  It was obvious.  In institutions they were killing each other already.  Their warders could not leave them alone for a second.  They cost more to lock up for a year than a hardened criminal. If someday they had children of their own they wouldn’t be able to raise them.

Poorer countries with authoritarian governments had a straightforward solution.  They took the children and killed them.  The developed world protested.  But many first world citizens guiltily envied those countries for being done with the problem once and for all.  In other countries the children just disappeared, the way girl babies used to in India and China.  In the U.S., most of the kids were institutionalized and sedated, some under pretty appalling conditions.  Ministers compared the treatment of ACS children to Herod’s determination to kill all newborn babies. But no one could get too morally superior.  The rejoinder was always, “That’s great.  You care for them.  Or take just one.”

There were only going to be three children in my class if I started school at the proper age.  Because I was born early in the year I was put in the class ahead.  The other two went to the class behind.

After my parents, the person I am most grateful to for having a normal life is my kindergarten teacher, Miss Costello.  Some parents wanted me removed from school and she talked them out of it.  She had enough experience with children to know I wasn’t a problem.  She talked some of the parents out of removing their own children.  My first classmates treated me as a pariah.  I was said to have “cooties”.  At least I was fairly athletic.  At recess I could compete.  My prowess at running, jumping rope, and kicking balls was admired.  I had no friends, though.  As soon as I bonded with another girl she herself would become a pariah until we broke up.  I blame the parents.  Miss Costello kept the kids from acting worse but she had twenty pupils and other issues to deal with.  There was one boy, Jeremy, who I hung out with from time to time.  He was so withdrawn himself he wasn’t much of a buddy.  But he expected the other kids to ostracize him and he didn’t notice any difference with or without me.

In later grades my teachers were on the lookout for problems and became upset when I shouted loudly at recess or argued with another child.  Other children could hit each other and receive a mild rebuke or, perhaps, a thirty second lecture.  I was sent to the principal’s office at the first sign of trouble. 

High school in Bend was no worse for me than for anybody else.  My friends had known me for a long time by then and I’d never hurt anyone.  We all had our own problems and confusions.  The risk of my going berserk seemed just another thing their parents worried about but wasn’t going to happen.  If anything did happen it would be just another day at school.  Besides, the serious ACS kids had been locked up for a long time.  Nobody thought about them day to day. 

I lied to my college classmates about what year I was born.  I got a fake driver’s license.  But my birth date came back to haunt me when I met a boy and fell in love.  On an October walk around the local lake I told him my secret.  He said he admired me for carrying the extra burden.  I thought revealing my secret made me more interesting.  It would deepen our relationship.  But the boy began to be distant.  Except for sex.  For days he wouldn’t tell me what was wrong.  Then I got really angry.  I scared him enough he said he didn’t want to get involved with a freak.  I kept my secret even tighter from then on.

I was careful when I met my husband to be.  But I recognized early on that Frank was a man I could trust.  Even in this day and age I find that being married gives one a credibility that being single does not.  Homicidal maniacs generally don’t have husbands and Volvos.  I didn’t tell my children until Sarah came home from school asking how I could have been born in 2017 and be so boring.  By then there was a national group for those of us “Normal 2017’s”, just to get the word out that there were such people. 

Of course medicine has progressed a lot since I was a child.  I have a hundred page report that says the flu never impacted my brain.  When I lose my keys I can rage through the house without fear of murdering the dog. 

Doctors can now induce the brains of ACS people to repair themselves, to grow a healthy cortex.  Unfortunately the people have entirely missed growing up.  They have no education.  The rest of their brain has been adapted to the bad part, which is suddenly radically different.  They are addicted to the drugs they’ve received most of their lives.  When they come off the medication they act like confused children.  They have no idea how to handle their sexual urges.  They require more care, at greater cost, than when they were sedated.  Who is going to integrate them into society, to the extent it’s possible?  Who is going to pay for their care?  Their families have moved on.  Taxpayers don’t want to add this cost to government expenses.

I feel a special duty to help these people because they are exactly my age and I’ve been so lucky.  There is a national organization promoting their welfare but I prefer to work with the local one.  We’ve adopted a triage strategy – to do the most for victims who seem the smartest and healthiest, and whose families want to include them.  We provide elementary education, counseling in how to deal with other people, training in daily living, and a catch-all we call acculturation.  We think it’s better to take a few people as far as they can go, rather than moving large numbers just a little bit.  We get help from volunteers because it is inspiring to see the successes.  And we get to show the world what can be accomplished.  If you’d like to see the work we’re doing or learn more about it, please let me know.

Helping others reminds me every day how lucky I’ve been.  If my mother had gone to the store more often, or chatted with a repairman on the wrong day, I would have been a zombie most of my life.  I would have brought my parents an ocean of pain.  My marriage and my children would never have existed.  With whatever disappointments we may have in life, I recommend thinking sometimes of the disasters we’ve avoided.