A summer potluck at the house in New England where I will be born. My parents have just been married but some of their friends have already had their first babies. It is my job to check the newborns at the door and to plant them like cabbages throughout the front lawn. I come back from a break to find that they have all disappeared. My mother panics. My father reasons that they must have been kidnaped and will be returned unharmed once we pay the ransom, which I know will come out of my allowance.