Overthinking Flash Fiction

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

I joked that this had much more impact if it were just "For sale: baby" - but this got me thinking about it way too much. The reason such a short bit of language is considered a whole story is that we fill in all the gaps - the words allude to a set of circumstances and conditions, and that's the story. It's more in the parts of the story that aren't being told. But of course, to fill in those blanks we need context - we need to be able to fill in those missing blanks and in a way that's at least somewhat consistent with the intended narrative.

"For sale: baby" as a standalone is just absurdist. A juxtaposition of conflicting or incompatible ideas - like a clockwork orange. It's close to meaningless because the implied meaning is outside the range of what we can accept (even though we're constantly freaked out about stories of baby abductions and trafficking). The only reason it has meaning is in relation to the original "for sale: baby shoes, never worn". It requires the context that it's a parody - that you're supposed to fill in the blanks, because that's what you did with the original. Also on a meta level - the fact that there is this meaning in an absurdist word combo gives it meaning too - like A Clockwork Orange. But, this really lessens the impact and only people who already know about six word stories can really get "for sale: baby".

But this is also true with "for sale: baby shoes, never worn". How much meaning does that story have in the current age? It's in the format of a print classified ad - something which hasn't existed in any meaningful form for maybe an entire generation now. And the replacements, the Craigslists and Kijijis (I'm Canadian) are losing prominence, at least for goods and not services. Even ebay - which is now down to the same number of employees it had in 2005. All have had their milkshakes drunk by Bezos and targeted ads through user profiling. Sure the basic idea is still there, but the idea of listing baby shoes, never worn as being for sale is weird. Where would you list them? The context is different now.