I Met a Lonely Little Boy with a Baby in Stroller Buying Clothes on the Flea Market – I Decided to Follow Him
As Edison walks through a weekend flea market, he sees a young boy with a stroller and a sleeping baby inside. As he follows the boy, he finds them entering a dilapidated house. Unable to stop himself, Edison intervenes, trying to ensure the safety of the boy and the baby while trying to remain objective.
“Look at these vintage globes, sir!” a vendor said, trying to catch my attention. “They’re in great quality! Some of them open at the middle, and you can stash things inside.”
Antique globes on a shelf | Source: Midjourney
I laughed at the man, wondering what would fit into the tiny space inside these objects.
It was just another typical Saturday morning, and I was meandering through the flea market, searching for hidden treasures and eating my way through a bagel.
A person holding a bagel sandwich | Source: Midjourney
“No,” I said, brushing the man off. “I’m good, thank you!”
I made my way through the antique wooden boxes next, taking photos of them for my mother, but something unusual caught my eye.
A young boy, no more than twelve or thirteen, dressed in tattered clothes, was buying baby clothes from one of the stalls. Next to him was a stroller with a baby sleeping peacefully.
“Where are your parents?” I asked, approaching him.
A sleeping baby in a stroller | Source: Midjourney
The boy froze, eyes wide with fear. Suddenly, he snatched my phone and hurled it into the crowd.
I ran to retrieve it; as a lawyer, my phone was full of confidential information, and I couldn’t afford for anyone to get to it.
But the moment I turned away, the boy was already slipping away through the crowd, pushing the stroller with force.
“Hey! Wait!” I shouted, but he was off.
A boy running away | Source: Midjourney
“He’s been coming here often,” the old woman selling the used baby clothes said. “He always comes from that direction. Just follow the path, and you should find him. Help them. The baby is too young to be on the street.”
“What?” I asked her, wanting to hear more, but she was already busy with people browsing her stall.
I decided to follow him from a distance. Even though he had taken off, I figured I could follow the path as the woman said.
For about ten minutes, I tailed the boy through winding streets until he reached a dilapidated abandoned house.
A dilapidated and abandoned house | Source: Midjourney
“What is going on?” I muttered under my breath.
The place was a wreck, with signs of an old fire and general neglect that had taken over the house.
I watched through the window as the boy wheeled the stroller into the living room, and struggled to light a fire in a coal pot in the middle of the room.
My eyes scanned the room, trying to find an adult. Finally, I saw a man lying on the floor.
That was it.
“What’s going on here?” I demanded, stepping inside.
A man sleeping on the floor | Source: Midjourney
The boy jumped, knocking over the thin long metal pole he used to stoke the fire. The man stirred awake, jolted by my voice.
“Are you their father?” I continued. “Why are they living like this? Are you hurt? I’m a lawyer, sir. I can have you stripped of your parental rights. This isn’t an environment for children!”
“Please, don’t call the police or social services,” the man pleaded, sitting up with difficulty. “I can explain.”
“Explain? This is child neglect!” I shot back.
A man holding his face | Source: Midjourney
“These kids aren’t mine,” he said, nodding to the boy. “This is Dylan, and the baby is Simon. Their parents abandoned them weeks ago, and somehow Dylan ended up finding this house.”
“And you’ve been living here?” I asked.
The man nodded.
A close-up of a man with a beard | Source: Pexels
“My name is Joe,” he said. “I’ve been here for a few months. I lost my job working as a cleaner in a supermarket. There was a robbery, and the person behind it blamed me. There wasn’t any way to prove my innocence, so I was sent packing. The boys have been with me since they arrived.”
“I’m scared that Simon and I will be separated,” Dylan said. “So, Joe has been caring for us.”
A young boy | Source: Midjourney
“But you cannot live like this,” I said. “You need proper food and care, and a place to sleep. Simon needs more than that. What, he’s a year old? Younger? He cannot survive like this.”
Joe sighed.
“Look, man. I grew up in shelters and foster homes. My childhood was a nightmare. Given the choice, I’d pick these living conditions any day. That’s why I didn’t call social services or try to take these kids in.”
I glanced at Dylan, who was listening intently, holding Simon protectively.
A close-up of a little boy | Source: Midjourney
“And you’re okay with this? There’s no heat in here, and where does the baby sleep? In the stroller?” I asked the boy.
He nodded slowly, a sad smile forming on his face.
“Better than foster care,” he whispered.
“Joe, what exactly do you do to help them?” I asked, softening my tone and trying to fully grasp the situation.
“I share my food, any money I get from odd jobs, and I teach Dylan. He’s a smart boy. We find books at the library or sometimes people give us books at the flea market,” Joe replied.
A man eating a sandwich | Source: Pexels
But despite their reasoning, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was wrong. These boys needed proper care. They needed nutritious food, and I couldn’t tell what state the baby was in.
“I’m going to look around, okay, Joe?” I asked, moving away from the living room.
In the next room, I dialed the police.
They arrived quickly, social services tagging along. The children were taken away, down the hallway of the dilapidated house. Dylan’s eyes were filled with betrayal.
A man holding his head | Source: Midjourney
“I should have broken your phone,” he said.
“This is for the best,” I said, trying to make myself believe it too.
About two weeks later, my secretary buzzed in.
“Edison,” she said. “There’s a man named Joe here to see you.”
I stepped into the hallway, and there was Joe, looking cleaner and more determined than ever.
A man sitting at his desk | Source: Pexels
“I want to visit the boys, sir,” he said. “I tried, but they won’t let me because I’m homeless. I want to change my life. I’ve found a job, cleaning the library by day and cleaning at the gas station by night.”
I was taken aback.
“I want to become their guardian. With the right help, I’ll be able to do that.”
“You’re serious about this?” I asked.
A mop and a bucket in a library | Source: Midjourney
“I am,” he said. “I’ve grown to love them. It’s been horrible without them lately. The silence has been suffocating in the old house.”
I had to admit that I was moved. I didn’t expect Joe to be so caring toward the boys, especially given the circumstances.
“Why don’t you work for me?” I asked him. “We need a cleaner in the office and someone to take over maintenance here. Would you be interested? The hours will be normal, and the wages will be basic but constant.”
A person cleaning | Source: Unsplash
Joe nodded, clearly overwhelmed.
In the next few weeks, Joe proved his dedication. He devoured the law textbooks that I gave him and worked tirelessly.
With my help, he managed to meet the boys a few times, assuring Dylan that he would always come back.
“I’m just getting my life together, my boy,” he told Dylan when Joe and I went for a supervised visit, taking new clothes and school textbooks for Dylan.
A pile of clothing | Source: Midjourney
“And you’ll come back?” Dylan asked.
Joe nodded.
Months later, Joe was finally back on his feet. He managed to get all his documents in order and enrolled in college.
“I’ll pay for it,” I told him. “You just focus on juggling work and college and giving the boys a home. When this is over, we’ll get Dylan and Simon back where they belong.”
Now, Joe is on his way through college, with hopes of attending law school. He rents a little apartment and is fighting to become the boys’ guardian.
A cozy little apartment | Source: Midjourney
What would you have done?
Joan Collins Turns 91: Photos of Her Transforming Appearance through the Years
Her childhood was unconventional as she grew up during the Blitz period. Years later, Joan thought it would be great to do a film about growing up with her sister during this era but her dream hasn’t come to fruition.
Even so, the actress said that as the war continued, she was just a child, unaware of the bombings. She would collect fragments of debris from the streets and store them in her cigar box each evening.
She narrated, “We would draw silly pictures of Hitler. We were evacuated 10 or 12 times. We would be in the tube stations, and people would be playing their harmonicas and singing.”
Despite the chaos, Joan Collins, who deeply loved her Anglican Briton mother, realized that she did not want to live the same life her mom lived. “Mummy was the 1950s housewife, very sweet and very docile,” she explained.
The actress had previously said that her mom, who died at the age of 52, died very young because she never spoke back to her husband.
oan also shared that “My father never held back. I saw him as a figure to look up to more than my mother. I loved her to death but I considered her to be weak and I hated all the clothes she wore.”
The actress’s mother consistently wore girdles, suspenders, stockings, tight bras, underpinnings, and corsets, which Joan disliked.
Joan, who took great care in her appearance, was voted the most beautiful girl in England by a photographers’ association when she was 18. The newspapers asked her dad what he thought about her daughter’s position, he replied, “I’m amazed. She’s a nice-enough-looking girl. Nothing special.”
At this point, Joan had departed from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), developed a passion for French existentialism, admired the singer Juliette Gréco, and dreamed of becoming a celebrated stage actress.
The focus on her appearance was even more as her film career progressed. Joan disclosed that in Hollywood, she faced daily verbal abuse.
She recounted how the makeup department gave her cruel nicknames, such as “Moonface” due to her baby fat and “Scrawny Legs” because of her thin legs. She remembered the department as a large group of women who were particularly harsh and unkind to her.
In 1955, when Joan was 22, she was cast in the biopic about Evelyn Nesbit “The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing.” Evelyn was considered the most beautiful girl in New York and Joan was to play her.
So, one day, Joan who was still in the Juliette Gréco character and thus had no makeup and was in jeans with scruffy hair, ran into her director Richard Fleischer. Richard told her, “Oh my God, I cannot look at you – you are so ugly. You cannot go around like that – put some makeup on, get your hair done, get a proper dress.”
Just like her career, Joan’s personal life also had its ups and downs. When she was 17, still a virgin, the actress went on a date with actor Maxwell Reed, aged 31. He spiked her rum and coke and raped her.
“I was 17, but I was the equivalent mentally of 12. We did not have sex education,” she noted. Shockingly, Maxwell became the actress’s first husband. When asked why she chose to marry her rapist, she answered, “Because I come from a generation where if you’re going to have sex, you get married.”
However, when Joan learned that Maxwell wanted to give her to older men for $12,710 a night as long as he could watch, she stood up for herself. After four years of marriage, the two divorced.
In her 20s, Joan lived with several men, including Sydney Chaplin and Arthur Loew Jr. She also had an affair with a married man who was eight years her senior. As much as the man was handsome, witty, and fascinating, Joan said the affair was utter hell and she never engaged in one again.
Hollywood men, including directors, also went after Joan. In her autobiography, “Behind the Shoulder Pads,” the actress revealed that she was offered the role of Cleopatra in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s film on the condition that she got along well with Buddy Adler, the head of Fox, and the chairman of the board.
Joan, who was disgusted by how directors and producers, who were old men, took advantage of young actresses said no as she never wanted to be a part of that. The Cleopatra role was given to Elizabeth Taylor.
In the memoir, Joan also wrote about having an abortion when she got pregnant at 26 with her fiancé, Beatty, a 23-year-old aspiring actor. Beatty convinced Joan to abort the baby because it would derail their career. Years later, she agreed with him, noting that if he had a baby, she would have had to say goodbye to her acting career.
Joan went on to have three kids. She had her first two, Tara and Alexander with her second husband, Anthony Newley. Her last child, Katyana, is with her second husband Ron Kass.
The actress’s third husband was Peter Holm and she is now married to Percy Gibson. Joan announced that she was engaged to Percy in December 2001 and then the pair got married in 2002 at Claridge’s Hotel in London, in front of 175 guests.
The lovebirds, who have been together for over two decades, met when Joan was featured in a touring production of the play “Love Letters” in the US. The Peruvian-born theatre manager also helped Joan edit her novel “Star Quality.”
Many people talked when Joan and Percy Gibson got married because he is 32 years younger than her. Joan was asked to comment on their age difference and she said, “Well, if he dies, he dies.”
In 2023, Joan gushed about her marriage saying that she had found the right man in her current husband, “Oh yes, Percy and I have been married for 21 years and it’s just marvelous.”
Now, Joan is in her 90s but she still has the youthful charm and grace in her presence. When asked if she has had cosmetic procedures done, the actress simply said with a shrug, “If people want to think I’ve had surgery, then…”
Joan added, “You can tell [I haven’t] because I have lines and jowls. When I see women around my age I think: ‘Oh, really? My gosh, I look quite a bit…’ I think I look pretty good!”
The movie star is also needle-phobic and just couldn’t bring herself to have cosmetic work done on her. She attributes her good look, perfect complexion, and youthfulness to staying out of the sun.
She added that her mom taught her to moisturize her skin and use night cream, something she also taught her daughters. Joan’s lovely appearance still amazes her fans.
In April 2024, Joan enjoyed a fun photoshoot for the New York Times Fashion and Style section. She looked radiant in a white cardigan paired with an off-white cap and black trousers.
A fan, amazed by her look, said, “You are simply iconic, dear one, and stunning ♥️♥️.” Another admirer commented, “You always look so beautiful♥️.”
When she turned 90 in 2023, a fan shared a picture of Joan taken on the streets. The actress was in a modest flower dress styled with a white coat, a sun hat, and sunglasses. The fan captioned the post, “Happiest of birthdays to Dame Joan Collins, who turns 90 but easily looks at least 20 years younger.”
At 91, Joan Collins is content with both her personal and professional life. Retirement isn’t on her agenda, as she plans to continue working because of her passion for it.
She acknowledged that performing her one-woman show and staying in a different hotel each night was exhausting, but the enthusiastic audiences and her love for her work made it a rewarding experience.
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