BabyLegs: $12 + shipping. Salvation: priceless.

When I'm in a mall I expect to spend a couple of mindless hours walking between racks of merchandise and stuffed wallets. So on Sunday I was pleasantly surprised by an educational experience. In a store selling stuff for kids I saw a flyer that educated me on the dangers of Gapiosis.

You may unfurrow your brows now; I will explain all. Gapiosis is the space between the top of a baby's socks and the bottom of its pants. Bad enough in ordinary circumstances, it gets accentuated if you are callous enough to carry your baby in your arms. Horror of horrors, Gapiosis condemns the unprotected baby to contact with air!

That's right folks, this is the same air that is unfit for fish to live in, that can slowly and inexorably transform a fresh pizza into a two-week-old lump of moldy green culture. Imagine what it can do to a sweet, delicate baby's shins!

Thankfully, help is at hand in the form of BabyLegs, striped leggings last worn by Jane Fonda in fitness videos in the 1980s.

But now that our children are protected against gapiosis, you have to wonder what other dangers lurk. For instance, how will we defend our young against the dangers of tubercolourosis? No, no, not tubercolosis; we have vaccines for that. I'm talking about tuberCOLOURosis. This is the less well-known affliction wherein children who eat too many carrots turn orange.

And who will guard the generation of tomorrow against the depredations of cheeking pox? (You haven't heard of cheeking pox? This is when swarms of well-meaning but otherwise daft adults grab a baby by both cheeks and shake its face hard while pretending to lisp.)

While diplomats from the world over are jawing at each other over climate change in Bali, the next generation of mankind lies in its collective cradle under the shadow of these and other perils. Will we realize our danger in time? Will the BabyLegs corporation succeed in their heroic struggle to rescue our future?

Or will our race die out in an epidemic of shivering legs, orange tans and saggy jowls?

Only time will tell.