For some reason people are always asking me whether or not I want kids someday, I think asking, “So when are you graduating high school?” is far more contributory to most small talk. In the interest of ending the conversation ASAP, I lie. “Sure why not- 2 girls and a boy.” That answer basically covers all my bases. I used to say all boys, but that made the conversation even longer, I’d get the 2nd degree. “Why wouldn’t I want girls??”
Look, I don’t want kids, some people just aren’t ment to be parents. I’m not patient, I like to yell and scream when I’m mad, I get what I need to get done quickly without distractions, and zwieback is the food of the devil. I never even baby-sat during my tween years. Plus after kids, your hair falls out, you need a breast lift, tummy tuck, and a Prozac, Zoloft, Valium cocktail. The problem is those, like me, who would never know what to do kids won’t accept that- and they go right ahead with the child bearing anyway. This is, in my mind, a major problem with society.
Not just anyone should be able to have kids, a process needs to be instituted to weed out all the crazies. Just like getting a driver’s license. Take a class, if you pass the test then you can get a “Parenting Permit,” allowing you to take care of other’s children part-time. If all goes well with the permit, a foster child will stay with the aspiring parent for a year. If the kid doesn’t die, or OD on drugs, you’ll be issued a “Parenting License.” Granted my plan is slightly flawed, but I’m just throwing the idea out there, someone else needs to work out all the kinks.
Bottom line, I wouldn’t want to be my kid. (To unto others as you would have them do unto you.) The bright side is, I’m going to be a phenomenal old person!
<----me at 65 After 65 I’m going to check myself into a chic nursing home, eat Jell-O, throw my bedpan at the nurses, and roll around in a wheelchair with a morphine drip. The first thing I’ll do after check in is find myself a friend with a smokin’ 20-something grandson.
I can look at my friends right now and tell what they'll be like in 70 years. What can I say, I got skills.
Gabe and I were having this conversation the other day on our way to get slurpees.
“You’ll be the grumpy guy that the kids that visit are scared of”
“Yeah maybe. I just don’t want to be one of those guys who dies alone, and someone will follow a smell, only find me a month later dead because I choked on peanut butter or something”
“Peanut butter huh?”
If you have to do some kind of volunteer work, going to a nursing home is the best. There is always that cranky guy in the corner that the nurses tell you to “watch out for, he’s basically harmless but just keep your distance.” That’ll be Gabe, I bet all my future cats.
“A little girl will give you a balloon and you'll smack it away with your sun spot covered hand and you’ll tell those girl scouts your balloons are ugly and you are ugly as well and you want to know something? Let me tell you, life’s a bitch, then you die!!”
My explanation made him a tad defensive, but not so deep down, he knows I’m right.
“However! I’ll be 90 playing poker with the girl scouts, taking all their money. I won’t have any social security by then so I’ll need the money to pay for my fancy-shmancy nursing home. They can cry I don’t care, stop wasting time baking cookies for the homeless and learn to play better poker.”
He paused for a moment, and leaned his head over to one side. Creating a visual for himself….
“I can so see you taking money from the Girlscouts.”
I will persevere.
