Something terrifying is happening and there’s nothing we can do about it. As surely as Steve Buscemi’s teeth have been steadily fossilizing before our eyes, my demographic has been busy procreating. To this I say: WHAT THE HEY-HEY, PEOPLE?
Have we reached that age where we are mentally competent enough to raise little clones of ourselves? How does one determine mental competency? Is there an IQ test involved? If not, why? I spend half an hour struggling to pick out shampoo at CVS – how on earth am I to make an informed decision on child-rearing? Perhaps I should just remove the ‘informed’ part and things will be much simpler? Is that how it works? Having been a whoopsie-baby myself (whoopsie-baby…whoopsie-daisy - get it? Get it? I’m hilarious!) and given the lives of my parents, I have three things to say: CONDOMS, CONDOMS, CONDOMS! (Also yeah, that was a very awkward conversation with my mother, in case you were wondering).
I’m personally terrified of becoming a parent. How could I be, when I’m practically a child myself? Thankfully my boyfriend shares my sentiments on the matter, possibly because he may be watching too many teen-pregnancy shows on MTV or simply because his family have been cursed(?) with overzealous swimmers. He informs me that at least two of the members of his family are pregnant at any given moment in time. He says that they are maniacal baby-making machines.
A very good book suggests that we all wind up as parodies of our parents. In light of this revelation, allow me to illustrate: how would YOU feel if Weird Al were trailing behind you for the remainder of your existence, mocking your awful life decisions and generally fucking up an already terrible thing and how would you feel knowing that there was nothing you could do about it? TELL ME!!!!!
But I digress. So, babies.
Having babies is scary. How do people know they’re ready for that kind of responsibility? Don’t try to tell me that no one is ever really ready – I’ve watched Oprah too, buddy. What I want to know is how do people consciously decide that they want to spend the next twenty-odd years of their lives running behind a snot-nosed twerp? I’ve been doing it on and off for the past two years as a daycare teacher, and as much as I love those kids, I can’t imagine ever taking them home with me. Okay fine, maybe some of them are fun and awesome and I’d love to have them for a weekend. BUT NOT ALL THE TIME FOREVER. Which brings me back to my point: why willingly take on such a huge responsibility, especially when it’s not necessary?
Biological urges aside, raising kids is hard – it requires patience and money and love and money and planning for the future and money and the ability to not burn water (which, incidentally, would be the worst super-power ever). Being the kind of person who can’t even be relied on to trim her own nails, I am slightly perplexed. Actually, I only ever remember that I have nails when I can no longer play the guitar, get a hangnail or start unearthing week-old playdough from beneath them. Yeah. Slightly disgusting, I know.
If only kids were like hamsters…like you could just keep them in a gigantic wheel for the rest of their lives and they’d be perfectly content just running aimlessly. You could bring them out on special occasions to show off to your friends or pick up girls (“OMG, TOO CUTE!”)… but otherwise they’re pretty unobtrusive and keep to themselves. No? Perhaps you think this takes all the joy out of parenting? Feh, what do I know? But either way you need to be a poop-scooping master. THAT’S RIGHT. POOP SCOOPING = THE JOY OF PARENTHOOD (Why not get a puppy instead?).
Let’s take a step back for a second. Imagine you are not yet housing a parasite in your uterus. Firstly visualize the amount of time, money and resources you would spend raising a child. Now imagine that you’re spending all this on something productive that will actually benefit the global community instead of facilitating overpopulation. Imagine how much we, as a species, could achieve? We could have already defeated the impending robot apocalypse by now. Maybe we could have solved the energy crisis. What about creating a masterpiece? Devoting ourselves to becoming the next Beethoven or Leonardo Da Vinci? We could probably afford to restart the space programme! Maybe we’d finally get to casually throw around phrases like “let’s put this baby into hyperdrive” and maybe we’d all be driving Millenium Falcons? You know you’re dying inside with the secret desire to be Han Solo. Maybe you could just use this money to hire an army of minions and become Emperor of the universe? THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS AND YOU ARE HOLDING US BACK, BABY-MAKERS OF THE WORLD. How’s that for some perspective?
So start inventing lightsabers and shut up about babies already.
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