Author's Note: This column generated my very first hate mail. I was quite proud, because it told me that at least my columns generate some kind of intense feeling, even though I would have preferred awe, joy or delight over anger. Oh well. At least somebody read it. And to him (yes, him!) let me just say two things: 1) One must exaggerate one's point to make the story more interesting and, 2) these are just JOKES, people.
Of All the Things I've Lost, I Miss My Friends' Minds the Most
“No, no! In the POTTY or no jelly beans! NO jelly beans! Karen, I have to-” Click.
This is representative of how most of my conversations with my best friend, who has a two-and-a-half year-old, end. In this particular case, she is attempting to inspire her young son, who received his first pair of Big Boy underpants for Christmas, to use the toilet in exchange for jelly beans. This seems like a very reasonable bartering system to me. I tend to agree with a lot of Zach’s principles.
However, having a lot in common with a two-year-old is a pretty good indication that I am not ready to have children of my own. I am too selfish. I would hoard all the jelly beans for myself. After all, I manage to go peepee in the potty every time, so who deserves those jelly beans more? But you don’t just lose jelly beans when you decide to raise a child. You lose everything. Time, perspective and, most importantly, your mind. Which is why I have remained childless so far. I need to protect what is left of my sanity.
For starters, I can’t afford the time it would take to have a kid. I am too busy lying on the couch doing nothing. If I wasn’t able to do nothing anymore, I don’t know what I’d do. I need to not do anything so that I will have the reserve energy ready should I be called upon to do something. Children, I have observed, are not very tolerant of this approach to life. From what I understand they require enormous amounts of attention, and most of it centers around disgusting liquids that have dribbled out of their various orifices. Mopping up another person’s body goo is not high on my list of ways to spend my time, and I frankly can’t understand why other people freely elect to do so.
These people, who were previously very clean, very presentable adults, are brain-washed by their own infants into becoming total slobs. I watched a stream of snot ooze from Zach directly into his father’s mouth while being tossed around in the air – a game he seems very fond of despite the fact that it often results in projectile oatmeal vomit – and Zach’s father just laughed and wiped it away. This was jaw-droppingly disgusting to me and I would have thought Zach’s father would share my sentiment. Before he had kids, I am certain he would have. Now, he seems to find his son’s inability to keep body liquids where they belong utterly charming.
So here we have a formerly fully functioning individual reduced to ratty hair and sweat pants, who is covered in oatmeal barf and snacking on baby snot. In this case it’s understandable that the next loss involves most of the five senses. For example, a mother manages to remain completely unaware that her three-year-old is running up and down the aisles of the grocery store in a swerving pattern that manages to block grocery cart traffic in either direction, shrieking at a decibel that has car alarms going off within a five-mile radius. Meanwhile the mother, with a distracted, pleasant expression on her face, will be reading the ingredients on a cereal box and whistling softly to herself. Clearly the woman has lost the ability to hear, and her sight is also growing hazy. The only sense that seems completely undisturbed – in fact, is heightened – is the sense of smell. Despite the fact that she has been totally oblivious of her child wreaking havoc on dozens of innocent shoppers, she will detect, from across the store and in the middle of a conversation with the butcher, that her child has “done a poopy.”
This brings me to my final and most important point, which is that I do not want to lose my mind. That distracted “I’m not really here, I’m somewhere nice in my head” expression that you see so often on parents of young children is frighteningly similar to the blank, contented stare of a mental ward patient. I do not want to become a person whose every nerve is braced for a poopy diaper. I do not want to be found wandering the streets, confused, unable to find my own mailbox because I have not slept in four months. I want to be able to remember the names of my friends when they call. I want to be able to talk to them in full, comprehendible sentences.
So I don’t think kids are right for me, not right now. Although if someone were to offer me some jelly beans, I might reconsider my position.
© Karen Bertiger 2005. No changes may be made without permission from the author.
