Tuesday, 04 August 2009

• My Main Goal in Life

  
  

  I’m going to list a series of characteristics and I want you to guess what I’m talking about. 

  Expensive.  Dirty.  Loud.  Useless for at least six years.

  Did you guess tractor?  If you did you’re wrong.  Tractors are useful immediately like most large investments should be.  The correct answer is a child, and these are all the reasons why I’ve made it my life goal to avoid producing one.

  Children are Expensive:

  According to numbers I swear I didn’t make up, the average cost to raise a child to age 17 is $275,000.  That includes housing, food, transportation, clothes, healthcare, schooling, and the ridiculous amounts of toys they’ll force you to buy for them by throwing tantrums in Target.  If you think $275,000 is a lot of money, just remember that seventeen-year olds aren’t even in college yet.  Considering that the average tuition for a private four-year college is slightly over $25K, you might be adding a significant amount to that total.

  Children are Dirty:

  I’m just going to start with the most obvious example.  Kids are literally walking bags of poop.  If that’s not bad enough, guess whose job it is to clean up after them?  Not mine, I assure you.  But the mess doesn’t stop there.  Apart from the whole issue of uncontrollable bowels, have you ever watched a child eat?  They get more in their hair than they do in their mouths!  It’s like watching a pie eating contest where the contestants are blind amputees and the best they can hope for is to smash their faces into the pie and hope some of it makes its way into their mouths.  It’s a wonder kids can get so chubby with all the food they end up not eating.  Although I’ve heard that dirt is pretty fattening.

  Children are Loud:

  Let’s discuss a common scenario.  You’re going on six hour flight and you’re one of the first people to board the plane.  After you take your seat, you check out the people walking down the isle hoping that someone cute will be sitting next to you.  Suddenly, you spot a woman carrying something in her arms – a baby.  Is the first thing you think:

  1. I really hope she’s not sitting anywhere near me
  2. That kid better be drugged up
  3. Is it too late to change my flight?
  4. All of the above

  Let’s face it; no one wants to be on the same flight as a baby because they scream constantly.  They scream when they’re tired, they scream when they’re hungry, they scream when they poop their pants.  Look, I’m upset that I’m tired and hungry and pooped my pants too, but that doesn’t mean all 142 people on this flight need to know about it.  Some things are just best kept to yourself.

  Children are useless for at least six years:

  Technically child labor laws say your kid can’t legally work until 14, but generally by 6 they’ve developed enough muscle and motor skills to be able to do things like fetch the newspaper and carry your beer to the car.  Unfortunately any time before that they’re pretty much just an old drunk bald man babbling nonsense words and blowing spit bubbles all while his head is flopping around like a half-decapitated chicken.  I think I’ve met more useful bags of sand.  Somehow I think that Child Protective Services might have some major issues with me using my kid to protect my house from a flood though.  Stupid CPS…always trying to ruin my fun.

  So there you have it – my reasons for not wanting to produce any spawn.  I do feel somewhat bad about not passing on some amazing genes, but it’s not enough to make me want to put myself through all that mess.  Who knows if I’ll be successful though; girls are pretty tricksy.

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