I'll give you the conversation first, and let you guess the news.
I agree to meet a friend from work at a bar this afternoon. He approaches the bar:
Me: "Where the hell have you been? I'm half drunk already."
Friend: "Ok, you wanna kick me in the nuts?"
Me: "No fucking shit! Congratulations!"
Give up? That's how he told me he and his wife are having a baby. I love how normally when that news is broken it's exciting and emotional, but somehow most things with me seem to lack a certain class and social standard. I also wish there were no background to that story, and that was the typical way to tell friends you're expecting. But, as the story goes, when he told me a while back that he and his wife were thinking about having a kid, I blankly said the day he tells me he is having a child I will inflict said pain onto him because that means it would be the beginning of the end. In all actuality, I'm quite happy for him, and I didn't kick him, but it got me to thinking today, "Why am I so anti-baby?"
I don't hate children, I don't even hate babies. I do, however, get annoyed when they're whining, crying or running around their upstairs apartment like a maniac while their neighbor below is attempting to relax and do some blogging while trying his absolute hardest not to flip shit and start screaming through the ceiling, but I wouldn't say I
hate them. I also know that at the end of the day, kids are going home to their families, and I'm going home to my quiet and relaxing place, devoid of all Pack and Plays and Hannah Montana dvds.
I've never really wanted children, and the older I get the stronger my convictions become about raising a child. As I've said before, I spend my entire day with other people's kids, why would I want to come home to my own.
"But you'll feel differently once you have one" seems to be a popular rebuttal. Excuse me, did you just hear what I said? I said I'm not having one. I don't doubt that you do feel differently about a child once you have one, because you have one. I don't necessarily feel like I needed the Reese's peanut butter egg I just ate, but I felt differently because I had one sitting on my counter.
I don't mean to sound cynical against people who want to have children. In fact, I have had several fleeting thoughts of fatherhood. Some that have downright freaked me out. But they have been just that, fleeting. Perhaps it's my age and the fact that I'm not close to settling down just yet, but I've always felt that I want to live my life as my own, and not be responsible for anyone else. I'm a bit too selfish at this stage in the game to be worried about anyone else. And I swear to God if they don't quit running upstairs I'm going to loose my shit.
time and I would have to miss a second of the festivities. And now, five and a half years later, she's officially a "grade schooler". And apparently a self-reflective teenybopping grade schooler, considering our phone conversation this evening thanking me for some "back to school mad money" I sent her late last week:
