By Tom
“Venti” Waters
July
16th , 2004
| Proud parents hold them out in front of your face and you’re just
supposed to react to it. What do you want me to do with this thing? Give the baby
the secret handshake? Hand him a gift set of scented soaps? Bask in his
unmarked beauty? |
To hear people talk about having children, you’d think they were
discussing the latest desirable fashion accessory. “I can’t wait to have kids. He
wants a boy, but I want a girl. He wants to have two, but I told him I won’t
settle for less than eight.” Did you want the economy model or the super
saver? Standard or automatic? Small infants horrify me in ways that Stanley
Kubrick never could. I can deal with four years of age and up, but babies are a
scary bunch. I’d like to have one some day, but I’m not racing to keep up with
the Jones’ or anything like that.
Proud parents hold them out in front of your face and you’re just
supposed to react to it. What do you want me to do with this thing? Give the baby
the secret handshake? Hand him a gift set of scented soaps? Bask in his
unmarked beauty? It’s not proper etiquette to go around shoving babies at other
people unprovoked. They’re dangerous weapons, so you’d better be carrying a
permit. Small children can projectile vomit farther than professional athletes
can lob a javelin, so keep that thing at least twenty feet away from my
clothing. They drool, spit, and make gassy noises around the clock. They produce
odors that trump this author even after a night of whiskey, tacos, and curd
cheese.
What makes me so anxious around children is that I don’t know how to
react to them. They’re blank slates with their large, watery eyeballs and gaping
little mouths, twisting around with no teeth in their head. If a grown man
shuffled up to me in the street in down blue pajamas with slipper feet and drool
coasting down the front of his chin spouting unformed vowels, I’d run
screaming in the other direction. What do you want from me, baby? Couples must know
this is the single man’s kryptonite! Or maybe they’re so self-involved and
overjoyed with their new status symbol that they don’t recognize the sheer
terror that their freshly spawned off-spring provokes.
Once they achieve up-right status, it doesn’t get any better. That’s
when babies learn how to stumble at break-neck speeds and crash into walls,
coffee tables, or anything else that gets in their way. They have little porpoise
heads carved out of concrete. This is the only explanation I could come up
with, as they can fall down a flight of stairs, bounce their skulls off large
boulders, and still come out of it smiling and gurgling. If I chip my forehead
off of a bookshelf it takes three weeks to get rid of the gigantic welt that
springs up.
Maybe it will be different if and when I have my own. That’s a little
miracle (or catastrophe of nature, depending on who you talk to) I can’t wrap my
head around just yet. At 28, more and more friends are warding me off with
their newborn infants. My generation isn’t in a mad dash to have children.
We’ll get to it when we get to it. These are the career years, and I’d rather
make money to provide for a little tyke first before shoveling pureed mush down
the front of his or her pajama-suit or placing my kid in those automatic
door-way swings and watching them catapult back and forth. On top of all of this,
I’ve heard that it helps to have a girl-friend, wife, or significant other
when you’re trying to have children. Maybe that’s why I’ve been unsuccessful
so far. My friend Tony, who’s a year younger than me, just had his second
child. A girl. I’m sure she’s adorable but I filed for a restraining order to
avoid any unpleasantness. When she can talk to me without spitting up from
fifteen paces, I’ll be glad to meet her.
