I hate sharing food. I have Joey Tribbiani-levels of devotion to the food on my plate. If I offer you a bite, hey! Congratulations! You’ve passed over into a coveted level of friendship in which I have deemed you worthy to consume food that is rightfully mine. But children have no sense of personal ownership. Or rather, children have a hyper sense of personal ownership, in that they think they own everything. Oh, you’ve got some chips on your plate? I’ll just go ahead and stick my grimy little hands in there and grab one because there’s obviously nothing wrong with that, but not before touching all the other ones and getting tiny flecks of dirt and booger and crayon all over them. But the problem here isn’t hygiene, although dude gross get your stupid little sausage digits off my plate. The problem is that my instinct would be to yell “FUCK NO!” and shove the child backwards as hard as I can with both hands. Yes, even if said child cometh from mine own loins. Sorry kid, I’m just not ready for that kind of commitment.
I own a sizeable dog kennel. I often joke that my 3 year old dog is all the child I can handle, but at least I can leave him at home for a handful of hours by himself and nobody will accuse me of animal neglect. If he’s acting like a dickwad and I’m sick of his shit, I can just lock him in his kennel for 30 minutes or so until he CHILLS THE FUCK OUT SERIOUSLY DOG I HEAR YOU BARKING YOU HAVE FUCKING FOOD WHAT DO YOU WANT JESUS CHRIST. The problem is this is only kind of a joke. If I had a kid right now I’d probably leave little Doodle O’Crapshispants chilling on the couch alone so I could run to the store or the bar or something. What’s a few hours going to hurt? I’d say to myself as I locked the door behind me, his little toddler eyes widening as he watches me go. Then I’d come home, see that the kid has managed to break both his arms and crack his soft little skull open and ransack the refrigerator and put a shoe through the TV and eat an entire box of Swiss Cake Rolls and then vomit up those Swiss Cake Rolls and then crawl into the bathtub to take a nap. So next time, obviously, I’d just remember to put him in the dog kennel.
I hate washing small dishes. Washing dishes isn’t a big deal when you’re washing regular person-sized things like plates and cups and frying pans and shot glasses. But when you’ve got a baby, you end up washing what seems like a never-ending stream of very tiny things that have to be super clean or else your baby will contract the black plague and DIE. Little rubber nipples, tiny ass spoons that you secretly use yourself whenever you eat a pudding cup, small-necked bottles that you need a special brush for because regular brushes are too big and tough and manly to fit inside, slotted plates with Elmo on them only Elmo’s face is now crusted with week old mac and cheese because the kid threw it under the stove when you weren’t looking and you just found it. I can’t explain it, washing tiny dishes just makes me feel like a chump, like I’m cleaning up after the imaginary tea party I just had with my Barbie dolls. Either grow up and use metal spoons like the rest of humanity, or wash your own damn dishes with your tiny creepy hands.
Watching someone open gifts slowly is the WORST. Having to sit through grandma delicately un-taping each corner of the gift you gave her for Christmas and then folding the wrapping paper back up for future use is torture enough. But have you ever put a wrapped gift in front of a one year old? He’ll sit and look at it, bang on it with his fists, get a few bits of paper off here and there, gnaw on the edges for a while, then roll backwards on his back and cry for a while. If he does manage to get the paper off in under five minutes, he’s going to become super preoccupied with the paper and forget there was even a box with an expensive toy inside. Slow, inconsiderate, and ungrateful. Stupid kid. I think it’s pretty likely I’d end up not wrapping any of his gifts because who actually gives a shit? And that sounds Grinchy and terrible and lazy and so it’s best I don’t have a baby right now.
Photo by Navets (Creative Commons)
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