| As we mature, most of us adhere to the Great American Dream. It was taught to us along with the Star-Spangled Banner and the Story of Jesus. "Follow the golden rule, do your very best in school, marry a loving spouse, buy a great big house, have children born in the month of May, and thank God for every lovely day."
Yeah, okay.
You can keep your aprons and your rakes. You can have your floor-scrubbing and your garden-weeding. You can hold on to that vacuum, throw away that mop, and don't you dare give me a dishwasher for my birthday. I especially don't want to make a butterfly costume out of felt scraps, or teach a child (gifted with a voice that could scare extraterrestrials) to sing "America the Beautiful." Don't look at me to carry a backpack filled with ten pounds of diapers and thirty pounds of pureed goo poo. I like waking up to my alarm clock, not the screaming of the damned. I take my coffee black, and I've never wanted cream leaking out of my tits. I'll tear my finest sheets before I split my stomach like a cow at the slaughterhouse. And lady, you've got to be joking -- no amount of pink teddy bears, balloons and "congratulations" cards could make up for that.
When The Dream came knocking, I turned it away. I refused all that baggage that comes with it, so cleverly concealed in the red-white-and-blue packaging. When it moved on, I stuck a note on the door of my beautiful one-bedroom apartment:
My Ten Reasons Not To Have A Child:
1) I don't want to lie to a man. I don't want to hear the words, "No, sir. Bobby meant his fat, bald imaginary friend who happens to be standing behind you," come from my mouth. I especially don't look forward to the "Momma Made Me Gay With A Hunger For Fat, Bald Men When She Introduced Them As Imaginary Friends" tell-all book that will inevitably come out twenty years later.
2) I don't want to clean bubble gum, peanut butter, construction glue, maple syrup, and mud that bears a suspicious resemblance to dog poop out of nappy human hair, only to discover a colony of flesh-eating bugs rocking out to Toddlerstock '06.
3) Cat fur on the carpet is still more desirable than Crayola on the wall... Especially around the holidays, when the Mother is smiling that she had one just like her, and the Mother-In-Law is delighted to see that her holiday wish of Hell for her Harlot-Bitch-Strumpet was granted early this year.
4) My refrigerator door is a well-organized series of lists and directions. I do not want the cast of "Pimp My Kitchen" to transform it into a tripped-out tribute to the marvels of the Glittering Macaroni Mosaic. It is my secret suspicion that children include such things as raisins and irreplaceable buttons in their art just to rebel against society's conventions, and by "society's conventions" I mean "my sanity."
5) The only monsters in the house live in my closet. When they transform my umbrella into the Thinnest Serial Killing Rapist Ever, I beat the evil out of it with my baseball bat. Obviously, if more than one Safety Defender occupy any house at any time, permanent injury is unavoidable. Be reminded: The shoulders of Junior Safety Defenders are exactly crotch-height. If you must spawn, do not teach it to play baseball.
6) It is my privilege to snarl at people who bring their dog into pet stores and allow it to defecate on the floor, to point and laugh at people who reposition their vehicle more than five times to navigate in and out of a parking spot, and to glare at parents who cannot control their scream machines. I'm well aware that if I were one of them, I could get my meal in a doggie bag and relocate to the car, where I could suck it down like a starving crack-addict trapped in a dumpster with two mating cats. Sure, I could become one of those people.
7) Until they make self-propelling harnesses that can safely transport fifty pounds to the location of its corresponding remote control, I will not have children. I can live without children. I cannot live without supermarkets and department stores. Sure, I could survive growing turnips and wearing a loincloth made of squirrel skins, but other mommies would frown on that and then the only play date little Tommy would have would be with Fritz...the Weissman's gardener.
8) All my houseplants are dead, the cat feeds itself, and my nutritionist insists arugala is the new beef. The only peanut-butter and jelly I see every day comes in the form of spam, insisting that rubbing a combination of Wasp Jelly and Hippo-Nut Cream on my penis will make it ten times longer in minutes.
9) I like my bikinis more than the alternative; a stretchy leotard with three layers of sand-trapping crotch fabric which could only have been designed for a life-size fertility goddess statue that was made exclusively from raw dough. I have no wish to meander down the broadwalk looking like an amoeba that just farted two screaming, sunburned beach spriggans a moment ago.
10) When I am old, I shall drink heavily and play chess until the pieces become animal crackers. I will not spend my holidays sitting on my wrinkled old grannass in an equally old chair and watch the world happen around me, like a mothball-smelling goldfish out of water, wondering if I'll die before anybody feeds me or changes the puddle I'm sitting in. Hey, it's never too early for wishful thinking.
Live free, live well, live without vomit on your shirt.
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