My Life As A Parent

If you’re stinging from the pain of ‘this economy’ or suffering nasty paper cuts from your post-holiday credit card statements, consider cutting back on child-related costs this year.

Dear Man Who Invented Daylight Savings,

Do you think Mary had to nag teen Jesus to the point of psychotic break just to get him to hang his wet towel on the bathroom hook installed by Joseph?

I live with teenagers. Which means I speak a second language.

The other morning at breakfast, the 15-year old mentioned sorrowfully he may have “tossed a fork.” Because I have grown so accustomed to feeling clueless for what my kids and their friends are talking about (“Dude, that song is way sicker with that stupid hotness yo!”), I assumed “tossed a fork” was new lingo for “blew chunks.”
 
Turns out my son had literally thrown a piece of cutlery in the trash on accident.

Well, people, it’s finally happened. After 10 years of screaming “no f*#@ing way!” and crouching in bathroom stalls like a toothless hillbilly on the run from Walmart security, I’ve been caught.

Things have changed since my mom sent me off to school decked in bad plaid, schlepping a generic bookbag and a brown sack with a warm tuna sandwich. Mmm, ecoli! It's what's for lunch. (I don't mean to be all braggy, but my immune system rules.) There were no cutesy Pottery Barn backpacks, L.L. Bean insulated reusable sandwich bags, and fancy freezer packs to be found. Only the strong survived.

Last week I chatted with our 17-year old son, whom we’ll call Deathmetal, and his friend C-Squirrel in the kitchen after school.

Every winter it’s the same story. There I am, just sitting on the couch watching TV and wondering why Jay Mohr still has a career, when the doorbell rings. And on the other side of the door awaits….Evil.

“Hi, Mrs. Aarons!”

“Oh, crap. It’s you again.”

“How are you today?”

“I’m fine.”

“Great! I just wanted to know if you’d like to…”

“No. I don’t. Thank you. Good-bye.”

Two years have passed since I cleaned the inside of my refrigerator. I am not lazy. I just think perhaps I’ve earned the maternal right to a certain measure of filth.

Like the basement.

Often, as a young man, I would spend hours arguing with my friends over creationism versus evolution. This is because I had a deep understanding of nature and science, and a thirst to share that knowledge. Or possibly because I didn’t have a girlfriend.

If only I had known that instead of spending all those hours reading and studying to form an argument I could have just had a child.

Having now spent countless hours in exhaustive research (by which I mean the ten minutes immediately preceding the writing of this article, once Jeopardy was over) I have discovered that there is no way that the human race could have possibly survived the natural selection process.