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.

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.

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.

Thirty years later, I can still recall the frozen horror that filled the kitchen that Sunday.

%#&@ this %#&@$#& piece of #$%&!

I remember as a teenager hearing small children use terms like wee-wee and pee-pee to describe their genitals. I would roll my eyes and think, “That’s ridiculous. My kids are going to use the correct words for their anatomy.”

Over the years I never wavered in my conviction. And when my daughter was born one month and one day after my son’s first birthday, I stood firm. As my babies grew into curious toddlers, I began to implement my policy of using the terms “penis” and “vagina” instead of cutesy euphemisms.

Hello, there!

(grunt) Hey. See some ID?

Sorry, but I didn't bring it with me tonight.

Need to see some ID.

Breast milk is funny. Cow's milk and goat's milk aren't funny; they're just things you drink. Think about it: if you were out of half-n-half, would you add a little breast milk to your coffee?