The Parent Trap

Well the patio project is still on hold thanks to Mother Nature scheduling the return of early spring, and dumping enough rain to turn the work area into a soggy mess. Laying patio stones in deceptively cold and damp conditions is not my ideal work environment, so I decided to make the wife have fun. Now seeing how we are slowly slipping into suburban domestictude (aka “homebodies, and yes I know its not a word, but I don’t see you writing this, so I reserve the right to make words up as needed!”) our definition of having “fun” usually consists of sitting around watching TV and reminiscing about those days back in college where we were out partying with our friends till the sun came up. Of course now that we have reached that dreaded mid to late 20’s range, we no longer have the energy or really for that matter the desire to be out all night carousing around the town. Domestictude in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, but occasionally you have to break out of the rut and go and find people to do things with. The key however is finding people who are also not settled into domestictude, as gathering with other domestictudites tend to reinforce the condition.

It has become obvious to the wife and me that the majority of our friends are domestictudites, seeing how most are in their mid 30s and have kids. Having older friends with kids can give a newly wed couple such as the wife and I a very clear glimpse into our future. Your friends are only to happy to have you over to spend some time chatting at their place, surrounded by piles of toys, blankets and all the gear needed to equip the modern parent for expeditions out into the world, if only so they can have a fleeting moment of adult sanity and conversation not consisting of one syllable words. I think that being a parent gives you an amazing ability to translate something completely unintelligible into clear language, and personally I am looking forward to that as perhaps it will surely aid in my understanding of some of the things women (the wife) say to me. However seeing how I am a guy, this will probably prove to be futile, as guys never listen (well actually we listen but are interrupted at critical moments by that little voice in our head that says oh.. look boobies!)

I have decided that having older friends with kids is an excellent way to prevent newly wed couples from having kids to quickly after marriage. The kids are a wonderful cheap source of entertainment, seeing how all the non parents are fascinated in the cute and funny things the kids do, while giving the parents a chance to try to show off their pride and joys. The kids are all cuddly, lovable and sweet, and since we are not parents, a fairly novel thing in our life. Having all the fun with the kids is nice, and getting some good “baby love” is always good for couples who are thinking about having kids. Of course all the parents sit back and enjoy the other couples having a chance to take some of the pressure off of them for a moment. The parents all coo about how wonderful it is to have children and how life changing the experience is. They tease couples with out kids about when they are going to have kids and try to convince us that we should have kids so their kids and our future kids can play together. All this sounds wonderful, and before long you kind of have this little idea creeping into the back of your head that it might be really nice to have children.

Saturday night, the wife and I were sitting at the dinner table with our friends, their very young boys (9 months and 2.5 years old) and a couple whose kids have already gone onto college. We were all watching the boys crawl/run around and run their parents ragged, all the while listening to the parents tell us all about how wonderful being a parent is. The older parents were teasing us about not having any kids yet, and how we should probably get started when a sudden realization hit me: It’s all a big trap! The parents just want us to have kids so we can join them in their misery! They want to see how we would do on only 2 hours of sleep and having had to chase a two year old around all day long. They want to see if we can handle having a little boy play fireman while we try to change them. They want to see if we can make our kids eat while having lots of people making faces at them. They just want to fulfill the saying that misery loves company!

So on a less cynical note: Congrats to all the recent graduates out there…Way to go... It is a big world out there and there is a lot to look forward to. Remember that now that you are done with school, there is something to look forward to: A life sentence... to work!

Anyone out thre want to help prevent us from becoming complete domestictudites? Let me know!