I wrote and "performed" this my last semester in college. After I was finished, I felt like a monster. No one laughed. No one smiled. My fellow classmates looked at me like I was pure evil. Like I was Sharon Stone bombing at a really bad joke. Who wants to admit they don't really like kids? I learned a very important lesson that day: Always Lie and Say You Like Kids When in Mixed Company.
Here it is now, unedited. Raw. Real. Real-er than The Real World. Wow. Emotionally devastating. Guaranteed to rip your soul apart and make you think really, really hard. Okay. I'm done.
When I was in seventh grade, my English teacher told us to make a list of what we hoped to accomplish in life by the time we were fifty.
Mine included writing the great American novel, owning an English cottage, retiring at the age of forty…and learning to like kids.
Things haven’t really changed since the tender age of thirteen, except for that last goal…
That was a dream I had to let die.
Throughout the years, I’ve learned that announcing I don’t particularly like children and they don’t like me is not exactly a crowd-pleaser. In high school, I’d casually mentioned this fact to my boss (mother of three) and she looked at me like I’d just said I like to cut the heads off of feral cats and deep fry them for dinner. She then exclaimed, “What could you possibly have against CHILDREN? They are the sweetest, most precious, most innocent little things in the world!”
My point exactly.
She didn’t make eye contact with me the rest of the time I worked there.
I decided to keep my dislike of children a secret since then. But it’s hard work pretending that I can tolerate them. Family reunions of any kind are the worst. The little runts are everywhere, like a swarm of pesky pigeons in a park--except you can’t fend them off with bread crumbs. I once had one crawl on my leg and it was everything I could do not to scream and shake it off.
What makes this particular trait of mine so offensive to people is that I’m female. And biologically speaking, I’m in the peak of my child-bearing years. So shouldn’t I be gravitating towards babies like a fat man at a buffet line?
Apparently not. It leads me to believe that that ever-elusive trait, the maternal instinct, skipped a generation. Or at least, went off the beaten path.
Because I do want to have a houseful of children. They just happen to be the furry, four-legged kind. Maybe if my mom had had a little brother when I was eight instead of buying me a dog, things would be different. But I’ll never know.
I worry most about what will happen when my friends get married and start overpopulating the world. Will our friendship dissolve? Can they be friends with someone who looks at their spawn the same way I look at cockroaches?
Heaven forbid they ask me to be the godmother.
Of course, my friends all know I don’t particularly like children. But they laugh it off and say, “Some day you’ll change your mind.”
Maybe. But I highly doubt it.
People can go their whole life despising cats and no one expects them to have a life-changing experience and adopt six cats from the pound. But supposedly one day, when I’m 35 and running out of eggs, I’m going to wake up and say, “Time to get pregnant!”
I wish everyone would realize what a relief it is for people like me not to want children. In a sense, I’m actually saving the world. The earth is only so big, and at the rate we’re going, we’ll run out of room or fossil fuels—whichever comes first. So my supposed heartlessness is actually reducing my carbon footprint. People should be thanking me. I’m making the world a better place for their descendants.
Of course, along the way I have met some tolerable children. They were quiet, well-read, and for the most part, didn’t pick their nose in front of me. So I know there’s hope. I might not ever be Mary Poppins, but at least I’ll be a step above Cruella de Vil.
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