Babies: 'Cause Sometimes Raising a Pet is Just Too Complicated

For whatever reasons the synapses in my brain continue to misfire, I've been thinking about children and raising them lately. Rest assured, it's been in a bemused, ironic sort of way. No biological egg timer has gone off inside me, and if it had, I'd wonder how an egg timer found its way into my torso--wound, I might add--when I've never even gotten black-out drunk in Mexico before. On top of that, my wife constantly reminds me that, at least for the foreseeable future, not even a shred of my genetic code is going to find its way into her fallopian tubes. But that's alright. I'm a patient man. And cunning.

I suppose the event that triggered these uncharacteristic thoughts was the USA Cheer competition I attended last Saturday. You see, my wife is the assistant coach for a high school varsity cheer squad, so I drove out to Anaheim to support her, and thus was allowed to watch the routines from the stands like a normal person, rather than from the front seat of my van and through a telescopic lens, as some of you were no doubt imagining. Indeed, that's my very point. At some time in the past (no doubt while I was sleeping, unawares) I passed the line where cheerleaders were an admittedly cliche fetish and instead became just kids. As I was watching their routines, hoping none of them fell in such a way that bones would protrude from their flesh, I couldn't help thinking that their skirts should have been a little longer. I wondered if my daughter, one day in the future, would still be allowed to compete in a similar event when she arrived in a set of mechanic's coveralls, her school letters amaturely sewn to the back by her father, and all her sleeves and pant legs securely duct taped closed. Sure, there might be a minor deduction, but that should just inspire the girls to perform all that much better.

Also, I realized that being the sole male cheerleader during a high school cheer competition presents an interesting paradox. On one side, you inevitably draw bemused smirks from a crowd who, at best, will applaud you like they do the kid who finally managed to find the finish line in the Special Olympics 100m dash. On the other hand, any man even partially honest with himself must admire the cahones necessary to get out there by yourself amidst a gaggle of teenage girls who you are either 1)hopelessly in love with or 2)convinced are bitches because they look so much better in the skirts than you do, and pretend to cheer your non-present school teams to victory.

What compounds matters so much is that a mere day or two later I read that Britney Spears's little sister, at the ripe old age of 16 (much like those damn cheerleaders from above), is pregnant with her first child. Excuse me, but what the fuck? I already realize I'm a bit old fashioned, but this is a first world country and it's the 21st century. It's not like she's finally siring an heir for the 12th century French earl who her parents wed her to for estates in Burgundy. But I digress. I realize my incredulity is symptomatic of my naivete, but I bring this gem to the fore, rather, to circle back to the question of parentage. I want to send some sort of trophy to Lynne Spears for the bang-up job she's done, but I can't find a gold statuette of a mother pounding a 40oz while holding an upturned baby by the ankle. You'd think those would be in more demand. Yes, there's the nature v. nurture debate, and Britney's train-wreck could always be attributed to the corrosive influence of celebrity, but there are still signs to the contrary. I mean, there are photos of her walking in and out of a truck stop bathroom with bare feet. I wouldn't let my dog walk in such a place, and his paws smell funny all the time.

Honestly, at what point did this family so offend the gods, because the needle on the celebrity barometer is slowly creeping toward "Greek Tragedy." If I follow their ancestry back far enough, will I find that at some point a father sacrificed his daughter to ensure fair winds at sea, or was some great-great-great-grandmother raped by a swan? So who does 16 year old Jaime-Lynn's baby have to turn to? In many teen pregnancy situations I relax a bit because there is a strong matriarch there to oversee the child. And who would that be in the Spears clan? They'd better put an add on Craig's List for a competent necromancer, because if the kid's great-grandmother can't be called up from the soil, I can only imagine what kind of disaster will result. Then again, I won't have to imagine at all; she'll be on the cover of every magazine in the supermarket any-damn-way.

An Obscure Star Trek Reference*

I apologize for being negligent again, but the final weeks of the quarter/semester have finally arrived, which means even the most oblivious and self-absorbed students have raised their heads from the trough, eyes glazed, still senselessly chewing their dining commons cud as the reptilian portion of their brain struggles to buy its host another day. Finally they hear the distant, tolling bell as it peals across the campus, not realizing that it marks their own funeral. When exactly is that hallowed ceremony to begin? On that glorious last day of instruction, when they ask how their constant absences and missing essays will affect their grade. "How?" you ask. "Not unlike how a bullet tearing through a human skull affects brain activity."

There are, of course, the dedicated students, who despite even personal tragedy will still turn papers in on time and attend every lecture. Yet I cannot help but marvel at their polar opposites, their alternate dimension counterparts who emerge on the starship College Education, identical to their antitheses save for the curious goatee perched on each of their chins.* These are the guilty parties most likely to wander into class after being gone for a week, as if having accidentally stumbled into the wrong room on their way to buy a churro, and genuinely ask, "Did we do anything while I was gone?" What do you say to that? "No, we did nothing important. The class spent the hour deciding whether a rabid giraffe would beat a unicorn in a fight. We settled on a tentative 'no,' but only so long as it was a fair fight." Was it too blunt to just ask me if I did my job while you were away? Bloody twits.

I suppose I have simply become tired (as one does every term at about this point) with repeatedly encouraging the students to show up to class and turn in their assignments. You'd think this was obvious, but you'd also think they'd realize that them being absent the day a paper is due doesn't adequately justify its late submission. I wish I were making that up, but even hearing that transpire (it did) made something no doubt delicate and essential to the system quietly snap inside me. And thus, until I find a Swiss watchmaker who dabbles in repairing the human soul, I will be forced to shuffle along with that something rattling impotently inside me. Should it ever be fixed, I may finally decide to tell a class what they should really hear. I don't know precisely what that is, but I have an idea:

"Don't say another Goddamn word. Up until now, I've been polite. If you say anything else -- word one -- I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my black throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, and fueled by my hatred for you this fear engine will bore a hole between this world and that one.
When it begins, you will hear the sound of children screaming -- as though from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin.
I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth."

Perhaps this is too much. I never know, but I imagine my point will be made. Also, not to dip into the stagnant waters of plagiarism, of which I warn my unheeding students routinely, let me point out that the quoted text above is yet another gem from the writer of Penny Arcade. Can you see he's a bit of an influence? Honestly, if I could write like that at will, I would seriously consider scrapping the Ph.d program and actually making some money in this world.

Then again, if I did dare to tread outside the barren and paper-strewn halls of academia, I fear one of my former students would inevitably be my boss. And then...hating your ignorant boss with every fiber of your being...well, who honestly wants to become a cliche?