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.