Variable Annoyancometer and kids

The best thing about being a parent is that your children permanently adjust your brain so that it takes something really amazingly gigantic to annoy you. Not until you spend time with people who are not parents is the gross annoyance disparity thrown into sharp relief. You are reading a book and your child is bouncing a ball in the house, and at home you would just ignore it until something broke, and the something would have to be really special in order for even that to register. Put this event with people who do not have children and you notice the non-parents get the same look that Iraqi's have when they are checking to see if a suicide truck is headed their way. The person who said "children should be seen but not heard" must have been an alien not of this world in order to utter that with a straight face.

The problem lies deep in the early stages of parenthood. As a new parent you are schooled, via emersion, in all that is loud, uncontrollable, messy, disgusting, wet, and smelly. You are also schooled by the smile you little booger gives you, realizing that, for good or bad, this child thinks of you as his or her God. And whereas we adults can ignore God until we want something, the child has God to look at and scream at all day and all night. The god is quickly trained. And so it goes.

I have calculated that my wife and I have, between the two of us, changed my child's diapers approximately 4,380 times. For me I started this three hours after my daughter was born and finished 2.5 years latter. This has an effect. With dogs you throw them into the backyard and then scoop it up every once in a while. A cat gets a litter box and your neighbors flower bed.

I always get a kick out of movies that make such a big deal out of bowel movements in diapers. At first you are so overjoyed that the kid is born and ok that you change fifty diapers and you might as well be counting your gold bullion.

Then they figure stuff out and you don't have to do that anymore. And all of a sudden you feel, no pun intended, but kinda shitty. From there it just gets more complicated and time consuming. Babies are so much easier to deal with than children. Once they can do stuff on their own look out.

So I look on my non-parent friends with empathy if not sympathy, for though I can understand their annoyance with kids, I have long since passed the point of remembering what non-parenthood was like. I look at old photos and movies and wonder "What the hell did I do with all that free time?" I must have have done something for all those hours each day.

I think that all the sex ED classes are pretty lame since they talk about VD and AIDS and condoms, and other crap that teenagers can't relate to. These classes should start like this:

You know how much fun it is to baby-sit your nephew Bobby? And remember how glad you are to get paid and go home after three hours? Well imaging Bobby with you all the time, everyday, never out of your site, being Bobby. Then imagine that nobody is going to pay you squat for all that time. And imagine Bobby as a teenager getting drunk on his first date and puking all over the inside of your car. And then Imagine Bobby going to college and spending his money on strip clubs, and beer. Then imagine Bobby marrying a woman who you think should be committed. Then imagine those to having kids of their own then dumping them at your house everyday since both of them have to work and neither can afford daycare.

Still want to have sex?

I love my kids and whether they are bouncing balls, or needling each other, or playing nicely, I can, thanks to them, smile and slide on the ice.