There, I’ve said it.
Ok, so I have breasts (admittedly slightly bigger than God originally planned on giving me, thanks to modern science), I have a womb (which I would happily give back in a pretty box with a big bow and a ‘thanks for the thought’ card), and all the lady-plumbing that goes along with it (which I really don’t want). I am physically designed to spawn. But, I am a firm believer in the ‘just because you can does not mean that you should’ approach to having children. Although God may have given me the parts necessary to create a tiny version of me (which makes me think of The Omen), he did not give me the emotional or mental Operator’s Manual. Or, come to think of it, a return policy for unused or faulty parts...
Now dogs, dogs I am good with. Hand me a puppy and I can coo and do silly voices and rub bellies and mop up enough piss to float the Titanic. Hand me a baby, however, and watch the light go out of my eyes as the tiny tacticians in my brain try to figure out which way up to hold it. And I always call babies ‘it’, which tends not to endear me to the human beings from whence it came. I’m the opposite with dogs – a dog is a ‘he’ or a ‘she’, never an ‘it’. At least with puppies it’s easy to tell – you just turn them upside down. With babies, you run the risk of getting it wrong, unless you have gender-specific clothing or the name to tip you off.
Babies freak me out.
If a puppy does something naughty, you can make a loud, disapproving noise and at some point they will learn not to do it again. (Usually. At least, most puppies do. Just not the ones that belong to me). Do that to a baby when it craps on you and listen to the air-raid siren of baby screams escalate, while you learn that making loud noises at a baby makes them crap harder. You can crate a puppy while you are out of the house so that you don’t come back to a pile of fluff that used to be a sofa. You can’t crate a baby. Well, technically you can, but you will get CPS called on your ass rapido. You can leave a puppy alone. You can’t leave a baby alone. That’s the point I was trying to make. Please don’t call the cops…
Because I am now, apparently, at a ‘certain age’, I get the “when are you going to start having kids” question a lot. While the honest and direct answer is “I’m not – I don’t like kids” (or alternatively, "when the dinosaurs defrost"), the various resulting responses take so much energy to deal with that I usually reply with something along the lines of “Well, ummmmm…. Mumble mumble mumble… Is that a purple squirrel?! No? My mistake… what’s everyone ordering?” and hope the subject drops. There are multiple responses to announcing that you are not planning on breeding, and they range from short and sweet (and not comprehending) to very patronizing (while not comprehending):
1. “What? Why?”
This response usually comes from someone who already has kids. Now, don’t get me wrong – I don’t judge people who have kids – if they like ‘em, more power to ‘em – it’s their decision to have kids, just like it’s mine not to have them. End of story. (The women who have, like myself, decided not to have kids never ask this question.) These are usually the ones who shoot me the ‘smothering old people’ look. I find this question and the accompanying 'look' to be the most annoying and upsetting of all the responses - it carries the implication that I am somehow less female/feminine/capable of love, because I’m not popping out kids with alarming regularity. And when I am upset, my mouth tends to engage before my brain and sense of decorum does… so my reaction is usually something along the following lines…
“Well, let’s see. I like my breasts exactly where they are instead of being able to play ‘keep ‘em up’ with them like soccer balls; I like to be able to sleep more than two hours a night because my baby is crying / because I am worried my teenager is getting impregnated in the back of a Ford Windstar; I like that I don’t have a vagina like a windsock; I don’t need to worry about my dogs quitting college on me, nor will they cost me a fortune in bail money when they end up in jail for indecent exposure.”
2. “It’ll be different when it’s your own”.
How in the fuckity fuck does that make sense? Listen carefully… “I don’t like kids”. How will the fact that I carried the little bugger in my body for 9 months and share chromosomes with it change that? I admit, there must be something to maternal instinct – how in the hell otherwise do the moms prevent themselves from going completely boffo and dropping the shit-machine off somewhere after a consecutive 4 months of little-to-no sleep? And sometimes, there are questions that have no answers. And the ‘possibility’ that I will bond with a child of my flesh isn’t enough of a safety net for me. I guaran-goddamn-tee that if I ever got pregnant, the result would pop out with a cigarette in one hand, a bottle of Smirnoff in the other and curse out the doctor. With that lovely image in mind, I am not in any rush to join the hallowed ranks of Motherhood. When I come up against this statement, my response is usually “Why will it be different?” And then watch as people try to explain it. It’s actually pretty funny. If you are a masochist.
3. “How can you not like children?”
This is usually accompanied by a look that suggests that you actually have two heads, except that one of them is only visible to monsters like yourself. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – “Babies freak me out.” The whole wobbly head thing; the grey, shiny-eyed stare that makes you feel like they can levitate small animals; the not knowing which end is going to explode first, or when; the spit-bubble-blowing; the creepy little nails; and most of all the unshakable conviction that babies (like cats, which might be another reason I don’t like cats) can sense evil, which is why they don’t like me either. If you are male and you say this, you automatically get the #2 response above. If you are female, people look at you like you are going to snatch their kids and serve them up 'au gratin'. To me, babies look like little pink gnomes. Little bald, pink, wobbly-headed gnomes. But it’s very hard to explain this to someone who likes them, or has them, so I just don’t say anything and try to look like the monster I clearly am.
4. “You’ll change your mind – you still have time.”
Ahhhh lovely… patronizing and reminding me that I am getting older and still single. Please sir, may I have another? This one always comes out in a very insistent tone, with the added bonus of the expression that says “you have my pity.” I’m not going to change my mind. Just because my eggs have a sell-by date on them does not make me want to use them any quicker. Or give them to someone who will use them. I’ve always harbored the slight suspicion that my eggs might actually hatch rather than gestate, and who wants to be socially responsible for the results of that? I still have time to do lots and lots of things – knock over a bank, learn to ride a unicycle, have group sex in a caravan in Aberystwyth – it doesn’t mean that I am compelled to do any of these things before I croak. Once again, just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
The best response, the very best response, the one that makes my knees weak with relief and urges me to burn my under-wired, over-padded, non-maternity bra in a gesture of primal solidarity does not come from the woman spurting one of the above responses, but from another woman who happens to be standing next to or near me when the question is asked. That person could be a close friend, an acquaintance, or a complete stranger - at that moment, it does not matter. All that matters are the two words that she utters:
"Me either."
Molly, out.
0 comments:
Post a Comment