Good morning. I’m a delinquent parent. You may notice my children—Jake and the other little shit—are stomping on the petunias in your garden. This is less because I’m busy, and more for the fact that I didn’t want kids in the first place, and I’m hoping someone will take them while I’m checking Facebook. Yes, it’s terrible. No, I don’t care what you think.
How did I get myself in this situation? Well, let’s just say I enjoy the idea of children more than the reality—and yet still had five. Yep, one kid pushed my capabilities as a parent. People started questioning at two and severely doubting at three. When the fourth child dropped, most of the neighbors left. And at the fifth, the government sent a letter that said in so many words, “We don’t want to go all China on you but stop. Now.”
Children can be fun-loving gifts of nature who bring joy and delight to the world around them—staring in awe at a butterfly, stomping in rain puddles, saying cute nonsense. But somewhere along the way God forgot about my brood. It’s partly my fault, partly because these children tend to evil.
Whereas some children sit quietly reading books and graciously thank their elders, other demon-ridden spawn ram their trucks into people’s legs at the dentist’s office, pee in the saltwater aquarium, and enjoy sinking their teeth into flesh, which is either a phase or a sign of serious psychiatric problems.
Most children will break down at some point, and parents can do nothing to stop it. My children, however, scream longer and louder than any other creature in existence, piercing wails that would rip the eardrums out of a woodpecker. Some have compared it to the sound someone makes when he or she is dropped into a cauldron of acid or is cutting off a finger with a dull knife.
In the spare moments they aren’t screaming, the children lash out when their Goldfish cracker supply is threatened or the TV is changed to something other than colorful, androgynous… things who sing about spending time with family and sharing.
But as a parent, I’m protected. Even if my child has a knife to your throat and is demanding your social security number, credit cards, and any spare Thomas the Train engines you have, you can’t do anything. It doesn’t matter if I’m misusing my privileges or making a bad name for parents who actually try. It doesn’t matter that one of my kids is blindly shoving a screwdriver into an electrical socket or assaulting their sibling with a stapler.