Okay, about this giving birth thing. It seemed like such a good idea at the time...But then real life intervened and now I'm wondering...What in the Hell was I thinking?!
Forget the issue of the sperm donor, whether it was Love or just Time to Breed that influenced my decision to marry this person and bear his children....(Oh, please, when these kids need something or have done something whose children do you think they are? His? I think not! They're mine! So the ridiculous idea that I "bore" anyone's child is just beyond me! But I digress...) Anyway, forget the sperm donor and why I decided to have children. I did. And once conception took place, it's a whole new ballgame. First of all, the kid has to be born...Either that or your guts get stretched by a group of cells that progressively multiply into a person who just grows and grows and grows. Better to dynamite the little sucker out of there before he grows beyond the size of a Thanksgiving Turkey and makes the movie, Alien, seem more autobiography than sci-fi.
Okay, so they're born. You survive toddlerhood. You re-learn Second Grade Math and realize, probably for the first time since birth, that you are really, really stupid. That's bad, but that's not what does you in.
They become teenagers.
Yeah, like the one your parents used to warn you about by saying, "I hope you have a kid just like yourself one day. Then you'll see what hell you've put us through!"
At the time you didn't believe you'd ever see anything eye to eye with your parents. You figured you'd certainly NEVER parent like them, so what was the big deal? If you had a kid like yourself, you'd understand him or her and be a much better parent than your stupid parents ever thought about being!
Damn. That pride goeth before a fall thing just up and kicked my ass.
You see, the first kid was nothing like me. And the second one showed no signs of my former rebellious behavior. He hates conflict. He does whatever he can to stay on my good side. He does really well in school. He's quiet...too quiet...
The sneaky little bastard!
It's late, but I see the signs now and I'm on to him!
He's got a girlfriend. She appears to be a sweet thing, but hell, I appeared to be a sweet thing, too. He talks to her for hours and hours at a time. He won't talk to us, his family, but HER, well, apparently he'll tell her any damned thing. I've heard him. "She's making me clean up my room...Yeah...I know. I know!" Sure I'm making him clean up his room. It's a freaking health hazard! It's littered with fast food wrappers, tiny bits of paper, dirty socks and clothes...And the further kiss of death and sign that my parents' wish is coming true....His room is just like my room was when I was his age... Before I discovered cleanliness is next to avoiding a diphtheria epidemic.
Then...He tells me if I go to the 8th grade dance as a parent volunteer/chaperone, he won't go! He doesn't want me on the property! "It's embarrassing, Mom! It makes me look like a pansy!" His brother, 2 years older, says "Ben, you're 14. Mom gets to mortify you for a couple of more years until you learn how to work her so she doesn't do it to you. When you're 16 you get to drive, then you can get away from her!" I whap him upside the head and he laughs and I'm charmed... So yes, the 16 year old jerk has learned to play me...But his younger brother is not so sharp...Okay, so maybe he is as sharp as his brother because when he said he wouldn't go to the dance if I volunteered, I looked into his eyes and saw...Well, his eyes were bright with tears and he looked so absolutely pained that I suddenly felt how very hard, embarrassing and mortifying it must be to try and dance for the first time with your first girlfriend...And to have to do it with your mother watching your every move? Oh, I so felt it! Damn. I was siding with my son against my own self!
But I came back to my senses with the arrival of the next sign that my youngest son is turning into my worst personal, parental nightmare...
Not only does he think I'm stupid and to be avoided; not only does he give me the barest of details and none of the pertinent information in his life...Now, in his quest to apparently be the child my parents wished I would have...Ben has added another log to the fire of my eternal damnation...
He likes all the music I used to like! He's listening to Led Zepplin, the Allman Brothers, Cream, Pink Floyd...This is a disaster! Where did I go wrong? He's growing his hair...I led the boys in my high school in a sit-in because of the dress/hair length code...and now Ben's growing his!
I was the teenager from Hell and now, in my own house, despite my careful, not-like-my-own-mother parenting, I have bred my own little hellion! I am immeadiately going to enter into negotiations with a security firm. I need motion detectors, lights, infared cameras, bodyguards...I'm bugging the phone, the computer, the bathroom. I'm marking the liquor bottles, taking the important thingy off the carburator, getting a larger, smarter dog...a herding dog.
How on earth has this happened to me?
I know what's next...that's what the Hell part of all this is...You know what's coming for you because you once brought it down upon your own parents!
Yeah, but they deserved it, I say, but what did I do? What? I mean...It's not as if I act like my mother did or anything! I'm always there...volunteering at school, checking up on things, driving him to and from school and to his friends' houses, monitoring his whereabouts. I mean, it's not as if I'm "intrusive" or anything!
God, you'd think I wrote about him in my blog and published it or something!!!!
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