Everyone who knows me well...okay, even some people who don't know me well, know that I'm not a big fan of children. There fine for those who choose to make them. Lovely little creatures. Button noses, tiny toes, interesting smell, cute accessories. But, I believe I was otherwise distracted when they were giving out the maternal genes. I truly in my heart of hearts believe that most people of my generation are having children so that they can have something new to name. What the hell else are you going to name Tucker or Tawni or Apple? The very same people have cats and dogs and treat them like children (don't get me wrong-my cats actually run my house) and cart them around in grocery stores and airports like newborns. Then, one day three or four years into a marriage they look at each other and realize they have nothing left to talk about, the sex hasn't been hot in a couple of years and nobody is getting any younger, so rather than get a divorce they have a child.
What a brilliant strategy.
Am I cynical? No. Why would you ask?
I don't have children because I know with inevitable inflation I wouldn't be able to pay for their college education and their therapy bills.
Recently, a friend mentioned a quote by humorist Fran Lebowitz from a Paris Review interview that seems to summarize my feelings to an absolute "t".
"I wouldn't say that I dislike the young. I'm simply not a fan of naïveté. I mean, unless you have an erotic interest in them, what other interest could you have? What are they going to possibly say that's of interest? People ask me, Aren't you interested in what they're thinking? What could they be thinking? This is not a middle-aged curmudgeonly attitude; I didn't like people that age even when I was that age."
No truer words were ever spoken. I've been known to take the stance that I've nothing to say to children...none of them have read Proust, so what's to talk about? Call me a curmudgeon if you must. Fine. I'll gladly bear it. But, anyone who's known me for more than 20 years will tell you that I too didn't enjoy children when I was a child..so why change now?
I leave you with another of Ms. Lebowitz's little tidbits with which I agree wholeheartedly. There was nobody like the magnificent Ms. Parker-not before and certainly not since.
"Dorothy Parker makes me laugh, always. Her book reviews. People really slight her because she was so dissolute, she hardly wrote, she was a drunk. I think if someone can write a book review of a popular novel published fifty years before you read the review, and you laugh every time you read it, that person is remarkably talented. "
In closing, and keeping with the theme. I've no doubt that I, despite my wishes, will die on a perfectly sunny day.
Abiento.
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