Big Mike: The Buck Stops Here

The greatest thing I’ve accomplished in this wild, weird world is not reproducing. No lie. The fact that I haven’t spawned brings me more joy than even a Cubs World Series victory would.

Which is amazing when you think of all the guys who’ve ever blathered that the greatest moment of their lives was when they saw Junior pop out of the birth canal. Who knows? Maybe if I’d seen a little Big Mike jump out of one of my wives/girlfriends/acquaintances, I too would be shouting to the world how fantastic it all was.

The truth is, I don’t like kids. The best thing about them is they belong to someone else. I might have considered having kids under certain circumstances. To wit: they’d have to be born adult and they’d have to find a place to live other than my home. I suppose that first condition would make the whole enterprise a non-starter for any potential female partner.

I was talking this over with my pal Anna in LA the other night. She seems wishy-washy on the whole prospect of breeding. Ask her in general if she wants to have kids and she’ll shrug and say, Yeah, I suppose. Ask her specifically if she’d wouldn’t mind carrying a human beachball in her belly this minute and she’ll freeze you with an ugly stare.

After I’d canvassed her, she turned the table and asked if perhaps I regret not planting a seed. I gave her a version of the above screed.

Anna: “Naw, it ain’t kids you don’t like.”

Me: “Oh, yeah?”

Anna: “Yeah. In fact, I think you like kids. I’ve seen you hold kids. I’ve seen them crawl all over you on the floor.”

Me: “Yeah but….”

Anna: “Yeah, nothin’. You like kids.

Me: “But I’m so happy when they go away.”

Anna: “True. But who isn’t? Most sane parents long for the day their kids go away to college. People pay forty or fifty thou a year just so their darlings can live in a dorm room in another state.”

Me: “Hmm. I never thought about it that way.”

Anna: “Right. It’s parents you don’t like.”

Me: “I think you’ve got something there.”

Anna: “Uh huh. The entire species of them. Parenthood turns people into jerks.”

How true. Yesterday, on the way to the Kroger I got stuck behind a car bearing a bumper sticker saying, I’m proud of my Cub Scout. Think of it. These parents have defaced their automobile, probably lowering its resale value in the process, just to tell all humanity how wonderful it is that their son has joined a club that accepts anybody. Not only that, since it’s not humanly possible to resist reading a bumper sticker, they’ve stolen several precious seconds of my life that otherwise might be spent contemplating how the Cubs can get rid of Milton Bradley. It’s a crime, I tell you.

I mean, really. The Cub Scouts? We’ve become so narcissistic about our heirs that we’re waving flags celebrating the fact that our kids spend an hour and a half after school once a week learning how to make breakfast pizzas?

These people may as well have put a bumper sticker on their car saying, I’m proud that my kid doesn’t stay home sitting on his fat ass in front of TV once a week. And they’re not unusual. Everybody brags about how smart/cute/quick/special their kids are. They are — to them. To me — meh.

I don’t want to sound curmudgeonly here but I want to find a bumper sticker that says, Nobody gives a shit about your kid but you. Am I a bad guy?

Maybe not. In a story about America’s new unhealthy preoccupation with its kids, Vanessa Richmond writes in The Tyee: “Some people are starting to (unpopularly) point out that our current interest in kids and parenting is neither normal nor historical. The ‘parenthood’ concept is, in fact, a recent invention, a type of obsession, and even a form of insanity.”

Ain’t it the truth?

Early on in my potent, randy life, I thought I’d get in on the parenting bandwagon eventually. For some odd reason, though, I was deathly afraid of impregnating someone. Why? Maybe it was my plethora of neuroses and phobias. I figured it was hard enough for me to deal with me — now I’m gonna make some innocent kid do it too?

In any case, I never hit the bullseye, although there was a scare or two along the way. Maybe I was just lucky rather than smart.

Either way, I never became a parent. That’s good; I’m filled with enough self-loathing, thank you.