All In The Family

A while back, Mark and I were going to see a movie and we witnessed a gay couple going to great effort to let everyone see that they had a baby. "Oh, David don't forget the baby's bottle. Yes William, and I'll get the baby's blanket.", they shouted loudly across the parking lot. Of course, even if it was biologically possible for two men to have a baby, we knew it wasn't theirs. The baby was black and they were pasty white. We also knew that they weren't from Florida. That's because here in Florida being gay is considered a contagious disease, and the politicians don't even want a black baby to catch the dreaded gayness, so they have made it illegal for two men to adopt.

The problem with that scenario is that it prompted Mark to opine, "We should get a baby. You would make such a good parent.". There are obvious problems with that statement. First of all, I have, all my life, known that I didn't want children. Not my child nor anybody else's. I asked Mark, "How do you figure I would be a good parent?". "You are so good with Molly.", he answered. So I had to explain to Mark that being a parent and owning a dog are vastly different. You cannot put a baby in a cage when you go out drinking, and leaving a big bowl of food on the floor isn't considered proper child nutrition. On top of all that is the fact that I inherited some of my dads temper, and I know that at some point a child would figure out exactly what buttons to push just to see daddy go off like a Fourth of July fireworks display.

Having grown up with ten brothers and sisters, I can safely say that I had my fill of babies. I don't know how my mother did it, I guess that large bottle of Mogen David in the refrigerator helped. When I think back on all the crazy things we did as children, it is a miracle that my mom wasn't carted off in a straight jacket. I know that just trying to bring up my new dog, Chandler, is enough to set me off. This morning he figured out that wallpaper has delicious glue on it, but that to get to the glue he has to peel the wallpaper off the wall. I of course disciplined him in a civilized manner, and realized it isn't all that bad. At least he wasn't doing it while sitting in a poopy diaper.