Kids

I love kids, they´re great fun. So long as they´re not crying or cramping my lifestyle in any way. Which is why I don´t have any, because realistically they´re gonna do all of the above. Think the wife´s a handbrake? Wait´ll you have kids! Handbrakes personafied. Or personalised handbrakes as it were, as opposed to personalised numberplates, which at least you can sell down the line and maybe even make a tidy profit from. You can´t do that with your kids; not unless you´re living in Asia. Or pretty sick.

Economically speaking, kids are expensive to run. A foolish investment really when you consider that no matter how much you spend on them, you´ve still not got control over how they´ll turn out or whether they´ll be capable or even interested in keeping you in the style you´re accustomed to when you´re old and fucked. So really there´s no point. I think it´s much cheaper and less debilitating to keep them at arm's length - let friends and family do the hard yakka of popping them out & maintaining them, stepping up to spoil them rotten every once in a while to keep yourself in the favourite aunty stakes.

Inconsistency in this regard gives you some serious cut through. Don´t make the mistake of being too timely with birthdays and christmas, you just get lost in the clutter. Every man and his dog are dishing out the goodies at these times, so unless you want to break the bank and splash out on an ipod or playstation, you´re just going to disappear into a void of gifts. Pointless.

It´s much smarter to disappoint the little fuckers with complete disregard for their special day then come through with the goods when they least expect it. At this late stage, you can get away with a chuppa chup if you like (suck on this kid!), it´s out there on it´s own and will hence be warmly received thanks to not having to compete with the barrage of shit that´s being hurled at the kid from every which way on the day.

A phonecall is a great way to get a double hit on the brownie points scale. A day before or a day after is best, once again so as to get that cut through factor. On the day itself, they´re usually too busy prepping for their party or unwrapping presents to be interested in fielding phonecalls from wellwishers anyway, ungrateful little bastards. So, call the day before or day after, or you can even stretch it out to 2-3 days either side. It´s failsafe. And if they´re wondering why they haven´t received a gift from you, you can just blame the postie. Off the hook easy peasy.

Having planted the seed of anticipation, you can hit them with the slam dunk a few weeks-months-whenever you get round to it later by finally sending them something. And like I said, you can get away with murder on the budget front because you´ve got total top of mind! But the lollipop won´t really work, you´ve got to represent with something half decent...here´s the trick. Wait for the sales then score them something ubercool that´s been marked down by 80%. Badabum badabang, favourite aunty status safely in the bag.

Actually this is the only way to shop for kids these days, the spoilt little fuckers demand all the latest gadgetry as though it´s their godgiven right that you to slave your ring off bringing home the bacon for their retail pleasure. I blame the tele. If I had kids I wouldn´t let them watch it. Or if I did, it would be taped and played back upon completion of household chores. I would edit out the advertising, hereby saving my fragile ears and headspace from their relentless harping on at me to acquire them all and sundry.

I would take them back to basics, for example, they would make their own toys. Mud pies, sticks for guns, home made bows and arrows that we could terroise neighbours pets with...and I would teach them to design and make their own clothes. I would discourage them from following fashion and encourage them to be weird and individualistic, even if wearing crazy ensembles of opshop-hand me down-self tailored meant alienating themselves from their classroom peers.

I really wouldn´t care if the kids got a hard time for being a bit freaky. It´s character building. No biggie, just because you´ve got no tele, make your own clothes and toys doesn´t mean you should have the piss taken out of you. Bring it on I say, fuck with my kids and you fuck with me you little fuckers. That probably adds to the freak factor, a hardcore loopy mother prepared to give kids the bash if they mess with her brood. You see, nobody would mess with them with this in mind.

That´s the point, build respect through fear. They´d all be clamouring over each other to get an invite to a sleepover at our place. Getting down with the freak family that nobody dares to fuck with. Imagine the feelings of power, security, exclusivity, social standing generated by having access to our exclusive world. I mean what kid do you know that wants to be in a normal nuclear family? Huh? Give 'em half a chance and they all want out, break the mould. Freedom! That´s what draws them to my family, the poor little fuckers never get half a chance to express themselves or dare to be different within the confines of their own white picket fence world.

The parents would be another story, they´d be as nervous as all hell. Worrying that the source of our creativity was coming from a world of drugs or religious/satanic rituals or the like. I would play on their fears by having lots of low red lighting, candles and allow my kids to wear black. Why not, it´s my favourite colour, why can´t it be theirs too? I would let them run riot in my makeup kit from an early age. They would all develop their own individual styles, from christina ricci in the Adams Family through to Edward Scissorhands and everything in between. There would be no sheepish wallflower behaviour from my kids, they would be encouraged to explore and express their every creative whim.

If they didn´t have any such creative whims, they would be coerced into having them. No food until they´ve come up with something rad. There would be deadlines involved and all manner of stimulus to aid and abet the cause. Nothing like a bit of acid in your smoothie to jumpstart the imagination. I would never give these smoothies to other people's kids though, well not without their approval or unless I realised that they were in dire need of some kind of jump start in the personality department.

My kids would have great work ethic and a natural survival instinct. Natural because they would know no other way. If they were cute enough, I´d pimp them out for modeling so they could start paying their own way. The less easy on the eye kids would have to settle for standard jobs such as paper runs or whatever the modern day equivalent might be. Whatever, by the time they were of school going age, my kids would be able to pull their own weight as sure as hell I'm not going to be the one entertaining them during the school holidays. I´ll be focusing on maintaining my sanity having to have them around me for all those extra hours. They'll be needing to get out of my hair and get to work, hell I´ve done my time for those unindurable first 5 years of hell. Yep, my kids would begin their journey into self sufficiency and automony young; by the time they hit high school they´d be capable of running the show. Or for parliament for that matter. They´d be off the hook my kids, if not a little weird.

But weird is good, it´s like the presents thing, cut through. Better to stand out than to be in their with all the bog standard wallpaper, a homoginised sheep. A sheep. Imagine. Who in their right mind would want their kids to be sheep?

I would teach my kids to have their own point of view and if that conflicted with that of their peers, teachers or guardians, that they should buck the system. Mash shit up, see what happens. They might get expelled, too bad. I would home school them, or better still, send them offshore and step things up a little. It would take them a while to get kicked out again, they´d have to learn a whole new language in order to figure out what they´re dealing with. Then if that day ever came, I would play the cultural differences card to buy a little more time and tolerance. If that didn´t work I´d break out the learning disabilities and go for the sympathy vote. A few white lies to keep the kids out of my hair never did anyone no harm, except for maybe the teachers.

I guess you could summise that the reason I´m not a mother is because I would break the mould. Raise the bar. Invoke fear and jealousy among all the traditionalists who would then go on to copy my style of mothering. I would hate that. My kids would no longer be special nor would I. We would be the new sheep. I would have to start all over again and perhaps have to resort to current day mothering standards. How bloody tedious. All those ballet classes, sports practices, brownies, cubs, piano lessons, lord have mercy! How did kids end up being kings?

It´s incredible, kids these days have busier agendas than their parents. The parents are basically slaves being rinsed out, ridiculed and ultimately ruined by the poisonous fruit of their very loins. It kills them in the end, yes, you heard me, they eventually die. Not a normal death like mine will be; rather a long, slow, painful death that ultimately manifests itself in the form of some drastic illness right towards the end, by which time it´s far too late to avert. Or sometimes they just drop dead, it just nips them in the bud before they´ve even had a chance to tell anyone of all the years of pain, suffering, heartache, career and financial ruin they´ve endured at the hands of their children. Yes, I know, it´s dreadfully sad. But what can you do? Other than wise up and don´t go there!

Aside from the fact that I´m clearly not interested in having children, I´m sure you can see why I wouldn´t want to share my awesome maternal skills with the world for fear I would end up like a cheap Chinese copy bag, once a classy original faded into a mass produced shadow of its former self.

Yes people, you have the children and I´ll be favourite aunty. As they grow, I´ll get to know them better than you. They´ll tell me stuff they would never tell their parents. If you´re real nice to me, maybe I´ll share it with you...just like your kids, I too can be bought!

In the meantime, I´ll enjoy my lie-ins, my income, my space, my peace, my freedom, my shopping trips to Paris, my wholly selfish existence as much as you´ll enjoy your important role of parenting. And I won´t envy you one little bit. And you´ll feel sorry for me and think I´m missing out on something really amazing. And I´ll think you´re wrong. And we´ll agree to disagree on everything but one thing; that it´s really probably just as well I don´t have kids. That would be really mean. Mean as in mean, not as in awesome.