Escape From The Planet Of The Sprogs
The strike was months in the planning. It was a stroke of luck that brought the target into range, completely out of our control and to our utter surprise. But ahead the plan went with just a few alterations to reflect our good fortune.

My mom came up, rang the bell. We let her inside. She got comfortable, played with the kids a little, made chit-chat.

She never saw the chloroform-soaked rag coming. My wife had just that morning talked me out of the two-by-four-across-the-back-of-the-head method to subdue her, so I was relieved when the chloroform worked. Within seconds she was out, we pinned a note to the oldest boy (his shirt I mean) assuring the old lady we'd be back--eventually--and then lit out like parolees.

Date Night 2004.

The Anniversary is Tuesday (seven years!), so we finagled a Saturday to get out, just me and Mrs. Pops. No kids. The air smelled sweeter. Flowers bloomed as we walked past. Almost no food was thrown during dinner. A choir of angels sang hymns, odes to love and devotion, which was a relief because then we could pretend we were listening to them and not have to think of stuff to talk about.

I call her Mrs. Pops, but if we're talking about Time Invested over the last 5+ years, I can almost say that we're not even really married. We had the ceremony seven years ago and the paperwork was all filed properly. We were married, in fact, for nearly two years when we first started out.

But then our first son was born. This is a little insight for the unattached out there amongst the swarm of loyal Bucketeers: if you are married, you are a couple; if you have children, you are parents. The two terms, sadly, are mutually exclusive.

People without kids are normally put off by observable behavior--or more to the point misbehavior--of children in proximity to themselves. This is not what you should be most concerned about when considering making little imperfect copies of yourself. No, the real, unspoken danger of children is that they are gigantic galactic drains, much like a stellar black hole, but instead of matter they suck in time. Endless amounts of your time, the time you used to spend watching TV or going to the movies or just sitting in one place not having pointy knees driven into your groin (which can come as quite a surprise, let me tell you).

But unlike actual black holes whose immense, almost infinite gravitational force distorts spacetime until time actually slows down, children simply eat it. They devour time the way they don't devour puréed peas--passionately and with no small amount of force.

Any idea you have to do something--read, eat, a home improvement project (hypothetically... remember this is "you", not me)--can and will be interrupted because one/some/all of the kids need to be fed/washed/held/medicated/entertained/disciplined humanely, etc. The next time you have a second to catch your breath it's four months later and your book is collecting dust, your food's gone bad and your home improvement project... er... well, you still could do that, but who's kidding who?

This is how my house works. In July we thought it would be fun to try and see Spider-Man 2. Finally we get a chance to see it and just realize, oh yes, that come out over a month ago... But luckily we have a thirty-screen theater at the nearby Ontario Mills giganto-mall, so they're still showing The Sound of Music--probably without their knowledge--on some little nook screen no one's visited for years. Spider-Man is thus no problem.

Dinner, movie, slink back home to the temporal vortex, slightly disappointed that I didn't scandalize more people with my choice of controversial footwear with the exception of my wife, who knew exactly what she was gettting in to and has no excuse.

The irony of the couple-parent paradox is as cruel as it is true: at the moment of your child's birth--the exact moment--you understand it and all the horrific ramifications of its realization. I am convinced there are parts of your brain fully developed but left dormant, like Jungian collective unconscious memory, wired to switch on at the appropriate moment.

Case in point (and this is a true story) story: We have new neighbors, just moved in a few weeks ago. At the end of Date Night 2004, I'm walking my mom out to her car (it sounds sweet, but I was just trying to be sure the coyotes didn't carry her off again). No car pulls up or passes in the 5+ minutes we are talking. But mom gets in her hideous Pontiac Aztek and drives off.

All of a sudden the car parked in the neighbor's driveway lights up and the doors open. The new neighbors had a kid 11 days ago. They had been out looking around their new hometown and had just come back, having left the baby with its grandmother. They had been sitting in the parked car for nearly half an hour just to avoid having to go back inside and be Parents again, or at least to put it off as long as possible. Oh how I laughed and laughed later. Not "with" them either.

So in doing the calculations, totalling up all the time Mrs. Pops and I have been alone together since the consummation of our union (legal consummation you perverts) minus children and child-related activities, I would say we've only actually been married 2 years 8 months 11 days 19 hours 40 minutes and 12 seconds out of 7 actual years.

God help us when they leave for college. We'll still be newlyweds.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 7.7


Pops


PS: In the footwear link above, those are my actual shoes. Not those particular ones in the linked ad (at least I don't think so... wouldn't it be funny if they were?), but you know, that style, color(s), etc.

PPS: For the Actual Marriage Number (AMN) Calculation, you can e-mail me at pops@fakeemailaddress.com or accost your local astrophysics professor.

- posted by Pops @ 10:19 PM