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the latest
waddle: good morning, wordpress - 10:36 a.m. , 2009-07-03 elaborate murder attempt - 2:56 p.m. , 2009-07-01 building a tractor in the basement - 10:42 a.m. , 2009-06-19 ask no questions tell just a few lies - 3:17 p.m. , 2009-06-09 my long lasting flavor really lasts long - 1:10 p.m. , 2009-06-04
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You are all going to laugh at me, but this question has occupied me on and off for a while now, so I decided just to lay it all out here in classic argumentative style (you know, the prefix-intensive one), so here it is: SHOULD I GET MYSELF KNOCKED UP, EVER? PRO: The human day planner. Very useful! CON: Not good enough. (Hereafter abbreviated as NGE.) PRO: I'm 30 years old. CON: I'm only 30 years old. PRO: I'm fairly cute, I'm fairly smart, I'm financially stable, and I have fairly good genetic material (except for a smidgen of familial alcoholism and mental illness). Husband is also cute, smart, finanically stable, and has fairly good genetic material. CON: What if the same arguments were used for taking life instead of beginning it? ("Well, I'm white, I'm female, I'm middle-class, I could probably beat the rap or at least not get the death penalty...") In other words, NGE. PRO: I have "a lot of love to give" etc. CON: Do I really? PRO: It might make me more interesting to have a kid, and I could write about it. CON: #1: It might make me less interesting to have a kid, because I would write about it. #2: NGE. PRO: Lorrie Moore has children. Margaret Atwood has children. Adrienne Rich has children. Anna Akhmatova had children. CON: Plath had children too. PRO: My kid would have amusing stories to tell about the wacky hijinks of his/her parents, perfect for bonding over bongs in his/her freshman year of college. CON: Therapy bills. My kid getting scurvy from being raised on a diet of martini olives and cocktail onions. All the other PTA moms looking down their noses at me for letting my kid get scurvy. [gesturing weakly at the gin bottle] "Mummy has a headache. Bring Mummy her medicine..." Oh, and of course, NGE. PRO: If I'm this ambivalent it means I take the whole thing seriously and I'd be a good mother. CON: If I'm this ambivalent it means I'm not confident enough to be a good mother, and I wonder if doubt can be transferred placentally like vitamins or heroin? PRO: Mini-Mimi! Mini-LT! So clever and cute! CON: Nature vs nurture again. The kid could grow up to be Good People, or it could grow up to be a crack-addled artmonkey or talentless ass-shaker. You really don't know. PRO: You'd get to name it. Possible names for my hypothetical hellspawn: Sidecar Smartypants, Mildred (Bonk) Smartypants, Johnny Cash Smartypants, Helicopter Smartypants, Minneapolis Smartypants, Zoltar Smartypants, Mordechai Smartypants, Ghengis Smartypants, D'W'Ay'ne Smartypants, Godspeed You Black Smartypants. CON: Probably the most extreme example of NGE. You could just get a guinea pig or something. Of course it's not solely my decision to make, unless it happens to me like it supposedly happened to her, but LT and I are usually on the same wavelength about the important stuff. Besides, it's my webpage. Do you have children? Did you methodically and logically decide to conceive them or did it "just happen"? Did you always have a vague feeling you wanted one? Why? (And if you claim it's biological destiny I shall be very angry. Well, not very angry but chagrined.) Am I a freak for hideously overthinking every single moment of my life? (Don't answer that one.) OK, later we'll get back to the amusing stories etc. I feel better, even if you don't. ---mimi "but I think Pynchon writes a fine bedtime story" smartypants back/forward |
