Short, Retarded Roommates I Love

Originally published Monday, February 20, 2006

I love my kids. There's nothing more immutable or more true in the universe. I'd give up TV for them. (Well, maybe not Battlestar, but everything else for sure.) That written, I've come to realize that for all intents and purposes kids are just roommates who don't care about your stuff. (Or simply "roommates" for short.) That's it... roommates who don't care about societal norms or any of the usual niceties that make living with someone bearable. Oh, and they're retarded.

Seriously! I love my kids more than most people love their Tivo, but along with being wonderful and precious and cuter than a macaroni-art scene of Santa riding a flying unicorn over a field of smiling daisies, they are mental. Pick any ten minute period within the last week and imagine for a moment that your kids aren't kids at all, but are in fact full-grown adult roommates, and replay the scene in your head and you'll see what I mean. Here, let me...

The other day I was working from home, typing away furiously on my laptop, and while I was trying to work, my roommates were taking turns jumping off the couch and screaming "Wheeeeeee!" Then one of my roommates pulled a throw blanket over his head and said "You can't find me" about 37 times until the other roommate pulled the blanket off, at which point the younger roommate collapsed into tears and had to be given a lollypop to get him to calm down. Somewhere during all of this the younger of my two roommates shit his pants, which event he announced proudly by saying, "I have poopy!" with the same entusiasm you'd use to announce you found a 20 on the ground.

See what I mean? At 2 and 6 it all seems perfectly normal, but at 32 and 36 they'd be mental defects. Or celebrities. Yeah, that's actually a much nicer analogy. Having kids is like living with celebrities.