I'll probably take hell for this

Don't tell Sally, but I've been thinking about kids. Having some, I mean, and, perhaps even more specifically, becoming a father. At this time, I'd like to let people who may not have yet met me know that I do not want children at any near point in the future, and that goes double for those who do know me, and/or know my parents. Let's leave them out of this, shall we?

The past month or so, I've been thinking about what an awesome father I would be. Don't you think? I'm animated, absurdly child-like in my own right, and have small fingers (Just kidding, you NAMBLA-pambies).

It's strange, though, for me because when I think of parenting, I think of comedians. Which isn't to say my parents weren't wonderful--they were and are--but more to say that my parents never formally codified their teachings. Their parenting curriculum was more by implication than explication. So when I think of parenting, I think of people like Patton Oswalt, Sarah Silverman, and Bob Saget.

I'll repeat that. When I think of parenting, I think of Patton Oswalt, Sarah Silverman, and Bob Saget. Here's why:

Patton: I'm going to be a fucking awesome father. You know why? Because I'm going to the lamest father ever. Phil Collins' No Jacket Required is going to be the most contemporary album I own. And I'll rave about it too: "Hey, have you listened to this? This is some good stuff."
"Fuck you, dad!"
And I'll smile to myself because I'll know I've raised a fucking awesome kid.

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Sarah: You know what babies love? Ethnic jokes.

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Bob: In comedy circles, there's a famous Saget story about the night his first daughter was born. After a very difficult birth, during which Sherri Saget and her baby almost died, a friend showed up to find Mr. Saget looking utterly destroyed, unshaven, unrecognizable, but holding his newborn. "Oh my God, Bob, she's beautiful," the friend said. "For a dollar, you can finger her," Mr. Saget replied.

Anyway, I find it interesting that when I think of parenting in the abstract, I default to comedy. But when I think of parenting in the concrete sense--the day-to-day care, the worrying, the mess, the push and pull of differing temperaments--I think of my parents, I think of loving something unconditionally, something that can and will hurt me at some point, and I think of waking up every morning contented and eager, waiting for the day to bring me an experience for which I have no training. I think of waking up, as I did this morning, wrapped up and around my girlfriend, warm, safe, and right.

I have a belief, deeply held, that I rarely bother to explain to people because I don't want them to think I'm crazy, or some hippie-dippy new age asshole that's perennially out of touch. I believe that if you have a question, be it nebulous or directed, if you have a question, the universe--your surrounding environment--will give you the answer.

Case in point: Ask Metafilter is a community website where members can ask questions of members. Queries run the gamut, from "How would I find a Japanese language "camp" or intensive school in the greater New York metro area?" to "How long can a reasonably healthy human survive without water?"

The other day, the question was "If you could tell a soon-to-be dad anything, what would you say?"

A smattering of answers:

Buy 1000 marbles and put them in a big glass jar. Every Saturday morning take a marble out of the jar (after your child is old enough to avoid the choking thing, you can give them to him/her). That is about how many Saturdays you have to spend with your child before they are off on their own. It's a great visual reminder to take advantage of the time you have together. You will be astonished how quickly the marbles disappear.

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When you fall asleep late one night on the couch and the baby rolls off you and falls to the floor, don't freak out. Almost everyone drops the baby once.

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Do not underestimate the amount of time a baby requires, from both of you but especially the mother. Take how much time you think it will require, then double it. Now, think about that, and double it again. That's how far off your current thinking is. The quote I remember is "How much time does a baby take? All of it."

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in the delivery room: stay away from the vagina. childbirth a miracle!! a beautiful thing!!! amazing to behold!!! but dad, you don't want to visualize mom's ladyparts when they are at their structural extremes.

And, again, I'm not about to be having babies--hell, I won't even suffer a dog in my apartment--but it's nice to have some perspective and advice tooling around in the ol' subconscious for future reference.

But the scariest part of fatherhood, to me anyway, is the instant revision of your deadlines, your internal calendar that tells you what should be done by a certain date. For instance, I work at a weekly paper. I have weekly deadlines. I deal with life more or less a week at a time. The date is constantly a surprise to me, because it makes sense to think of life in seven day chunks.

What is a baby? It's a project with a deadline date eighteen years in the future. It's difficult for me to fathom that. If I had a child, right now, today, by the time the due date arrived (har!), I'd be 41 (23+18=?). That's middle-age. By the time you're 41, you should have had all your adventures, sown all your seeds, settled down, and come to terms with the fact that all your songs are in your past. But maybe I'm looking at this from the wrong side; 41 is a starting point, a place of renewal, a great time to schedule your mid-life crisis.

My problem, I suppose, is that while I enjoy taking the long view and planning for the long term, I have no stratagems, no coping mechanisms for a time period nearly as long as I've lived. What's even scarier is that I know of very few people who do.

Maybe I'll have a baby and buy a Ferrari at the same time. I'll never drive it (the car, not the baby) and I'll barely make ends meet, but by the time the baby's gone on to college, or juvie, or Iran, or wherever babies go, it'll be completely paid off.

Of course, by that point cars will probably run on hope and Unicorn tears, and my classic Ferrari will probably be on some eco-terrorist strike list, so I'll have to hide it in my garage, sneaking black market diapers in to clean it with while I down enough tylenol with pine sol to make me think I'm driving South, a cigarette in one hand and a flask of hard A in the other. Anyway, I just don't know if I'm ready to own a car like that. It's quite a commitment.

- T