Cheers to babies, jeers to gonorrhea
Just a few days ago, I found out that my friend Andy had a baby, which was pretty crazy because he’s a dude. Then someone explained to me that HE didn’t actually have the baby and that it was his WIFE who had it, and then I got all mad because Andy actually did NOTHING but people are giving him all this credit, like they say, “Oh, hey, congratulations, Andy, on having your baby!” and all of those people are probably extra impressed because he’s a dude and is having a baby and it’s all a LIE and meanwhile, there are all sorts of hard-working people in this world who do AMAZING things and HE’S the one getting congratulated for not even HAVING a baby, and I’m like, That ass, I’ll bet he cheats at solitaire, too.
(However, I then realized that Andy actually does have a baby now, regardless of whose orifice it came out of. So it’s accurate to congratulate him on HAVING a baby even if it’s pretty meaningless. I mean, we don’t congratulate people for having dogs or having Bubblicious gum. Although, we do sometime express condolences when someone has gonorrhea, and having Bubblicious is in many ways the opposite of having gonorrhea. So maybe it’s okay.)
(The baby congrats, I mean. Not the gonorrhea. Gonorrhea is never okay.)
(In fact, I don’t think Andy has gonorrhea. But maybe he does, in which case congrats on the baby but don’t try to have any more. I mean, Jesus, think of the children.)
So it turns out that the procreation of the next-to-last of my college roommates really has for once and for all dismissed the idea that I’m a kid anymore. When I had my son, I could pretend that I’d knocked up some young girl at an inappropriate age and that hence I was still a young stud. When I had my daughter, I could pretend that this apparently dumb and masochistic young girl came back for more (I mean, who could resist?) and that I knocked her up a second time at a still-inappropriate age. (Everyone note that I’m taking credit for having these kids. If Andy can do it, so can I. That bastard.) So I get the fantasy of forbidden love along with the illusion of being in my late teens, and I get to think about what it would be like if my father-in-law were chasing me with a shotgun, which hardly ever happens in real life.
But that illusion falls apart with Andy. Andy is an engineering grad. We all know that if engineers who electrocute pickles are knocking anyone up, it’s happening well beyond the young chick age. Hence, I had to admit that I’m not a college kid anymore.
On Monday, I turn 33.
Almost everyone around me has kids now. A funny thing happens around this time of life, I’m finding. You don’t notice that YOU are growing up, but you notice that everyone else is. Like, Andy’s the retard who invented the giant fruit cannon. No way that guy is a dad. Or a doctor. I have this fat friend who isn’t actually fat anymore. Only, he used to be fat, and that’s forever how I’ll remember him and every time I see him I’m like, “You’re not fat” and he’s like, “I will disembowel you now” and that’s how it is with Andy and all of these other people I know. I mean, hell, they’re just kids themselves. They’re mentally incompetent. All of us are mentally incompetent. How can these people care for children? They can’t, that’s how.
I’m not one of those people who has a problem getting a year older, though. I have friends who get all freaked out even at our age and I can just imagine the AARP crowd dying to beat the hell out of them the next time they attend an Andy Griffith fan event. I’m cool with not being in my twenties anymore. Really. I’ve got it damn good, especially if poor Andy has gonorrhea.
Happy birthday, Johnny boy.