Baby, We Thought it Over....

OK, how many of youse guys are familiar with the infamous Baby Think it Over?  Seems like just yesterday that my daughter dragged home this screaming plastic waste of time. This year, it was my son's turn.

Now, for those of you who have been either under a rock or stranded on a desert island somewhere, the Baby Think it Over is a life sized plastic brat designed to simulate the experience of having to take care of a real baby for the weekend, intended, I suppose, to make the kid hate it so much that they immediately go out and buy a lifetime supply of propylactics.

Well, I can understand the Powers That Be wanting teenage girls to have to deal with it, because in my experience, they're the ones that think babies are as adorable as all get out, and want to have one so they can dress it up all cute and shit and stroll around with it.

BUT fifteen year old boys don't have that problem. They have no interest in having a baby. They just want to be left alone to play World of Warcraft and ride their bikes to the store. I know that my son wants a baby about as much as he wants to put on a dress and dance in the Santa Claus parade.

BUT, we had to put up with the baby anyway. Dan brought it home last Friday, and despite the fact that we actually have a cradle in the attic, he decided to have it sleep in the cat bed.

This baby screamed, cooed, cried and breathed just like a normal baby for the duration of the weekend, and it was my son's job to take care of it. All I can say is, I'm damn glad that the baby didn't come with a voice recorder, because the air was blue in his room most of the time. He cursed, swore, and berated that baby, signed, moaned, and muttered at it, and more or less told the baby how much he hated it at least once an hour. I had to talk him down at 3:30 in the morning, because he was getting ready to put the baby in a sack and lock it in the basement.

At one point, he even figured out how to make the baby feed itself while he played video games....

I wanted him to take the baby up on the roof and dangle him off like Michael Jackson did with his kid, but I guess it ultimately says something about his "parenting skills" that he wouldn't allow that.

That didn't stop us from pretending to set it on fire while he was in the shower....

We all sighed in relief when the baby went back in his bag and went back to school Monday morning. So, what did this experience teach my son?

Not a damn thing.

It will be years before my son has babies, (let alone baby making, on his radar.)  All that was achieved here was fucking up his weekend. I guess if the idea was to make him hate this baby with a white-hot rage that almost caused him to do it in, then HEY! I guess the Powers That Be were successful after all....