"Don't use your children like that -- it's shameful." It's a paraphrase of a quote from "Dead Like Me," when a woman attempts to use her kid being in the car to cut into line at the post office.
I'm Child Free. Does that mean I hate kids? No, it means being a parent is something I would never do to a child. I'm obsessive, judgmental, hot-tempered and can be downright mean. So nobody who should be raising a kid (and I could COUNT when I was seven, and saw the future population numbers. I later realized that being a parent doesn't guarantee permanent effect -- atheists usually come from religious households, after all).
However, I'm a GREAT aunt. I'll take your kid horseback riding and to cookout parties and down to the swimming hole. Of course, I'll also let your kid get into the Triple-sec-soaked marshmallows and take turns body-surfing the rapids until somebody's bleeding. Just sayin.'
However, I never volunteered to baby-sit your kid.
The next person who dares to get between me and adult events, books, movies or whatever, because their 14-year-old daughter happened to walk into the bondage panels at Nowescon (for example), and causes me any loss of time and enjoyment for the sake of their kid - he or she is getting a bill for my art rates, and those start at $80.00 an hour.
And if s/he has the gall to squawk, "Are you a parent?" then it will be $120 an hour, as a nuisance fee, under Arrogant Cluelessness.
This is a legal contract.
If you claim you've never read it after getting the bill, ignorance is no excuse. So do your job and explain to your kid that, while THOSE people are doing it -- it's for grownups, and the kid doesn't get to do it until s/he is an adult, too.
Signed this day -- September 7, 2011 -- by Donna Barr
I'm Child Free. Does that mean I hate kids? No, it means being a parent is something I would never do to a child. I'm obsessive, judgmental, hot-tempered and can be downright mean. So nobody who should be raising a kid (and I could COUNT when I was seven, and saw the future population numbers. I later realized that being a parent doesn't guarantee permanent effect -- atheists usually come from religious households, after all).
However, I'm a GREAT aunt. I'll take your kid horseback riding and to cookout parties and down to the swimming hole. Of course, I'll also let your kid get into the Triple-sec-soaked marshmallows and take turns body-surfing the rapids until somebody's bleeding. Just sayin.'
However, I never volunteered to baby-sit your kid.
The next person who dares to get between me and adult events, books, movies or whatever, because their 14-year-old daughter happened to walk into the bondage panels at Nowescon (for example), and causes me any loss of time and enjoyment for the sake of their kid - he or she is getting a bill for my art rates, and those start at $80.00 an hour.
And if s/he has the gall to squawk, "Are you a parent?" then it will be $120 an hour, as a nuisance fee, under Arrogant Cluelessness.
This is a legal contract.
If you claim you've never read it after getting the bill, ignorance is no excuse. So do your job and explain to your kid that, while THOSE people are doing it -- it's for grownups, and the kid doesn't get to do it until s/he is an adult, too.
Signed this day -- September 7, 2011 -- by Donna Barr
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| Me and Padawan Learner in the Chehalis River. So there. |
2 comments:
i will be coming back and rereading this on a regular basis. piano be damned.
craig
Oops. Sorry. I just met a Piano-tuner guy (well, Facebook met) whose answer to all questions is, "I'm the piano tuner."
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