I’m not in nearly good enough shape yet!

This fact was rather amusingly brought to my attention earlier this week as I was standing in line for lunch at a local sandwich shop, ordering a meatball sub on white (for those of you playing the home game), and watching the poor woman in front of me juggle between trying to explain her order to the cashier and also trying to prevent her two little boys from killing themselves, each other, or possibly even just leveling the entire restaurant. She’d get a few words in, then suddenly just take off running down one end of the counter after Child A, only to finally lasso him just in time to sprint back in the other direction to intercept Child B from pouring condiments all over the floor! I never thought that I’d actually be one to be for those ridiculous, full-body-harness leashes that you see some parents drudging their kids around in like tiny prisoners, but as I watched this screaming mother running full tilt to Child A who was now walking out the door, it’s all starting to make sense to me now. At one point all I could do was laugh along with the people on the other side of the counter, shrugging our shoulders as if to both acknowledge, “Hey, my life is rough, too, but at least I’m not chasing after kids out into the street…”

…because that’s the thing – little kids are basically indestructable, but they certainly still like to push their luck to see just how close to death they can get before Mom or Dad (hopefully) swoops in to intervene! Sometimes it’s by means of playing baseball with a hornets nest, sometimes it’s by lighting the neighbor’s cat on fire in an enclosed area (note from Scott’s past: always ignite your felines outdoors…), but it pretty much goes without saying that if it’s poisonous, flammable, radioactive, or heavy enough to displace organs if dropped on one’s person, leave it to a child to find the most effective way of achieving the most life-threatening feats with it while you’ve slipped away to the bathroom for thirty seconds!

Rumor has it that they grow out of this phase approximately around the time when they begin to take interest in the opposite sex, so I’ll leave it up to you to decide which is ultimately the worse obstacle from a parenting perspective…

So at least for now, my lack of diligence in the realm of diet and exercise is actually working to my advantage with regards to keeping the little people at bay, but I’m being told by my better half that we’re not getting any youngeror skinnier, for that matter … so unless I want my diet plan to become preventing my children from running out into the street and killing themselves, there’s no time like the present for reviving that failed New Years resolution to become the Mr. Universe of our household, or at least shed enough unsightly pounds to be able to keep up with a over-ambitious toddler hopped up on 2% milk and pop tarts!

Of course, that would also mean that I’d have to come up with Reason #88 Why Scott Isn’t Ready to Have Kids, but as dedicated (to some causes) as I am, I’ve already been working on a few things:

  • Recurring fear from grade school that little girls have cooties that I’m not quite ready to confront
  • Hard enough to get up in the middle of the night for my own needs, let alone someone elses
  • Not sure how to keep the kids out of my toybox
  • Can’t afford kids and new swimming pool with built-in waterfall, jacuzzi, and curly slide
  • Still aspiring dream of becoming a professional body surfer that will likely fade away once parenthood commences

Got stories about why I should be eager to have children and start a family? Send them to i_don’t_want_to_hear_it@dependent_free_4_ever.com. Photos of the cutest children that I’ll ever see will not help your cause, so save your bandwidth and go play Yahoo! Poker or something instead…