My husband and I were around the middle group of our friends to get married. Some beat us to the punch, some came after. But we were more or less on that unwritten but strictly enforced societal schedule, and I was good with that. We'd been together for ten years by then. (Hey, I'm a belt and suspenders kind of gal.) And it wasn't exactly a risky proposition. Once you've puked in front of someone, you're good. Wayne and Garth were right.*

Now it's getting sketchy. Our good married couple friends just announced they're having a baby. A real, honest-to-God, not-a-high-school-carry-around-an-egg-project baby. Oh, sure. We have other couple friends who have kids. But one of them is Mormon and some of them are from foreign countries with their own societal schedules and one of them has a teenager, and you can guess when that kid came along...so none of them really count. Except this one. This one counts. This dual career, our age, not excessively religious, apple pie and baseball American couple is having a kid. Soon.

I actually have meetings written in on my calendar that will occur after a whole new person is created. Vacations are planned farther in advance. Frankly, it's freaking me out.

My husband is 30. I'm 28. Both of our sets of parents had children by the time they were our age. His parents had a couple. We have plants.

(They ARE orchids, though, which are notoriously difficult to grow. Admittedly, a couple have died. And some of them are on automated watering systems. Still...)

I think I can unequivocally say I should not be somebody's mother at my age. First of all, I've been known to - on a fairly regular basis - eat peanut butter directly out of the jar. And I have absolutely no affinity for brightly colored plastic blocks. Or Teletubbies. Or the song "Old McDonald had a Farm," which now having typed the title, is stuck in my head.

Plus we have to address the fact that all of the other mothers would stone me to death, which should be avoided as a general rule. When I was a kid my mother - who is a great mother and was undeniably born to play the part, as opposed to me, who is a second stringer at best - put a Little Debbie snack cake in my lunch every single day, and I did not get diabetes or heart disease. I see no reason to deviate from this model. Cupcakes for everybody. See? Right there, bad person.

Then there's the fact that modern children scare the hell out of me. I realize adults have been outraged by teenagers since Socrates. But fear is a whole other animal. My ten-year-old little brother wears cologne. Every day. What the hell? He also has his own television, his own computer, his own stereo, his own video game system and - I'm pretty sure this is true - his own DVD player. I got my first computer when I was a junior. IN COLLEGE.

All children from about the age of three strike me as vaguely dangerous. Sort of like nuclear power. Remember Chernobyl.

Armed with so many gadgets and, you know, cologne, I'm fairly certain any spawn of mine could take me hostage, steal the car, put the credit cards in her own name and get me voted out of the PTA, the Democratic Party, any number of professional organizations and the public radio booster club in about four and a half minutes, which is why I think it would be best to wait to have children until I either earn a black belt in something or somebody certifies me as officially an adult and officially suitable to care for such a dangerous being. And really, with the whole peanut-butter-out-of-a-jar thing, I think I've got a ways to go.



*In case my mother is reading this and wondering, that would be a Wayne's World movie reference. And yes, I locked the door. And yes, I'm eating my vegetables. And yes, I still love Little Debbie snack cakes, especially the chocolatey square ones with the cream filling.