Sweet Child O' Mine (80/90)

I'm home! No more beach!

And, once again, I'm staring at the screen with nothing floating through my mind to write about. Although I did just hear that there is now a video game out for "The Bachelor." That's not really much to write about, except that I think it's a ridiculous idea. If you're interested, you can read up on it here. From here it looks like "The Sims" with more recognizable names, and not as much fun.

I realized something this vacation, though. I'm not as bad with kids as I thought I was. At least, not with younger ones. I found myself actually playing with my nephew, instead of ignoring him or pretending to be engrossed in something else. It might be because he's an adorable child, or it could be because he makes noises that almost sound like he's talking, but you don't really have to pretend to be interested in what he says.

Here's the thing: I normally don't like kids. I don't want to be in their presence for hours on end. I think they're adorable, yes. But I just don't see the appeal of always having one around. Newborns need constant attention, and cry and smell a lot. I hear they don't sleep too well either. Then you hit one year, like my nephew, and they start teething, so there's not a lot of sleep with that.

After that, they start talking. And about mundane things, like what color their shirt is or something. I'm not sure, I try not to be around kids a lot. After that, there's potty training and school. While you do get a variety of stories from them when they get into school, it's still simple things about how recess was canceled because of the rain so they stayed inside and played Heads Up Seven Up all period.

I think about middle school is when I could deal with them, possibly. But that's when the hormones start to kick in. High school is even worse, the hormones are on alert all the time. But that's about the time when you can have intelligent conversations with them, so it's not too bad. And then they're not kids anymore.

Because of all those reasons, I've opted not to try to be a teacher. I could probably only deal with teaching seniors, because anything younger would probably be too much for my patience to handle 9 months of the year. And, to extend it, I used these reasons when I was thinking about if in the distant future I want to have kids.

I go back and forth on it a lot. Before, my main motivation to have children was so I could name them. I should probably have a better reason to have a kid then that. I just don't think that I could deal with kids. People say that it's different once you have your own, but I'm not too sure if I believe it.

But when I was watching my nephew this weekend, I could deal with him. It could be because he's at that adorable stage where he doesn't really do anything. Or it could be because he can't talk yet, so that was someone I didn't have to listen to this weekend. Maybe it's because he's my nephew, though. Which could mean that if I can deal with a relative's child, then maybe they're right.

Maybe I will have kids, then.