You Don’t Have To Like Your Kids
A New-Age Story about a Former Wife and Her Spawn
I think it was a Sunday morning, no, I got to tell this right so let me think…maybe it was mid-afternoon when I sprawled out of bed and poured my coffee with cream, extra sugar, that I realized that I just don’t like my kids. There was nothing physically wrong with them…they were capable beings and with my genes, they hadn’t grown up to shabby looking either. Maybe it was the caffeine rushing, or perhaps it was too early and too late in the week and Monday was rearing its ugly head around the corner. No…no excuses, I really don’t like these kids; and that’s supposed to be a natural feeling.
When Monday arose, the thought began to consume my mind. A female co-worker was staring me in the face while I sipped my morning brew while she was gabbing about her husband and their trip out of town.
“…and I will be taking the weekend off to Florida. We’re going to Key West to celebrate… yada, yada, yada…”
…my envy tuned her out. I never got to go anywhere let alone Key West. I wanted to go on vivacious trips to someplace afar so that I could lay on the sandy beaches self-conscious about my uneven tan. I wanted to eat gourmet lunches and wash the taste of two week leftovers away.
Damn. Now I do sound bitter so when I snapped back into reality she asked…
“yada, yada…How are the kids?”
The kids? Oh yea, my kids. I should’ve told her they were fine. Not only had their bastard father had cancelled his health insurance, convinced that I would spend all his money on my new husband but he died months later of cardiac arrest, and now I have no husband and no money. I’m glad he predicted that.
“With all the bills adding up, I feel too swamp to ask,” I finally answered.
I knew I had given her the wrong answer. Most people want to hear a simple ‘everything is alright’ in order to keep from hearing about you and more focus on them.
“Are they not working?” she asked.
Again, I should’ve said a plain response. I wanted to blame George Bush and complain about how wealthy people had finally manage to wave a giant middle finger to the working class and that my kids had gotten in the middle of the crossfire. My grown ass kids had not managed to land a decent paying job to support either one of them let alone me.
“No, they find jobs, but none of them stick,” I said.
“They really should be helping you out. These kids nowadays are so unreliable.”
And that right there, she said it. Kids are unreliable. The thought consumed my most inner subconscious…my children were no longer forgiven for taking camp in my unaffordable three-bedroom townhouse. They were no bloodsucking moochers that I now deemed unreliable. From that point on, I conceived the notion that…I simply don’t like my kids.