So You Want To Have Children?

So You Want To Have Children?
Preparation
Women:

• Put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front.
• Leave it there.
• Every week, add another beanbag.
• After 9 months, remove 2 beanbags.

Men:

• Go to your pharmacy.
• Empty your wallet on the counter.
• Tell the pharmacist to help himself
• Go to the supermarket.
• Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their front office.
• Go home.
• Read the newspaper… for the last time.

Knowledge

• Find a couple with children.
• Berate them about their lack of discipline, lack of patience, low tolerance, and how their children run wild.
• Suggest how they can improve their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and general behavior.
• Enjoy it while it lasts. It's the last time you'll have all the answers.

Nights

• Turn the radio on to some loud screaming station.
• Walk around the room from 5 to 10 PM carrying a 10 pound bag of wet goo while the station screams.
• At 10 PM, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep.
• Get up at 11 and walk the bag around until 1 AM.
• Set the alarm for 3. Since you can't get to sleep, get up at 2 and make tea.
• Go to bed at 2:30.
• Get up at 3 AM when the alarm goes off.
• Sing songs in the dark until 4.
• Set the alarm for 5. Get up when it goes off.
• Make breakfast.
• Repeat for four years. Look cheerful!

Dressing Small Children

• Buy a live octopus and a string bag.
• Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hang out.
• Time allowed: 5 minutes.

Cars

• Sell the BMW.
• Buy a 5-door wagon.
• Put a large chocolate ice cream cone in the glove compartment. Leave it there.
• Put a peanut butter sandwich in the CD player.
• Mash a box of chocolate cookies into the back seat.
• Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Going For a Walk

• Wait.
• Go out the front door.
• Go back inside.
• Go outside.
• Come back in.
• Go outside.
• Walk down the front sidewalk.
• Walk back up it.
• Walk down it again.
• Walk very slowly along the street for 5 minutes.
• Stop at every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue, and dead bug along the way. Inspect each minutely. Ask at least 6 questions about each.
• Retrace your steps.
• Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbors come out and stare at you.
• Give up and go back into the house.
• Repeat for 5 years.

Patience

• Repeat everything you say at least 5 times.

Grocery Shopping

• Go to the supermarket. Take along the nearest thing to a pre-school child: a fully grown goat. (If you plan to have more than one child, take more than one goat.)
• Buy your weekly groceries without letting the goat(s) get out of your sight.
• Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.

Feeding a 1 year-old

• Prepare a bowl of cornflakes.
• Hollow out a melon through a small hole in one side.
• Suspend the melon from the ceiling.
• Swing it back and forth.
• Spoon the soggy cornflakes into the swaying melon while making airplane noises.
• When at least half of the cornflakes are gone, pour the rest on your clothes and the floor.

TV

• Learn the names of every character from every episode of the Wiggles, Barney, Teletubbies, and every Disney movie.
• Watch nothing else on television for at least 5 years.

Cleanliness

• Smear peanut butter on your sofa.
• Smear jam on your curtains.
• Hide a fish behind the stereo. Leave it there all summer.
• Stick your fingers in dirt. Rub them on your walls.
• Color your other walls with crayons.

Traveling

• Make a recording of someone shouting "Mommy!" over and over. (There may be no more than 4 seconds between each shout.)
• Include the occasional crescendo to the approximate decibel level of a fighter jet.
• Play this tape in your car continuously the 5 years.

Conversations
1. Start a conversation with another adult.
2. Have someone else continually tug on your pants and shirtsleeves while playing the tape prepared above.
Get Dressed
1. On a day when you have an important meeting, wear your nicest work attire.
3. Put 1 cup of lemon juice into a cup of cream. Stir.
5. Pour half of it on your shirt.
6. Saturate a towel with the other half.
7. Attempt to clean your shirt by rubbing it with the saturated towel.
8. Do not change clothes. You're late already!
9. Go directly to work.
You are now ready to have children.