I love my kids, I just hate parenting
So Jimmy Kimmel created a bit for his show in which he asked parents to give their kids terrible Christmas presents and then film the results. He recently aired the results (video below). And they are disturbing…
Earlier this week I wrote about the five baby-related items that made our first year as parents a little more bearable. These were all items in which our son had little say; because they were for us, not for him.
But now, as we get closer to Christmas, and our son gets closer to self-awareness, we have to take begin taking his “interests” into consideration.
Read more about The Anti-Christmas List: Five Gifts My Son Won’t Be Getting …
Having your first kid is not easy. Despite all the books and the advice, there’s really have no way of knowing what you’re getting into or what you’ll need to survive it all. Every parent gets a bunch of crap when they are having a kid, and a fair amount of it are things that they initially have no real idea what to do with – until they suddenly need to figure it out REAL QUICK.
It’s kind of like a computer game where you collect all sorts of random items you can’t fathom any use for, and then you get to a specific puzzle and it suddenly becomes clear that the only way to solve it is by using that jar of butt paste you somehow acquired way back when.
You never quite realize how dangerous your home is until you have a child. Once your kid gets mobile, perfectly innocuous things that seemed safe for years will become booby-trapped death machines.
The furniture you’ve had for years, drawers you haven’t even opened in months, the stuff you’ve lost beneath, between and behind your couch? None of it is safe. The kid will find it – every jagged, swallow-able, poisonous bit of it – and he will find a way to use it, as a weapon, on himself. Seriously: babies should be hired to brainstorm for the military; the unique ways they have of injuring themselves have to be use-able in combat.
They are like little MacGyvers of pain.
There was a time when I thought they weren’t real. I saw them on a classic episode of The Simpsons and thought they were a clever joke. But, sadly, they do exist. And it’s hard to believe anyone would consider using one.
I’m talking about the “Baby Harness.” In the classic Simpsons episode that featured the return of Danny DeVito as Homer’s long-lost brother Herb, a baby-speech translator captures the feelings of a child who has been subjected to a harness: “This leash demeans us both.” (Watch the episode here!)
The sad fact is that even parents who refuse to succumb to the convenience of the baby harness can’t help but regularly demean their children. Sometimes, all it takes is the wrong shirt.