Childbearing Years

For those of you still in the childbearing years:

Preparation for parenthood is not just a matter of reading books and decorating the nursery. Here are 12 simple tests for expectant parents:

1. Women: To prepare for maternity, put on a dressing gown and stick a pillowcase filled with beans down the front. Leave it there for 9 months. After 9 months, take out 10% of the beans.

Men: To prepare for maternity, go to the local drugstore. Tip the contents of your wallet on the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself. Then go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office. Go home. Pick up the paper. Read it for the last time.

2. Before you finally have children, find a couple who are already parents.
Berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels, and how they have allowed their children to run wild. Suggest ways in which they might improve their children's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior. Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.

3. To discover how the nights will feel, walk around the living room from 5 to 10 carrying a wet bag weighing about 12 pounds with a radio turned to static. At 10, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep. AT 12, walk around the living room again until 1. Put the alarm on for 3. Since you can't sleep, get up at 2 and make a drink. Go to bed at 2:45. Get up at 3 when the alarm goes off. Sing songs in the dark until 4. Put the alarm on for 5. Get up. Make breakfast. Keep this up for 5 years. Look cheerful.

4. To find out if you can stand the mess children will make, smear peanut butter on the sofa and jam on the curtains. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer. Stick your fingers in the flower beds and rub them on the walls. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

5. To find out if you can dress a small child, first buy an octopus and a bag made out of loose mesh. Try to put the octopus in the bag so that none of the arms hang out. Time allowed for this: all morning.

6. To find out if you can develop a child's artistic ability, take an egg carton and, using a pair of scissors and a pot of paint, turn it into an alligator. Now take the tube from a roll of toilet paper and, using only Scotch tape and a piece of foil, turn it into an attractive Christmas candle. Last, take a milk carton, a ping pong ball, and an empty packet of Cocoa Pops, and make an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower. Congratulations? You have just qualified for a place on the play group committee.

7. Forget the BMW and buy a station wagon. And don't think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there. Get a dime. Stick it in the cassette player. Take a family-size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the backseats. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car. There. Perfect.

8. Get ready to go out. Wait outside the bathroom for half an hour. Go out the front door. Come in again. Go out. Come back in. Go out again. Walk down the front path. Walk back up. Walk down again. Walk very slowly down the road for 5 minutes. Stop to inspect minutely every cigarette butt, piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue, and dead insect along the way. Retrace your steps. Scream that you've had as much as you can stand until the neighbors come out and stare at you. Give up and go back into the house. You are now ready to take a small child for a walk.

9. Always repeat everything you say at least 5 times.

10. Go to your local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a preschool child--a fully-grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat. Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goats eat or destroy. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

11. Hollow out a melon. Make a small hole in the side. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swinging melon by pretending to be an airplane.
Continue until half the Cheerios are gone. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure lots fall on the floor. You are now ready to feed a 12-month-old baby.

12. Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street, Barney, the Big Comfy Couch, Arthur, the Magic School Bus, the Disney video library, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles... When you find yourself singing, "Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go" while at work, you finally qualify as a parent.