On Dental Hygene

“I’m getting a new tooth!”

She wasn’t mine, obviously, I have no children of my own. She was there with her mother, eating lunch in my section that day, at work, five or maybe six years old, I can never tell with other people’s kids, and obviously excessively proud of the gap in her mouth where once a tooth had been.

“Oh, are you?” I asked, my head cocked to one side, smiling politely, and she nodded her head with the kind of enthusiasm only children are capable of.

By adulthood that enthusiasm, that wonder, has been beaten out of us, however much we might try to hold it tight.

“I am!” She said, still nodding, “I’m going to lose all my baby teeth and get all new ones, and they will be my grown-up teeth, AND I’m going to leave my baby teeth under my pillow so that the tooth fairy can take them and leave me money!”

She beamed with pride, and even I had to admit that minus the tooth the grin was pretty adorable. I like kids well enough, after all. I could never have one of my own, I can barely hold my own self together and don’t by any means have it together well enough to have another life depend on me, but I like other people’s just fine, and adorable is adorable, regardless of your position on children in general.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, genuine amusement in my voice, “Well good for you! You must be very pleased!”

She nodded, again, and I could have left it at that, if I’d wanted to, gotten back to work and never again thought about the conversation. It would have been the safe thing to do, and arguably the kind thing, but it was a slow day and on slow days you have to make your own fun, so instead I beckoned her forward, as though to offer her some sly secret the world had heretofore kept from her.

She leaned in, eyes wide, as I knew she would.

“Just remember,” I told her with a conspiratorial smile, “once you get your new teeth, they’re the last ones you’ll ever have. Ever. You do NOT want to screw these ones up.”

Her eyes went even wider then, wider than I would have thought them capable of going, and her mouth dropped open as though she’d never given this matter any significant thought. Behind her, in her own seat, her mom let the laugh explode out of her almost against her will, before biting it back as best she could, keeping it to a muffled giggle.

It was a high risk, high yield joke, I admit, but a funny one, as long as Mom laughs and the kid doesn’t actually cry at her first realization that her body would some day inevitably fail her. And, looked at from a certain point of view, it could even be considered educational, in its way.

She didn’t beg for dessert, after all, when the time came for me to present the cheque, and she’d no doubt brush her teeth without needing to be told for a good long while. A thing a child can always stand to learn.

And, although this is a smaller, meaner justification, I assure you: The look on her face was priceless…

Life

They spent years working, the programmers, and as they did they grew closer to one another than they ever thought they would. But however hard they tried they couldn’t quite develop the system of their dreams. They knew that artificial sentience, artificial life, was within humanity’s grasp, but however close they came it always seemed one step further away.

He lapsed into despair, on occasion. She did what she could to keep his spirits up. And, he realized as they worked side by side, month after month, he was growing over time to love her for that.

And she, not that he knew this, was growing to feel the same.

One night, in a bleak mood after one more failed test run, he commented that he was considering packing it in, giving up once and for all, that the project they’d undertaken was simply too much, too complex for them to accomplish. He told her they were wasting their time attempting such a major stride when they could simply settle down somewhere in the private sector, make themselves very wealthy indeed and allow artificial sentience to happen upon humanity as it would, in the fullness of time.

And, much though she hated to admit it, she found herself agreeing. Progress had been slow to nil, and she too had developed her doubts, much though she loved both the work and the man she was working with. But love, even true love, is not enough to justify a fundamentally failed endeavor and, embracing him, she agreed that yes, their quest to create artificial life was finally over.

“After all,” she added with a blush as she pulled back from the embrace, “we could always just create life the old fashioned way, if we wanted it that much…”

Seventeen years later, after the bodies had been buried, at the trial, they couldn’t help but regret the decision.

It turns out they were even worse parents than they were programmers…

Family's End

…kids, come in, have a seat.

Your mom and I have something very important that we need to tell you, though we know you might not want to hear it.

The two of us will be separating, and I’ll be moving out. I know this comes as a shock to you, but trust us, we’ve done everything in our power to keep this marriage alive, but it’s just not working out and we’ve grown to realize that it never will, and so it would be for the best that we no longer live together.

I know this must come as a shock to the two of you, but I want to make this perfectly clear: This does not mean that I love your mother any less. I love her just as much in this moment as I did the day I first proposed.

I have always loved her.

I probably always will.

It’s just….

It’s you kids. You guys are the worst.

When your mom first became pregnant, I was naturally concerned. I’d never considered myself the fatherly type, didn’t even know if I wanted kids, but all our friends who had their own assured me that, once you were born, I’d grow into the role. They told me that the moment I held my newborn child my whole world would change and a wave of love and connection to you would come over me, washing away any doubts I might have regarding parenthood.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

When I first held you, Timmy, I felt nothing but resentment at the opportunities lost, the hopes and dreams that, saddled with a new, squalling little monster that I was expected to be responsible for, I would now never be able to pursue.

I resented you so deeply, Timmy. So, so very deeply.

Please don’t hold that against me. After all, I sacrificed eight years of my life for a person for whom I felt nothing, gave up any interests I might have had, just to make sure you didn’t die during that period where you were utterly worthless on every objective level. In exchange for all I gave up, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask that you cut me a little slack.

Sarah, I wasn’t nearly as resentful when you were born a year later, but part of that is just that, for the second child, I’d already adjusted my ambitions downward. Yes, I’d have liked to not have a second child, but really after the first the damage is basically done.

Plus, I just like you better than Timmy. Timmy is just the worst.

Sorry Timmy, but let’s face it, you are.

Still, Sarah, don’t take the fact that I resented you less than Timmy to mean that I felt any meaningful connection to you on any level, because I would hate to accidentally imply that. It would be intellectually dishonest of me to do so and I pride myself on my intellectual honesty.

Or did, at least, before childrearing robbed me of any lingering sense of self that I might claim pride in.

So no, for the record, I’ve never felt any warmth or love toward you either, though I admit I liked you better than Timmy. I don’t know why I didn’t, you’re a perfectly acceptable kid and deserve appropriate amounts of parental fondness, I just don’t feel like we ever connected.

Maybe it’s me.

Maybe it’s my fault for feeling that love should be earned.

Maybe I expected too much from you. From both of you.

I expected you to be more… loveable? I guess?

I’m sure the fault is mine, most parents do manage to love their kids, or at least to fake it believably enough that nobody questions that they do. I just don’t have it in me. I’m too honest for my own good, too honest with myself and, now, too honest with you.

Still, poor of spirit is the man who shuns knowledge of himself. I’m an awful father, I feel nothing for either of you, and it would be unfair to all of us were I to continue wasting my time on this whole project. You deserve better, and I deserve much, much better.

Anyway, I’m leaving. Your mother has sole custody, since she seems genuinely fond of the two of you, and I doubt I’ll be visiting. I mean, I have visitation rights, I just can’t imagine any reason why I’d want to. I wish you both the best of luck in all your future endeavors, and I hope that this little incident doesn’t scar you emotionally. I may not love either of you, but you’re both good kids, well, mostly you Sarah, and though I have no interest in raising you and watching you grow, I do sincerely hope that the two of you grow up into the fully realized, interesting human beings that you aren’t right now. You do deserve that, everyone does, and though I have no intention of supporting you, either emotionally or, more importantly, financially, I do wish you all the best.. Have the happy life you deserve, kids.

Or don’t.

I’m not the boss of you.

And to be honest, it would take a team of German scientists and the worlds most powerful electron microscope to determine how little I care what you do one way or the other….

The Thief of Childhood

He was a monster, worse than an animal, skulking through the neighborhood and terrorizing the children.

Stealing their innocence.

Disgusting.

He’d stalk his prey and, once no adult was watching, creep up on them, to whisper his poison into their innocent ears.

“You’ll never be as well-off as your parents,” he’d tell them, “no matter how hard you work, or how smart you are. The age of that kind of prosperity has been over for nearly a decade, and it’s never coming back.”

And in their hearts they knew it was true.

And so he left them, weeping in despair...

Weekly Prompt Story: A Beautiful Thing

http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com/2012/06/24/weekly-challenge-322-a-beautiful-thing/

A Beautiful Thing

By Chris Munroe

I know you think your baby’s beautiful.

It’s your child. You brought it into this world and have a profound connection to it. it’s natural that you should find it beautiful.

To you, it’s the most beautiful thing that’s ever been. It’s your progeny, your precious darling, and moreover your shot at immortality.

You find it beautiful because you need it to be beautiful, it’s what will represent you to future generations.

I understand all of this.

All I’m saying is, it’s not MY baby, I have no responsibility toward it, and it’s a freaky, Winston Churchill looking motherfucker.

Sorry.

Children

If you ask parents permission to kill and eat their children, large majorities will grant it.

If you phrase the question properly.

They’ll think it’s a joke, but don’t concern yourself with that, the main thing is consent’s given.

Further: When you pose the question with more than one child present, they’ll attempt to convince you to take their sibling, rather than questioning if you have the right to kill/eat children at all.

I’m not sure what this means, but it‘s certainly been my experience. It’s an interesting quirk of the human condition.

Next week: Preparation and cooking of children.