A friend recently emailed this rant of his to me, which I have copied here in its entirety:
I’ve decided today that I have had just about enough of people bringing in their damned babies that are too young to do anything but sit there on one parent’s shoulder, make awkward faces, and shit in the doorway of my office. I’ve had enough of their parents standing there waiting for me to give the appropriate level of praise (“Good job, Chris, you really knocked the bottom right out of your wife the right way this time, huh?”). I’ve had enough of the weird small talk and not knowing what to say (“Wow, Melissa, you must have some Asian in your family tree somewhere, because your daughter doesn’t look anything like your husband”) or whether to touch the thing or tell them it looks like one or the other of them or whether I should know if they’re old enough to be sleeping through the night. I’ve had enough of being introduced to random spouses that I’ve met 5 times already and wasn’t impressed with the first 5 times, or who I wondered how the hell you managed to convince her to stick around with you long enough to procreate – maybe next time I’ll ask them how the conversation about you wanting to hire the smoking hot au pairs went. So please quit wasting my time, take your puke factory home where it belongs, and get back to your office and do your f-ing job.
Thank you. And if I at some point procreate and drag that child into the office, please forward this back to me.
I very much enjoyed that rant, but as a fellow non-procreator at this point in my life, sending it to me was pretty ineffective aside from its obvious entertainment value. But I'm glad I don't work in his office because a) I would share a lot of his feelings about the baby parade, and b) I might be inclined to visit him sometimes if I worked there, and it might be hazardous -- I don't consider myself a germophobe or anything, but his office doorway must be filthy.
