Eight (More) is Enough?

As much as I detest the swarming of media that has made Nadya Suleman a national phenomenon, I shall stoop to something close to their level for the benefit of my story. I could rail against the irresponsibility of this woman for cranking out children as though she thought she was in possession of a clown car and not a vagina. I could mock her for the slack-jawwed gaze into some other dimension that betrays her complete and absolute abandonment of reality. Or I could take the media to task for their choice to play into this woman's hands and be exploited while trying to exploit the exploiter, but I won't. I will simply address the unabashed madness of a person who has six children and says "I don't have enough!" Not just one more, she wanted to "up the ante" by more than one. She wanted multiple children more! It is my belief that the Gods of fate did the same thing that they did to the guys who decided to taunt the tigers in San Francisco. They wanted the rush of excitement so the Gods of fate said ... "Ohhhh-key-dokey, the rush of excitement you shall have." Nadya got what she asked for and so now ... she has ten boys and four girls. Without even delving into the cost of eight prom gowns and four weddings, let us investigate the thrilling possibilities that she has to look forward to with ten boys who will not be blessed with the deterrent value of a father's size 12D firmly implanted in the area of their anatomies where discipline (and other less savory substances) are impacted. So to state it simply, she will have ten boys ... running amok.

Now consider the story of one boy (me), who was left unattended for about one minute. When I was about four or five, I was standing on a chair watching my mother clean out my father's dresser drawer when the phone rang. While she went into the other room to get the phone, I looked at the half-dozen or so live rounds of ammunition and wondered, ... "Gee, I wonder if these would work in my gun." For those of you who are too young to recall, toy guns used to be actual replicas of real guns. They had a working hammer that actually struck at the opening of the barrel. The barrel was open, that was where you put your little yellow, plastic toy bullets. Apparently, it never occurred to the designers that some child might gain access to a live round of ammunition and put it in the barrel of that 'toy gun'. So anyway ... I grabbed a couple of those live rounds and slipped them into the pocket of my short pants. When my mother got off the phone and returned to her work in the drawer, I told her that I was going out to play (in those days it was safe for a four or five year old to play in his yard by himself). I found my 'toy rifle' in the yard and slipped my father's live round into the barrel of my gun, which I can say with absolute certainty, was 9 millimeters in diameter. I then raised my gun and drew a bead on our mailbox by the road. The thing is, at that age, you have not yet become acquainted with concepts like 'what's behind your target'. So anyway, I pulled my trigger and my gun disintegrated. The barrel peeled back like a daisy, in exactly the same manner you'd see Elmer Fudd's gun peel back in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, the plastic stock that was firmly rooted against my shoulder splintered into a dozen pieces, three of which remained in my shoulder and the loudest most terrifying boom that I had ever heard rendered me temporarily deaf.

To this day I believe that my temporary deafness was a blessing, because I didn't hear any of what my mother said as she ran towards me flailing her arms wildly as if she were being attacked by a swarm of wet hornets. When she reached me, I was standing over my destroyed gun shaking my hands saying "Owww". Perhaps at this point I should get back to that all-important concept of 'what's behind your target'. In this case ... it was the neighbor's house, which on that particular day, he and his brother were outfitting with a new roof. I have to tell you, I had no idea that when you are on the roof of your house and someone fires a shot that hits within two feet of your leg, how much it seems like ... someone is shooting at you. I did learn these two things though. First there isn't much difference between jumping off of a roof and falling off of a roof, you will reach ground in exactly the same amount of time. Second, when your father calls from work and you answer the phone and say, ... "Mommy can't come to the phone, the police man is still yelling at her." Your dad can make it home in very good time.

This is one of at least a dozen other stories that I can tell you about my childhood involving everything from Copperhead snakes, to snapping turtles to motorcycles in school hallways. To his dying day, my father would get a nauseous look every time someone would mention one of those "memories". So consider Ms. Suleman and her ten sons. I hear folks wanting to take her children away; but I say let her keep every one and maybe give her one accidental pregnancy just for good measure. She will deserve every "memory" that she gets. She's going to find out that there is a very good reason that we typically refer to that many offspring as ... a litter.