Todd Teaches How to Rear Your Children

The other day, I went over to my friend Todd's apartment. Todd and his wife had just found out they were pregnant and were very, very excited. Todd and I are the same age, and I feel too young to have children, but he said he was ready. I asked him, "What do you know about kids? How are you going to raise a child?" He calmly put down his tootsie pop, slowly looked up at me and said:

"You might think it's a bit early to start thinking about rearing children, but it's not. Kids are everywhere and need to be dealt with the right way. If you make a mistake raising a child, you are effectively giving the middle finger to the future, and that's just kind of rude. There are a few basic things I'm going to live by while raising my child.

"On Candy: Candy will make your kid fat. Do you really want a fat kid? If your kid gets fat, then they won't have any friends and they won't get a job and they'll die. Do you really want a dead kid? So, to make sure they don't eat candy, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to forbid my child from every eating candy...except on Halloween night. On Halloween I'll take him or her out trick-or-treating and let them collect all the candy they want. But then, I'll tell my child that he or she needs to finish it all before midnight or I will have to destroy what is leftover so that the ghouls of hallows' eve past don't come and eat their face. Then, the kid will eat so much that they'll probably get sick and vomit everywhere. At this point I can tell the child that they're probably allergic to candy and they should never eat it again. Now, I don't have to worry about type 2 diabetes.

"On Awards: I'll never let my child have an award unless they win something. Too many participation awards are given out to young kids. This is a stupid idea. It makes them complacent. No wonder this country never wins anything in sports. If my child is given some sort of participation award, I'll take it away from them and smash it in front of them. This will build their character so they learn not to take anything from nobody. Along the same lines, I'll make everything a competition. This will encourage them to get better at things and make them more awesome as they get older. If I have multiple kids, I'll make them compete against each other for my affection and promise to only love the winner. This will make them try extra-hard and will also teach them that nothing comes free, especially love and affection."

"Todd," I interrupted, "this all seems pretty stupid." Without flinching, he continued on.

"On Lying: I'm going to lie to your children when I see fit. For example, I'll tell them a fork is actually called a "spoon." This will confuse them and entertain me to no end. Furthermore, they will be so confused over basic utensils that they will have to discover new ways to eat food, which would be awesome. Imagine eating soup with a knife... badass, right? Also, if I lie to them and they figure out I'm lying, then I know that my kid isn't a total idiot and I can then be sure that I will send them to school instead of having them work on my farm as a chicken shepherd.

"On Apathy: I'm going to be relatively apathetic about my kids. When they're teenagers, they'll be apathetic about everything, so I might as well get ahead of them by a few years. I'll let my kids do whatever they want. I'll just tell everyone I'm are following a trendy new parenting style, approved by Oprah, called "free range children." They literally don't have to do anything they don't want to do. Don't want to go to school? Fine, their choice. Want to wear their Halloween costume to school in December? Sounds good. Not only will this reinforce their sense of entrepreneurship and creativity, it will also teach them that keeping it real is the most important skill they can ever learn. Furthermore, when my kid gets made fun of for wearing a Halloween costume to school in December (which they will), I can a) tell them I told them so, which will be fun for me, and b) teach them how to fight back, either verbally, physically, or both. If I later get called into the principal's office because my kid was "defending himself" in the schoolyard by making fun of other kids, I'll just tell the principle to stop being such a nerd otherwise I'm going to give him a swirly in the toilet. At this point it doesn't matter what other adults think of my kid... my kid is going to be so ace."

My friend Todd is an idiot.