Thursday, August 16, 2012

Babies in Bars

I am a 32 year old woman who is not only not married but babyless. Due to the toxically fertile water in Lancaster County (and apparent lack of birth control), for someone my age to not have pushed out a few by now is a rarity. The older I get, the more friends I lose to the baby bug. Which also means more excruciatingly painful baby showers to attend where my homemade quilt that took twenty hours to sew is shoved under a pile of fabricated plastic whatsamajigs which are apparently now necessary for human survival.

It's not that I'm not happy for my friends. I am. It is just becoming harder to relate to them and harder to visit them without tripping over the millions of matchbox cars that threw up all over their living room floor. Which once was a conversation about weekend plans to go to concerts is now shadowed by which TV show their child is totally into this week. I must give them credit though. My 30-something friends who have recently dove into motherhood also happen to strike a balance between fun and the responsibility of raising a family. The "fun" part has toned itself down from shouting drunkenly at the local bar, to casually sipping wine in their backyard after the kiddos have been put down for the night.

I may be making myself sound like a child hating a-hole. I don't hate children per say, I just like to return them to their proper owner at the end of the day and continue with my successful life of doing whatever the hell I want, whenever the hell I want. Five minutes in a store with a screaming child is enough for my uterus to shrivel up inside my body, slam the door shut, and put itself under lock and key. Clearly I am not ready to be a parent and I am dealing with the fact that I may never be.

Motherhood may be your life, but it isn't mine. Ah finally getting to my point. Because I am and choose to be sans baby, I venture out to bars to unwind and have determined that BARS ARE NO PLACE FOR CHILDREN. There is no buzz kill greater then sipping on a cocktail after a long day, celebration, or get together with friends then to experience toddlers playing tag around the barstools. Do you really want to expose your child to what they have to look forward to when they are 21, broke, and trying to score with the random hoochie mama who is ordering a round of red headed sluts? I know that the conversations that I have when I'm tipsy should never ever fall on the ears of the innocent.

The other night I was out celebrating the success of a job with a bunch of friends and coworkers. I stumbled in my heals to the restroom to relieve myself after drinking a plethora of alcoholic concoctions only to find a mother changing her one year old male child on the provided board in the ladies room. I ignored it and found a stall. The changing of the baby was also a commentary on every little shake of the powder and as she was finishing, the child stood up and shouted "I'm naked!" Really? She laughed it off and I cringed. Why is your baby in a bar? Us single, childless bar goers do not need a play by play of what goes on nor do we need to even attempt to be proper as we're staggering our way back to our barstool. Take your child home, put on Sprout, and enjoy your beer in your own backyard. Leave the bars to us who chose not to drink that damn fertile water.

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