My sister is pregnant, which is gross. I don't have anything against my sister—she's okay and all—but pregnancy makes me think gross things: breastfeeding, poopy diapers, zero sleep, loud noises during Battlestar Galactica reruns. If you put together a fun word collage of all the adjectives used to describe me, the words "nurturing" and "caring" would not be on that list, therefore I don't own a baby.
And even though the majority of my friends and family are reproducing and look at me hesitantly whenever it's time to ask the creepy single girl why she has yet to marry and bear a child, I have no problem telling them I'm barren. Think of my womb as Chernobyl. I don't actually know if I'm barren, but the quickest way to get a condescending mom-to-be to shut the hell up is to say that God didn't give me the gift of bearing life, but I'm sure you didn't take that for granted at all.
Here's the thing: moms or would-be moms know everything. They actually don't, but because they pushed a creature out from between their thighs and stamped a name on it, they are now God and everything they say is law. You want to hear all the ways your life can possibly suck yet remain rewarding because a tiny baby resembles you? Ask a mom. You want to know the best grocery store to buy discounted milk? Ask a mom.
I have no problem telling my sister that her fetus is dumb and hideous. She's okay with this. Also, your life cannot possibly be complicated unless you have children. Moms know this and they enjoy reminding you of this. Last summer I visited a friend and her in-laws for a weekend barbeque. While playing with her toddler, my friend's mother-in-law asked me how my life was going since graduating a few years back. When I told her I was just working a job to pay bills and working on my writing on the side, she explained that it must be nice not having real responsibilities such as taking care of the little boy in my lap who was happily pulling my hair and screaming happy sounds. She was also quick to mention that I was probably not interested in any of that anyway—"that" being bearing a child and feeding it and whatever else a mother does. Read to it? Probably.
You're right, condescending mother, I'm not interested in any of that. I know most of my friends and family members are happy being moms, but I wouldn't be. I have aspirations other than doing what almost every other female creature has been able to do since the dawn of time. Also, I don't have a stable financial situation and I date stupid guys. That's no environment to raise a child despite what Teen Mom and the majority of my high school graduating class have depicted. It is probably totally fulfilling (I wouldn't know, my womb can't create fulfillment, remember?), but just as a mother feels the need to gush about her glorious child, I feel the need to tell her how ugly babies are. All babies, meaning your glorious one. And boring. Your baby is boring.
I also have no problem telling my sister that her fetus is dumb and hideous. She's okay with this, I assume, because she knows my stance on babies. And while I have never felt the need to interrupt a mother when she is telling me how it is when you have a baby, I do feel the overwhelming need to intervene with my sister's plans for motherhood.
She lives in the South. She was born in the North and migrated to the South for God only knows what (because they talk to God down there), so it's not surprising that she said she was considering the names Cletus and Lester for her unborn spawn. I imagine this child will be born in a tin washing basin and will be encouraged to pick on children who read and enjoy math. Also, it will probably like NASCAR and get diabetes at one point in its life.
Now, this image does not sit well with me. If this were any other family's relative I'd say good luck and I'll enjoy watching your trainwreck of a life, but this is my sister and even though I can't stop her from not living where she lives, I feel like I can at least help this stupid baby make better decisions, the first going down to the courthouse when he/she is 18 and changing whatever inbred name his/her mother bestowed upon its head that day down by the river.
I will reiterate that I have zero desire to interject parenting advice. I'm not a parent, and when I choose to sleep in until 2pm on a Sunday because I drank 18 beers the night before, and then follow up that late start by eating an entire 4-pack of pudding snack packs while watching Renee Zellweger get all beady-eyed with some demon child, and then fist Cheez-Its into my mouth when Ashton Kutcher tells Natalie Portman that he's in love with her and she tries beating him up in that hilarious romantic comedy, I don't expect moms to tell me how to spend my kid-free time. You read another 100 pages in Fifty Shades of Grey and got a pedicure? Fuck off. The only thing I ask from my sister is to not come at me with that smug mom tone and, in turn, I won't give her child obscene amounts of birthday money or drugs. Start a lemonade stand and buy your own drugs, lazy kid.