36. The Parent Trap

The older I get, the more I feel like my peers are separated into two groups: Parents and Non-Parents. I am in the latter group, as are most of my friends. While most of them do plan to eventually have families, I am quite serious about having my children vicariously through other people and spoiling them as if they were mine. I have never wanted to have children of my own.

Whatever it is that explains that lack of desire, probably also explains why I have an increasingly difficult time relating to my peers who become parents. Not the older ones, the new ones. Older parents don't generally have stories about the super-cute thing their 14 year-old did yesterday. But the new ones...

I can't take the new ones. Nearly everyone I know who's had a child in the last 12 months is thisclose to getting cut from the Facebook roll. I'm just not one for the posts about how "Being this cute should be a crime!" or "He is the most precious thing in the world!" I know... I'm a grouch. I don't have the cute baby gene. The one where every kid under 1 is amazingly adorable and everything they do has to be photographed and commented on.

Not that I don't love to hear about "my" children. Of course I do... they're mine. I love seeing their personalities develop and watching them learn new things. But everyone else's kids...