I thought I would write about kids. I don’t have any. I often get that “awwww” look from my Mom’s friends. I prefer not to think of myself as childless, but as child-free. Don’t get me wrong, I love kids and for some strange reason they love me back. (Well, most of them. Read on.) And sometimes I pout when I think of leaving this world without a miniature version of myself who would carry on my literary legacy. (Say “awwww.”)
Years ago, I remember going out to eat with my friend Sue and her three-year-old little girl. It was a good thing this kid was cute. I’ve been told that puppies, baby chicks, and bunnies are born adorable so that the parents don’t eat their young. I now fully understand this.
Sue had to order an entirely separate meal for this child (which was never eaten) because the kid wouldn’t share with her Mommy. Years later I sat in a fast-food restaurant with this same child, waiting for half an hour while she held a fat bite of hamburger in her mouth and wouldn’t swallow it or spit it out because Daddy wouldn’t let her have more Coke. From the look on her Daddy’s face, I was expecting him to squeeze that wad of beef right out of her.
Let’s rewind the clock a few more years when I was dating this great guy who adored me and was everything a woman would ever want. And I, being a woman, wanted him too. There were no games, heart-wrenching worries, or wondering where he was because he was always with me. And every weekend, so were his kids (at least two of them).
He had a delightful ten-year-old boy who preferred the Discovery Channel and was polite, studious, athletic, and handsome, and just one of those kids who you know will grow up to be a heartbreaker. But he was trumped most of the time because his Daddy also had HER, a diminutive twelve-year-old girl, who at first was so excited to have me as HER new friend, until she realized that I was really DADDY’S new friend.
So I got used to McNuggets real fast and I quickly lost the rights to my remote. As a single gal, I was used to steak, take-out Chinese food at 10:00 at night if I wanted it, good wine, and re-runs of my own choosing, but my weekend days were now spattered with Spaghetti-O’s and slurpees and I was now blasted awake by cartoons every Saturday morning. We would order pizza and SHE wouldn’t eat it. She wanted something else, so off went Daddy to the store. (She’ll eat it or she’ll starve, I thought.) I soon found myself counting down the hours until I could hightail it back to work on Monday morning and escape the madness.
Yes, I felt badly about all of this. What kind of mother was I? (I wasn’t, which was probably the point.)
Then the day came when SHE saw me put my arm around her father. That little head spun around faster than Linda Blair’s as she stared me down with that “Chucky-comes-alive” look and fire-breathed the words, “DON’T TOUCH MY DAD!”
I could have taken her (I was bigger), but I opted out. There are some battles that are never meant to be won.
This story has a happy ending, though. Three weeks after I left, Daddy met a nice girl who just happened to be my old college roommate (and I had nothing to do with the introduction), who just happened to be a grade school principal, and who just happened to be childless and want kids.
And they are all living happily ever after. SHE is probably still breathing fire and I am breathing a sigh of relief.
The end.
Robyn Justo is a freelance writer who is living, breathing, and learning the new rules of dating over 40. Experienced, but by no means an expert, she shares the frustrations, triumphs, and general hysteria of single life on the Monterey Peninsula. “The Expiration Date” addresses the lighter side of dating later in life. The names have been changed to protect the innocent (and the guilty). Robyn also occasionally hosts local social events for those brave-hearted single folks who actually have the courage to come out of the house.
