Friends with Kids

Most of our friends now have kids, and so hanging out with them has become a spectators' sport, front-row viewing of them battling their children about brushing their teeth and arguing with each other about whose turn it is to put the kids to bed, stressing and yelling and aging far before their time.

These are people who once drank with us until they puked beer and vodka, but are now busy cleaning up after their own children's puke of green peas and apple sauce. In everyone's effort to keep in touch, we sometimes get invited to a dinner get-together (no longer referred to as "a cocktail" or "an evening together"). These occasions are guaranteed to turn into multiple distractions and broken conversations as a child screams about his rash, crying over who invaded whose space, breaking something in the house, or saying something mortifyingly embarrassing to one or both parents, such as when daddy watched American Idol while wearing mommy's underwear.

The parents have become so immune to their children's behavior that they can predict a predicament before it happens, and so they yell at their children before anything even happens. Just out of the blue: "Don't you even think about it..."

Of course, my wife and I try to be courteous; we pretend to be interested in their kids, speak little kiddy language, make baby sound, and play silly games. But we're always relieved to leave their household, often feeling like we've just watched an ugly bullfight or participated in a bad circus.

We went to a two-year-old birthday party last summer. We were one of two couples without kids. Everyone else brought theirs. The party was full of two-year-olds, high on sweets and out of control, and most would not remember the afternoon two days later. Here was the obvious: The grand event was for mothers to present their own kids, to show and tell their kids, like men would their own cars at car shows.

"My Stevie is in the 90th percentile for growth."

"Sarah walked four steps on the living room carpet. And then said 'Brittany Spears.'"

"Jenny finger-painted last Tuesday, and, I swear, the picture could pass for a Monet."

I had wanted to join in but my wife and I only own a dog. "Java can shit in the corner and bury her feces with dirt."

The dads would rather have been at home watching football, I could tell, but they all tried to appear pleasant, a detached smile strung on their faces as they starred at the little children, who were crawling in the grass and teetering on their feet and spitting up. The children were the only common ground between the dads; but, as most dads would never admit, other people's children just aren't all that exciting. I am still trying to figure out if the dads were there simply to dodge the label of bad fatherhood, or were they truly into this whole everyone-for-the-children scene. Muscle car shows no more; it's kid shows from now on.

Or maybe they were secretly into the other moms.