Babies Are Awful (Or: Why I'm Pro-Choice)

www.nataliedee.com

I'm severely misanthropic by nature. I think we can all agree on that. Hell, it's part of my charm. But if there's one group of people I tend to come down hardest on, it's terrible parents. You the kind: People who think that because they can put Penis A into Vagina B, they're suitable parents. Based on that line of thinking, the minimum requirement to be raise a child is having enough cognitive function to put together a coffee table from Ikea.

While the overall thought pattern and questionable morals of these parents are annoying on an unapparent level, the resulting behaviour of their demonic little hellspawn is obviously irritating you can see it from space.

Through a two-foot thick wall of concrete.

While blindfolded.

Take for example a group who came in to eat the other day. Not only were the couple incredibly unfriendly and unresponsive to my cheerful greetings, choosing to stare blankly at me as though I had grown a second head when I said "Hello", but they brought with them, of course, a baby. Now, there are some babies I find cute. Quite ones. But for the most part, babies are little more than id machines; screaming, crying, pooping, biting, shitting, eating, barfing id machines. Yet people always look down on me for not cooing the moment one of these is thrust upon me.

This one, however, had apparently progressed to the point where it could feel schadenfreude, and did nothing but scream for the entirety of the meal. Now, I don't mean just little, high-pitched squawks thrown in intermittently either. I'm talking "Banshee at the gates of hell" levels of screaming here.

At no point did it occur to the parents to either settle him down or take him outside.

Now, usually I can deal with difficult tables. Do I like having them? Christ no. But I tolerate them because I know they'll be gone soon and I'll get a tip. But it's another thing when you're table is so patently obnoxious that you actually lose customers because they don't want to be seated in the same section as the screaming baby. And God help me, when I lose two tables because you don't have the decency to take your baby outside for five goddamn minutes, you better believe I'm rubbing your bread on my taint.

Ordering the food itself, since the penis-bearing half of this horribly misguided union was so fat the words could barely escape from the blubbering hole in his face. Seriously, it was like trying to talk to the Swedish Chef. And when the food arrived, the only thanks I got was the baby looking me dead in the face for five seconds, then grabbing the plate and hurling it to the ground. The baby then turned back to me, looked me straight in the eyes again for what felt like an eternity in hell, then laughed. And I don't mean just a little baby giggle, but the full-on laugh of the damned.

The parents did (wait for it...) nothing.

At this point, I had reached the limit of my kindness. I had already lost out on two tables, and the parents seemed all too willing to let me clean up the mess their parental failure had caused. Literally. I spent the length of their stay hidden from sight so they couldn't ask me for anything, while praying to whatever God/gods would listen to shut the little Gremlin up.

The good news is they tipped 15%. The bad news is they should have tipped a hell of a lot more. I may be gay and all, but God help me you better fucking believe that the moment they left I was on the phone scheduling my vasectomy, just to err on the safe side. I bid them goodbye, adding to the mother, "I think your kid might have a future as a FOX News correspondent."

And that is why I'm pro-choice.