Parenting without kids

When my wife Kara and I went out to dinner a couple of nights ago, taking a break from the regimen of Ramen noodles and Cinnamon Life Cereal to which we’ve been rigidly adhering since we put our house on the market, we noticed that a couple of nearby families allowed their small children to have their Game Boys out at the dinner table.

For those unfamiliar with Game Boys, they are handheld devices with tiny little screens that devour childhoods whole, allowing kids to play video games when they should be out catching fireflies and smooshing them on their shoes as a warning to all other low-flying insects. Parents who allow Game Boy-playing in restaurants are clearly putting their kids into a high-risk category; these kids are far more likely than their peers to mature into adults who wear Bluetooth headsets when they’re not even talking on the phone, like they think they’re platoon commanders or Old Navy employees.

I can only imagine how my parents would have reacted if I’d have whipped out my old Game Boy (which was black-and-white and carved from a granite slab) at the dinner table, much less at a restaurant. The only game on that Game Boy would have been “Super Mario Brothers: I’m Looking at My Bare Hands Now Because Mom Just Snatched My Game Boy.”

As you can probably tell, Kara and I like to criticize everyone else’s parenting skills, because when you don’t have any kids, you have lots of time for stuff like that. You can also watch movies that do not feature talking bears, and you can say bad words without having to spell them out.

But we’ve also been thinking about babies a lot lately, mainly because our friends are proving to be slightly more fertile than the Tigris-Euphrates river basin. Sometimes, they even find that out on purpose. Walking through the aisles of Target yesterday to hunt for some presents for a baby shower, we were amazed at the contraptions that are available to new parents.

“Oh man,” Kara said, “Look at this thing.”

She was pointing towards a device that looked like it should have been offered for sale at a farm auction instead of in the baby aisle. It reminded me of the episode of Sesame Street where they visit the dairy farm.

“I can’t believe you actually have to hook yourself up to this thing. I wonder if it hurts,” Kara said.

“Moo,” I replied, feeling very gender fortunate, but also thinking about how much easier life would be if, like cows, people could just eat hay. You could keep a bale in the kitchen and just go to town on it whenever you wanted. No preparation, no dishes. I’m not sure if you’d want to figure out how to chew on your cud, though, because that seems pretty gross.

We ended up purchasing a baby wipe warmer. I had no idea that baby wipe warmers even existed, but apparently baby-wiping technology has come a long way. We thought that this gift was also culturally relevant at the moment, because if you’ve seen the movie “Hannibal Rising,” which of course you haven’t because it’s terrible, you find out that Hannibal Lecter would have grown up to be a park ranger if his mother hadn’t used cold baby wipes on him.

Judging from what we saw in the mall, our baby-having friends sure seem to be in for it. Parenting these days offers challenges that weren’t around even a few years ago. For one thing, kids have wheels in their sneakers now, which makes them nearly impossible to catch, especially on inclined planes. They just glide on along like they’ve evolved without us. At least they refuse to wear helmets, just like when I was a kid. Fads may come and go, but cranial contusions never go out of style.

You can give Mike Todd a timeout online at mikectodd@gmail.com.