Rolling

I was online with a buddy of mine a couple of weeks ago, and I was telling him that everyone we knew back in high school has kids. I'd received one of those invitations from a reunion site, and on a whim I went on there and dug around.

From the jocks to the nerds to the snobs to the saints, practically all of the old faces are married and have kids. I also noticed an interesting phenomenon: you don't have to look at a woman's bio to see if she's married with children. If she's got short hair, she's married. If she's got long hair, she's not. Works about 9 out of ten times. For men, it's weight: a few extra pounds means he's recently tied the knot, and a spare tire indicates a fifth anniversary.

Anyway, I was telling my buddy this news, and I thought he would come back with some deep thoughts on life. Something like, Well, we all get older, or, Yeah, I've been thinking of settling down myself.

What I got instead was: Losers! Ha!

I busted a gut at that one. God knows what I'll do if he ever ties the knot. Me and my buddy are diametrically opposed when it comes to politics, eating habits, and how to pick up women (he's Mr. Nice Guy; I, to your probable surprise, am not), but we've more or less used each other as validation for not giving a damn about backyards and potato salad.

Seeing all of these long-gone faces with kids gave me an interesting thought. Back in high school, I'm pretty sure we all wanted to get laid, but it rarely happened. Now, everybody's getting laid and they can't wait to post photos of the evidence all over the internet. It only took sex ten years to go from being the aw-shucks-red-in-the-face-sweaty-palms act it was, to a humdrum event you can now discuss over dinner.

That really is what separates the married people from the single people (besides the empty pizza boxes, cheap scotch, and strangers' underwear found under the cushions). Married people can talk about screwing all the time, while single people are supposed to be discreet. Which is to say, don't tell your friend about the bimbo you shacked up with at the last office party; wait till his wife is out of the room so you can tell it in detail.

Now before the ladies write in telling me how uncouth I'm being, give me a break. I learned more about sex by eavesdropping on girls in the cafeteria than I ever did in a classroom. Tuesday morning at Starbucks might as well be an adult Sex Ed class. One look at the cover of Cosmo will tell you how much women think about sex, and according to the women I know (married and single), the ladies can really go into detail when in a locker room mood.

Sex and age. Depending on what you mean by that, it can be an interesting discussion, or an unsettling image. Let's go with the first one.

I feel sorry for the women that hear it from their parents and grannies all the time, that the clock is ticking and they need to have kids. Personally, I regard it as rude. Whose life is it, anyway? It ain't yours, ma, or aunt, or grandma. You told your daughters to go out into the world, be who they wanted to be, dream big dreams, and get a fulfilling career. And now you want her to get on her back and do the one thing that you told her not to do when she was growing up? Not only is it rude, it's hypocritical.

Leave your daughters alone. Telling someone to have free will, and then blackmailing them for it, isn't love and it isn't guidance. It certainly isn't cute over Christmas dinners. It's disrespectful. Further, it's pathetic, wanting to live your life through that of your offspring. I find it odd, and a little frightening, when women tell me that their parents and grandparents still do this sort of thing. Not one woman is telling me about a parent saying that they want them to find love. It's all about the kids. Well, if it was all about that, why didn't they let daughter stay out all night with Johnny when she was 17?

Oh, I forgot: because then maybe you, dear grandmother, might have had to help out with the child. It seems that overbearing parents don't talk about sex with 17-year-olds because at that age, sex is about pleasure. They do talk about it with 30-year-olds because by then it's merely procreation.

Since when? Last time I checked, a 30-year-old woman liked sex as much, if not more, than she did when she was younger. Is she now supposed to feel bad about the act itself because it isn't leading to mobiles and Pampers on special?

Still, for those that go down that road, motherhood seems to be quite enjoyable. Flipping through the bios of old friends and enemies, I saw a lot of, "I love being a mom." I bet that's true. The pictures show smiling faces, on mother and child both. And that's great. But you've got to admit, it's kind of creepy seeing a woman with a child and knowing that not too long ago, you threw her down a snowbank. Back then it was funny. Doing the same thing to the same person years later, nobody would laugh and you'd probably get arrested.

My friend and I don't have any kind of a pact against marriage and parenthood. I read once that George Clooney and his modern Rat Pack had something like that going on, where they swore to just hang out, party, and be men's men for the rest of their lives. That smacks of phoniness and protesting too much, and besides, being a man's man is a hell of a lot easier with George Clooney's bankroll. The financial costs of marriage might be high, but being single isn't exactly a road to early retirement, either. If you've been on a first date lately, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Fact is, me and my friend have been busy. I don't see him very often, but that's the whole point: we've been moving around a lot. The rolling stone gathers no moss deal is a very true expression. Anyone who sees that as a shallow point of view doesn't get it: you're not necessarily rolling to avoid things, you're rolling because you're busy doing something. A by-product of that is not being in one place long enough to meet someone special and think, "You know, I'd be all right with building a swing set and arguing about where to put it."

So yes, my friend is wrong, though I know he was just kidding around. The married with kids folk are not losers. They went their road and gathered some moss. If the evidence is correct, they're glad they did. As a live and let live kind of person (as long as I get an opinion on it, naturally), I am fine with that.

But for the women out there that aren't ready yet, and who are listening to a clock ticking in the form of some bigshot family member's pacemaker, my advice is this: keep rolling.

You've got company.