Seriously... I'm Kidding (11 page)

Babies, Animals, and Baby Animals

P
eople are constantly asking Portia and me if we are going to have children. If you are one of the people or persons who want to know the answer to that question, before you stop me on the street or send me an e-mail or hand me back my dry cleaning, I can tell you right now that we are not going to have any children. We thought about it. We love children. We love to be around children after they’ve been fed and bathed. But we ultimately decided that we don’t want children of our own. There is far too much glass in our house.

A few years ago in an online poll, Portia and I were voted the number one celebrity couple people would trust leaving their kids with. That’s very flattering, but before anyone starts dropping their babies off at our house like it’s a day care center, let me tell you how much I know about them. I know which end you feed. I know up from down. I know front from back on the boy ones. And I know that when they’re born they’re slimy and make weird goat noises. I might be thinking of a baby goat in that instance.

I know everyone says it, and that’s because it’s true—parents have the hardest job in the world. I can’t think of anyone who has a harder job on the planet, besides maybe whoever glues those tiny rhinestones onto doll shoes. It’s so precise.

Portia and I have learned so much about parenting from being around our niece Eva and her mom and dad. It’s a challenge even if you have the most precious, most adorable, and cutest baby on the planet. (I know everyone says that about their own kids, and I’m sure you all think your kids are the cutest kids on the planet. It’s sweet that you think that, but the fact of the matter is, Eva is the cutest.)

We’ve learned how much patience you need to have and how careful you have to be with what you say and what you do because from the moment these little creatures are born their brains are like sponges that absorb every single thing around them. We’ve also learned how attentive you have to be. If you’re not attentive 100 percent of the time, you will quickly learn how difficult it is to get grape juice out of the antique rug in Auntie Ellen and Auntie Portia’s sunroom.

Here’s why I think every parent out there should be given a medal or a ribbon or a trophy, like those bowling trophies but instead of a person bowling on top there would be a little statue of a parent sitting down to watch some mindless TV after scraping dried peas off the sofa while their son or daughter is finally sound asleep in the other room. That might be too much to put on a trophy, but you get the idea.

First you have your baby, which in and of itself is a stunning feat. I won’t go into specifics, but ouch and no thank you. Then you spend the next eighteen years raising the child. Throughout that time you ask questions you have never before thought to ask another human being, like, “Who needs to go potty?” and “Can you please take your underwear off your head for Mommy?” and “You got what pierced? Where’s that?”

Once your kids turn eighteen, you think you’ve done your job and you can go back to having a clean basement. But it turns out, according to an article I read, 80 percent of college graduates are now moving back home with their parents. Eighty percent! It would probably be 100 percent but some parents were smart enough to move without telling anyone.

That has to be frustrating for a parent. Your dream is to send your kid to college, be there when they graduate, and watch them go on to do great things. They’re not supposed to come back home. Their room has already been turned into a gym.

That sort of thing doesn’t happen in nature. When a bird leaves its nest, it leaves for good. The mama bird does all sorts of things to get those babies out of that nest for the long haul. First she’ll nudge them to encourage them to get up and move around. Then she’ll show them how fun it is to fly. She’ll circle the nest, swoop around, play peekaboo. Then she’ll fly to another branch and squawk, “Hey, get out. I have company coming.”

And the baby bird leaves. It learns to fly and make its own nest. It doesn’t leave, get a bunch of tattoos, and come back to mooch off its mama. It starts looking for its own food and searching Craigslist for temp jobs.

I think parents can learn a lot about parenting from nature. Not only can they learn from birds, they can also learn from the wildebeest. When wildebeests are born, the parents encourage the babies to walk right away. And if they don’t learn fast enough, they get eaten by a lion. So I guess what I’m saying is—parents, once those kids are out of college you’ve done your part. If they come back home after you’ve spent all that time and money on their college education, what you should do is get yourself a lion.

Okay, maybe don’t get a lion. Maybe just change the locks.

Portia and I don’t have any children. That’s why we’re always full of energy and smiling. But we do have a lot of animals that we treat like our family. We have two dogs, Mabel and Wolf, and three cats at home, Charlie, George, and Chairman. We have two cats on our farm, Tom and Little Sister, two horses, and two mini horses, Hannah and Tricky. We also have two cows, Holy and Madonna. And those are only the animals we let sleep in our bed.

We really treat our animals like they’re our babies. We don’t dress them up or anything. But we do take them to Mommy and Me classes every Friday. You should see the cows play the maracas during music time. If it isn’t the most adorable thing you’ve ever seen.

I know having pets isn’t exactly the same as having babies. It’s not like I have to stay up all night nursing our cats. I mean, I do but I don’t
have
to. But our animals have taught us valuable lessons that could be applied to parenting human babies, should we ever change our minds. Things like when your baby wants to communicate something, it will moo loudly. And when your baby is hungry you will need to feed it some hay. Maybe that only applies to cows. But one thing we know for sure is that you should never sneak up on your baby, and when you’re feeding it, you should always hold your hand flat. Now I’m thinking of a horse. You know what, we mostly know about animals. We’re not gonna change our minds.

My Bucket List

1. Buy more buckets.
   

2. Travel to distant lands to learn more about different people, cultures, societies.
   Watch more Discovery Channel.
   

3. Wear more white.
   

4. Learn to fly.
   

5. Build a canoe.
   

6. Tell everyone I know I built a canoe.
   

7. Go see the philharmonic, concerts, operas.
   Watch more PBS.
   

8. Call more people “rascal.”
   

9. Watch someone run a marathon.
   

10. Learn to speak a foreign language, like Australian or British.
    

I Am Not Lazy

I
am not a lazy person. In fact, I’m a very busy, hardworking person. I host a daily talk show. I have my own production company. I have my own music label. On the weekends I manage a Kinko’s downtown. But every once in a while I do something very lazy, shockingly lazy.

A few months ago, I got home from a long day of entertaining America and many other parts of the world and I sat on my sofa to watch some television. I realized my favorite cat, Charlie, wasn’t with me. She usually finds me as soon as I come home. My other cats are more independent. They spend summers backpacking through Europe and call when they need me to wire money.

But Charlie and I have a very special relationship and I wanted to let her know I was home. Don’t worry, I’m not one of those crazy cat ladies. I just like my favorite cat to know I’m home so we can talk, have dinner together, and watch
Hoarders
.

I assumed she was in our master bathroom because that’s where the cats like to hang out when we’re not home. They record most of their “cute kitty plays with loofah” YouTube videos in there.

Now, in order to let her know I was home I could have walked to the bathroom or yelled for her, which is what I usually do. But for some reason on that day I did something else. We have an intercom where I can push a button and talk to someone in another room. Sometimes it’s fun to use when we have company. I’ll get on it from a different part of the house and whisper stuff like, “Is there anything you ever really wanted to tell God? I’m listening.” Oh, we have fun.

Anyway, I got on the intercom and I said, “Charlie, I’m home! Charlie!” and I hung up and I waited for Charlie to come running. I didn’t think anything of it until I looked over and Portia was staring at me.

She said, “Did you just intercom the cat?”

And I looked at her and I had no choice but to say, “Yes. I did just intercom the cat.”

In my defense, I was very tired and if I wanted to walk all the way to the bathroom to find Charlie I would have had to get on my Segway, ride it to the escalator, take the escalator to the third floor, cross the champagne fountain, get my retina scanned, and deactivate dozens of laser beams.

Okay, that isn’t true. I would have had to walk down the hall.

I’m not usually that lazy. Have I ever tried to take my pants off without taking my shoes off first? Yes. I also recently got in my car one morning, noticed a stain on my shirt, and then continued to drive to work instead of going all the way inside to change.

I’m sure you have all done that at some point. You get dressed in the morning and you’re excited about your outfit. Right before you leave the house, you notice a coffee stain right in the middle on your shirt or a little hole right in the armpit. Of course that means you put it back in your closet like that after you wore it the last time. “Oh, that’s not too bad. I can wear that again.”

Once you see it, instead of having to go back and find a new shirt to match the pants and shoes and neckerchief you already picked out, you shrug and say, “I’ll just tell people it happened on my way to work.”

We’re getting lazier and lazier. There is so much technology that helps us be lazy. There are now cars that park themselves, which is great not only for lazy people but for people who also hate not having scratches on their bumpers. There are vacuums that vacuum for us. Thanks to Bud Light Lime, we don’t even need to squeeze the lime into our own beer anymore.

Humans aren’t supposed to be so lazy. We’re not supposed to go from work where we sit for hours and hours in the same chair staring at the same computer screen to our homes where we spend hours and hours sitting on our sofas playing video games and watching reality TV.

I’ll admit I’m guilty of watching a lot of reality TV. Nothing makes me feel lazier than complaining I can’t find the TV remote to change the channel—and then eventually finding it so I can watch an episode of
I Shouldn’t Be Alive
about a sailor who had to float on a twig in the middle of the ocean for two months after his boat capsized and sank.