A Brief Example of Why I Don't Want Children

When I was 12, my friend and I used to jump off his patio roof into their pool all the time. The roof was maybe 9 feet off the ground, and its edge was maybe 5 feet from the edge of the pool.

This was pretty easy for us to clear, so naturally we felt the need to make the jump more difficult. We started out jumping over floating objects placed at the edge of the pool - inner tubes, boogie boards, etc. Then we decided to try jumping ONTO the boogie boards. From the patio roof.

If you've ever jumped onto a boogie board that's placed in the center of a pool and tried to "surf" on it, you know that usually one of three things happens:
1) You land gracefully in the center of the board, maintain your balance, and the board sinks beneath you. Everyone watching will clap and cheer, and Stephanie, the hot 8th grader who lives in the house next door, will come over and offer you a handjob.
2) You jump too far and land on the front of the board. The board rockets backward and you faceplant into the water. Everyone laughs.
3) You don't jump far enough, and you land on the back of the board. The board shoots out from under you and you fly backward and upward, not unlike a cartoon character slipping on a banana peel. The back of your head cracks into the edge of the pool. You break your neck and become quadriplegic. The rest of your teenage years are spent desperately trying to convince your helper monkey to jerk you off.

My friend went first. He landed on a combination of #2 and #3 and slipped off to the side of the board. His head must have come within 3 inches of hitting the edge of the pool, and he hit the board with such force that it shot out of the pool entirely. Of course, as soon as he surfaced, the first words out of his mouth were "That was awesome!"

Somewhere within my 12-year-old brain this situation gave me pause. I waffled for about 20 seconds and finally climbed up to the patio roof. Luckily, this 20 seconds was just enough time for my friend's dad to see us from inside the sliding glass door.

I can only imagine how stressful it must be to be a parent, because every once in a while every kid does something so inexplicably dumb that it must take every ounce of restraint in your body not to choke your son out like Macho Man Randy Savage. The look on my friend's dad's face when he saw me on his patio roof, about to jump onto the boogie board, was that look of confusion and anger. He ran outside and screamed, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!"

"Uh... not jumping into the pool?"

"You're damn right you're not. Get off there."

In all honesty, it did look really awesome though.