A time for kids? Rubbish. They’re all just spoilt brats who want more crap.
CHRISTMAS? Kill me now. Season to be jolly? Not this little black duck. Wish I was Jewish. Or in jail. Or dead. I s’pose it could be worse. Come to think of it, no it couldn’t.
But seriously, you know what I want for Christmas? To be a kid or a bloke. Having children and a vagina basically means being a slave and an emotional potty for the last two weeks of December. If the silly season had a motto, it should be: Christmas: It’s the Reason Alcohol was Invented. Or Christmas: Turning Back Feminism 150 Years.
Don’t get me wrong, I love sitting around a table with family and slagging off relatives as soon as they leave. And I do enjoy giving people gifts. What I don’t like is the obligation of it all. Call me Aunty Funbuster but I just don’t find anything more depressing than dragging myself around the shops to buy crap for people who already have everything and are still miserable.
Surrounded by other people dragging themselves around the shops to buy crap for people who already have everything and are still miserable. But I do like to make people happy. Which is why I’ll be pulling a migraine this year and spending Christmas heavily sedated in a darkened room so my family can spend the entire day slagging me off.
‘Tis the season to strap on the fake smile and hang out with relations who say “we should see each other more often” despite the fact that they don’t get the hint they’ve been saying the same thing for 30 years and it is still not happening. In the social potpourri of passive/aggressive aunts, overbearing uncles, hypochondriac grandfathers and the bitter and twisted cousins who have recently divorced that bitch/that bastard, people in relationships are always guaranteed that one magical moment on Christmas Day. That moment you realise that your family gives your partner the shits even more than you do.
As far as the, “it’s for the kiddies” mantra. Stuff ’em. Kids? Bunch of spoilt brats. They’ve got rooms bursting with toys that they never play with, parents who don’t beat them and all they do is whinge. They need a bloody good war if you ask me. Which you didn’t, but that’s never stopped me before.
If we receive one more card with a picture of people’s kids’ faces in the baubles hanging on the Christmas tree, I will be forced to set myself alight in protest. Don’t try me, because I am more mental than Mark Latham and I will do it.
I must admit we have sent out a few Christmas cards in the past. Once we frocked up as Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus and had our photo taken with Santa at Northland. In another we dressed our 10-month-old half-Italian son up as a concreter, complete with hanky tied at each corner on his head, a blue tradie’s singlet, a moustache and bling. Inside was the greeting “Behold! The Son Of Wog!”
But spare me the nauseating circulars. The sight of a typed A4 page dropping out of a card fills me with fear. Someone had the brilliant suggestion that all these smug, loving-yourselves-stupid letters should be uploaded for our deconstructing pleasure at www.mykidsarebetterthanyours.blogspot.com.
“Harry got an A for his grade five violin exam, which is not surprising considering he’s a musical prodigy in the same league as Mozart. He’s been placed in the selected entry stream of the exclusive school he has been awarded a full scholarship to. He’s now the world chess champion despite spending last year travelling the world representing Australia in marathon running and debating. It’s hard to believe that he’s turning six next year!”
“Amelia has taken the recent independent assessment that she is highly gifted characteristically in her stride. She’s recently finished writing, producing, directing and starring in her third feature film for the year. She is also the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the president of MENSA, and she recently won the Nobel prize for literature with her stunning post-colonial deconstruction of the image of indigenous women from a Jungian perspective. She has been named one in the Top Ten Most Influential Three-Year-Olds in the world and she’s now out of night nappies!”
Pardon me while I spew. I don’t care. None of us do. And we all laugh at you. You haven’t seen us all year because we hate you. I want to send back an email: “My kids? One’s stupid, one’s ugly, one’s violent and they all have worms.”
Three days to go. But it’s not all gloom and doom, I just try to look on the bright side. Maybe I’ll be struck down with a brain-eating virus and end up in a coma. Here’s hoping.
*****
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