The joys of parenthood

Follow these 15 simple tests before you decide to have children.

Test 1
Women: To prepare for maternity, put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front. Leave it there for 9 months. After 9 months remove 10% of the beans.

Men: To prepare for paternity, go to local chemist, tip the contents of your wallet onto the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself. Then go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office. Go home. Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time.

Test 2
Find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels and how they have allowed their children to run wild. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behaviour. Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.

Test 3
To discover how the nights will feel . . .
1) Walk around the living room from 5 PM to 10 PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 4 - 6 kg, with a radio tuned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.
2) At 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep.
3) Get up at 12pm and walk the bag around the living room until 1am.
4) Set the alarm for 3am.
5) As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a cup of tea.
6) Go to bed at 2.45 AM.
7) Get up again at 3 am when the alarm goes off.
8) Sing songs in the dark until 4 am.
9) Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up when it goes off
10) Make breakfast.
Keep this up for 5 years. Look cheerful.

Test 4
Dressing small children is not as easy at it seems.
1) Buy a live octopus and a string bag .
2) Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that none of the arms hang out. Time allowed for this - all morning.

Test 5
Forget the BMW and buy a practical 5-door saloon. And don't think that you can leave it out on the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that.
1) Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.
2) Get a coin. Insert it in the cassette player.
3) Take a family size package of chocolate biscuits, mash them into the back seat.
4) Run a garden rake along both sides of the car. There. . perfect!

Test 6
Get ready to go out.
1) Wait.
2) Go out the front door.
3) Come in again.
4) Go out.
5) Come back in.
6) Go out again.
7) Walk down the front path/driveway.
8) Walk back up it.
9) Walk down it again.
10) Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.
11) Stop, inspect minutely, and ask at least 6 questions about every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue, and dead insect along the way.
12) Retrace your steps.
13) Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you.
14) Give up and go back into the house.
You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

Test 7
Repeat everything you say at least 5 times.

Test 8
Go the local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a preschool child. (A full-grown goat is excellent). If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat. Buy your weeks groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Test 9
1) Hollow out a melon.
2) Make a small hole in the side.
3) Suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.
4) Now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.
5) Continue until half the cornflakes are gone.
6) Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor.
You are now ready to feed a 12 month old child.

Test 10
Learn the names of every character from the Fimbles, Barney, Teletubbies and Disney. Watch nothing else on TV for at least five years.

Test 11
Can you stand the mess children make?
To find out, smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains. Hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer. Stick your fingers in the flower beds then rub them on the clean walls. Cover the stains with crayon. How does that look ?

Test 12
Make a recording of Janet Street-Porter shouting "Mummy" repeatedly. Important: No more than a four second delay between each "Mummy" (occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car, everywhere you go for the next four years.
You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Test 13
Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continuously tug on your skirt hem/shirt sleeve/elbow while playing the "Mummy" tape made from Test 12 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

Test 14
Put on your finest work attire.Pick a day on which you have an important meeting. Now:
1) Take a cup of cream, and put 1 cup lemon juice in it.
2) Stir.
3) Dump half of it on your nice silk shirt. Saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture.
4) Attempt to clean your shirt with the saturated towel.
5) Do NOT change. You have no time.
6) Go directly to work.

Test 15
Go for a drive, but first. . . .
1) Find one large tomcat and six pit bulls.
2) Borrow a child safety seat and put it in the back seat of your car.
3) Put the pit bulls in the front seat of your car.
4) While holding something fragile or delicate, strap the cat into the child seat.
5) For the really adventurous. . . . Run some errands, remove and replace the cat at each stop.

You are now ready to have kids.

Posted on Monday 6th October, 2003