Word of the Day: April 26, 2008
Posted by keepbreathing in Coming to an ER near you, asinine.trackback
The word of the day today is Polybabydadia, a word which I have stolen without a hint of permission from the ever inventive Panda Bear MD. The rest of this post unexpectedly deteriorated into a bitter tirade, but you should be used to that by now.
Polybabydadia as I see it is the condition of having too many children by too many baby daddies. Its many manifestations are the scourge of our pedi ER, and a terrifying glimpse into the future; after all, the kinds of people who are grunting out five and six kids by as many fathers are not the kind of people who should probably be entrusted with the life of a tiny human being. And as much as I’d love to believe that all the children will be OK and grow up surrounded by love and rainbows and candy ponies, I know that the few of them who manage to make it past age 2 without being suffocated under a pile of jackets at a party will probably just continue the cycle ad infinitum. Every now and then a kid breaks through and changes their life for the better, but the sad truth is that most of these children are just screwed. It’s very depressing to look into the innocent eyes of a child and realize that the irresponsible, empty-headed, soulless pile of carbon who gave birth to them is going to screw their life up forever with neglect and unwillingness to take responsibility for what they have brought into the world.
The only cure that I know of for polybabydadia is mandated sterility, although a lot of people get pretty offended when I say that. Perhaps we could ward off some of the epidemic by giving out Depo shots and claiming that it’s morphine. It could work; many of the victims of polybabydadia seem to have a habit of chemically enhancing reality to escape from the soulless husks that they have become. Moving the blame to the daddies, we could offer discounts on beer in exchange for vasectomies.
That’s it for now. I’ll make up for the bitter with some funny later.
… which reminds me of the “Leroy” joke, shamelessly stolen a long time ago from some now-defunct medblog:
A woman walks into the downtown welfare office, trailed by 15 kids.
“Wow,” the social worker exclaims, “are they all yours???”
“Yep, they’re all mine,” the flustered momma sighs, having heard that question a thousand times before.
She says, “Sit down, Leroy.” All the children rush to find seats.
“Well,” says the social worker, “then you must be here to sign up. I’ll need all of your children’s names.”
“This ‘un’s my oldest – he’s Leroy.”
“OK, and who’s next?”
“Well, this ‘un, he’s Leroy, too.”
The social worker raises an eyebrow but continues. One by one, through the oldest four, all boys, all named Leroy. Then she is introduced to the eldest girl, named Leighroy!
“All right,” says the caseworker. “I’m seeing a pattern here. Are they all named Leroy?”
Momma replied, “Well, yeah; it makes it easier. When it’s time to git ‘em out of bed and ready for school, I yell, ‘Leroy! Time to git up!’ An’ when it’s time for dinner, I jus’ yell ‘Leroy! Time for dinner!’ an’ they all comes a-runnin’. An’ if I need to stop the kid who’s runnin’ into the street, I jus’ yell ‘Leroy! Stop!’ and all of them stop. It’s the smartest idea I ever had, namin’ ‘em all Leroy.”
The social worker thinks this over for a bit, then wrinkles her forehead and says tentatively, “But what if you just want one kid to come, and not the whole bunch?”
“Oh, that’s easy. I call ‘im by ‘is last name.”
Great article and I agree with all you say. There is to many unwanted babies being delivered along with STDs being contracted through acts of passion that are meaningless in many peoples eyes.
This kind of thing kills me. I’ve been trying for a while now to get pregnant and I see women every day…21 years old….5 kids…different dads.