Stop having babies!!!

My father and I have a pretty messed up relationship. When I was a kid, I was convinced that his sole purpose was to remind me how much of a failure I was at life and that no matter what, he’s always better than me at EVERYTHING. My earliest memory of this was when he first introduced me to “Ovals” basketball.

I had been watching him play all the time for the local team and I always watched it on TV with him. I practiced whenever I could to get the ball to hit the rim and then eventually start shooting. I ran up to him one day all excited, “DADDY! DADDY! I can shoot a basketball now. I’m Charles Barkley!” To which he replied, oh so you’re a basketball player now huh? Come down to the courts with me later and we’ll play.” I was so pumped! We got there later and I showed him I could shoot. Like I had seen him do to his friends, I started to brag. *sighs*

He then said, “Let’s play a one on one” and gave me “first ball”. I dribbled around him for a bit and he smiled in approval of his eight year old being able to properly control a basketball. I then got tired of that and pulled up to shoot. The ball left my hands perfectly and was sailing towards the rim with doves fluttering in the background. It was a picturesque moment in my life. The moment I scored my first meaningful point in basketball and on my pops who was quite the athlete. I could imagine the trophies, fame, recognition, and the proud look on my father’s face from all of that already. Everything had manifested itself into that ball and the shot being made represented the dawn of a new era in my life. I was in my own world.

Contrary to the laws governing linear perspective, the ball was getting bigger as it moved away from me. SMACK!!! The next thing I knew, I was getting up off the ground to my father notifying me that the score was 1-0. OK, I made the shot but why does my head hurt and why is my father now on offense checking me the ball? He saw the puzzled look on my face and explained. “Son, you just experienced the ultimate defensive measure in basketball: the blocked shot. What that means is that I saw your hopes, dreams, and aspirations being molded into that ball and I laughed with great malevolence as I grasped it and thrust it back into your face. Step your game up and that won’t happen again ya lil’ punk!” OK, not his exact words, but that’s what what he said sounded like to me at the time.

I lost the game 10-0 and I couldn’t quite understand why my father would do that to me. It took me a few weeks of secretly despising him and watching the older guys play to realize that there was a lesson to be learned from his actions, and that he was only trying to motivate me to be better. I think it’s been at least five years since anyone has genuinely blocked one of my shots. (Damn you Cassim!!!)

This is "serious"; not "cute"!

From since then, the relationship between my father and I has been competitive in nature. Even though my parents broke up aeons ago, he was still always there to support me in every possible way. Which of course involves his bragging and anti-motivational tactics. As I’m typing this now, he’s at his laptop (at age 50) bragging about how much “younger” and more skillful he is at everything than I’ll ever be, and when I have my son he’ll raise him for me so that he (my son) inherits his skill and not my ability to not be skillful.
Can you believe this crap?

I honestly don’t think I’d be the person I am today if it wasn’t for him and I feel like I’ll be forever in debt to him for that. A lot of the positive aspects of who I am and the choices I’ve made were influenced by him in some way. That in my opinion is the main role of a father. I look around me every day and I see young single mothers struggling to make ends meet and young deadbeat dads not giving a phuq. It’s like having a baby is the cool and trendy thing to do among the younger generation. Since this is a blog formed around the concept of keeping it REAL, I’m going to do just that and call EVERYONE out who I think is responsible this spreading epidemic.

Getting this off my chest early

CHILDREN ARE A LIABILITY!!! There is no getting around that. When it comes to balancing the chequebooks at the end of the month that’s all they’re going to be. That may sound a bit harsh, but if you were to record your finances on a double entry system like a business would, under the account for “children” you will ONLY be seeing entries being made on the debit side. The only exception to this is if your baby was a Gerber baby and then moved on to be a child star.

The chances of me fathering a child selected to be a Gerber baby are realistically slim so I know I’ll have to rely on my own resources to support him/her. I don’t see me getting anyone pregnant for another six years because I don’t see me being in that position to support myself, my wife and a child until then. I’d have to have a decent job, some money saved, loans under control, and a house first. Even after marrying someone and having these things in place, I probably wouldn’t get my wife pregnant until like two or three years into the marriage because I’d want us to enjoy pre-parenthood married life. I’d want to be able to come home just before a long weekend and say, “I found a great deal on tickets to Cyprus, you in?” and not have to worry about the liability of having children (yes, they are not only financial liabilities). You feeling me on this?

At my current age, my father already had two children. Both of my parents were working and had their own spot so I guess it worked out for my sister and I since we went to private schools; but what about my parents? I can only speculate how easy/hard it was for them to make ends meet and the stuff they had to sacrifice for us in order to make life seem “perfect”. If my memory serves me correctly, two years ago the pops was paying for my youngest brother to go to private school, me attending college in New Brunswick, my sister attending college in Barbados, and himself attending college in New York at the same time.

I’m sure he must have been swearing at me after every “tuition is due” phone call and wishing he had worn a condom (two just to be sure). I don’t know how many of my parents’ dreams my siblings and I have crushed due to their financial obligations, but if they were just content with raising children who lived comfortably without them (us) having to turn to drugs, crime and prostitution, they did just that.

Today in comparison to the late 80’s/early 90’s, the cost of living has gone up and the value of the dollar has gone down. Raising a child is dependent on both parents now more than ever but still the percentage of single parent households is climbing at an alarming rate. That’s not bad if the single mothers (or fathers) can provide for themselves and their children comfortably while living the lives they desire (without swearing every time a bill or a missed opportunity comes around). However how many of them actually can?

"If it wasn't for you I'd..."

A lot of the times it comes down to a decision between “the kid” or “me”. Either way somebody loses. You pick the kid and you suffer(could be emotionally), or you pick yourself and the kid suffers. You have $800 saved for a trip with the girls and two days before booking you have to take little Kyle to an ENT specialist because he keeps crying and pointing to his face which is turning red. After a barrage of tests, they find out he just has a mini Lego man stuck up his nose. Now every time you see him playing with his Lego toys while your girls are away, you have to resist the urge to take them away and burn them to quench your own selfishly subtle thirst for revenge.

This is exactly the kind of situation that will lead up to you hearing a story on the news about a young parent shooting a child in the face for “no apparent reason”.

Calling out the responsible parties

The mother

Unless you’re getting raped, who you have sex with is TOTALLY your choice. That goes double for who you allow yourself to get pregnant for, just like it’s TOTALLY your choice if you ultimately have an abortion. Having a child is a serious decision to make that should be planned with your significant other and maybe even the rest of both of your families if possible. The same care and scrutiny that you use to reject guys attempting to court you should be utilized tenfold in determining who you allow to impregnate you.

It BLOWS my mind to see the types of guys females are getting pregnant for. Then they act surprised and seek sympathy and comfort when they realize the guy bails on them. For those of you who are too ditsy to figure this out on your own, here is a quick checklist for the guys who DO NOT want to get impregnated by:

• Ambitionless mo-fo
  If you ask him what are his goals for the next 10 years and he can’t rattle that off to you at the snap of a finger, he isn’t ready to have kids. It’s simple logic really. If he doesn’t even have plans for himself over the course of the next 10 years, what thought do you think he has given to you and him “working out” and any possible children resulting from that union?
• Already has kids mo-fo
  Now I’m not taking a shot at all the dudes who already have kids, but if you know he has children by someone else and he’s not really taking care of them, what makes a kid popping out of your cooch any more special?
• Always jobless mo-fo
  I don’t even need to get into this one.

Getting pregnant for a guy within any of these groups with the hope of him not leaving you is like “praying”; you’re just BEGGING for it to happen.

Some females will say it “just happened”, but it didn’t “just happen” if you allowed him to have sex with you without a condom. Yeah you may have been on birth control but even that fails. Besides, you don’t know FOR SURE where else his d!(k has been (be REAL) so you should be making him wear one to protect your own self. If you’re still in high school/college you shouldn’t be letting guys have sex with you without a condom REGARDLESS as to how “in love” you both are. If you get pregnant, you’re going to have to eventually start missing classes as your pregnancy progresses until you plain out have to stop going. So now you’re that “sitting at home getting fat, pregnant, out of school, jobless, nagging her boyfriend” mother phuq-er that he either has to come home to, or receive ten million calls or texts from throughout the day. If you guys didn’t sit at plan it out, he wouldn’t be prepared for any of this and chances are he’ll leave you for your not-so-hott but also not pregnant home girl who’s still capable to putting out. MOST guys will not have sex with a pregnant chick regardless as to what anyone says. –REAL

One set of footprints

So now that leaves you with being an emotional wreck growing bitter towards men (or just the child’s father) with each passing day while realizing getting pregnant doesn’t guarantee him to be your man for life. You also secretly grow bitter towards your friends who didn’t get fat and still go out every weekend. Every time you log into Facebook and see them tagged in some album or you receive a “wish you coulda made it <3” post you crumble on the inside. You spent your weekend alone in the bathroom mirror trying to look happy while taking profile pictures of your exposed belly which will have captions like, “15 weeks” or “best thing that ever happened to me”. Bet you wish you had daddy around to hold the camera so you could get a better shot.

I know some of you are thinking I’m being a jerk but I’m just being REAL about the whole thing. Hopefully some young girl will read this and give her current sex practices a second thought. Being a young single mother isn’t some glorious journey into womanhood especially if you have to do it by yourself. Sure mothers do it every day but child aside, if a lot of them could go back and redo the choices they made, they would.

The father

I really don’t know how some guys do it. How can you get someone pregnant, know it’s yours and just not care. The way I see it, if you think you’re man enough to have sex without a condom, then you need to be man enough to deal with any resulting consequences. I think it’s fair to say that anyone over 16 knows that sperm+ova=babies. You know what what you’re doing can lead to so why not stop to think about the “what if”?

"What kid? She got pregnant by herself!"

Sure it’s easy to get a chick pregnant and walk away thinking, “that mess’ll take care of itself” but what if that was your mother… your little sister… your own daughter? Would you want them to be dealing with that alone? When you look at it like that it’s the kind of thing that could make you lose sleep at night.

It’s also easy to glance over your current situation and think you’ll be able to provide for your girlfriend and Jr. because you make what seems then to be a lot of money packing shelves at Staples. This changes after she’s about seven to eight months in to her pregnancy. Then you have to go for your first shopping trip for baby supplies.

It’s just bottles, pampers, formula and nursing pads right? You’re already ballin’ with your $300 per week Staples cheque so you don’t need help from either of your parents because you’re a REAL man and a REAL man takes care of “his”. OK, so that trip took up your whole month’s pay that you had saved up but it’s cool. You’ll get another cheque next week and besides this stuff will last FOREVER! Being a father is easy.

Then the baby comes and you realize you have to make that trip to BabyMart every month, so your car isn’t going to have those subs or those chrome 22’s you’ve been bragging about to your homies. Your girlfriend has stitches in the cooch from birthing your behemoth future NBA superstar so that’s another three weeks of no sex. Now you’re the “broke, no subs, no rims, almost “ain’t $h!t”, sexless, wishing you had bought the $3.99 box of condoms” mother phuq-er who’s been phuq-ing his hands for the greater part of a year.

While your homies were out racking up their kill count, you had to spend your weekend practicing breathing exercises that you picked up from that course your girlfriend’s friends thought it would be a good idea to send you both to. You can’t even watch the game with the homies at your place anymore because you guys “make too much noise and it’ll wake the baby”. You go over to their place and you receive a text saying, “I need you right now” halfway through it. Sure you can ignore it, but you know she’s not going to stop until to reply and say you’re coming. She’ll even start texting your homies and eventually one of them will tell you, “Yo handle your biz so your bitch can stop blowing up ma phone.”

Not quite what you had expected huh? Suddenly the blow job she offered that you turned down and begged for unprotected sex doesn’t seem like such a bad deal huh? Well that’s life.

Since I’m trying to educate the homies here let me just toss this in as well. Be careful with those chicks that appear to like you too much because some of them actually want you to get them pregnant. If they are the ones encouraging you to not wear a Jimmy hat because they are on some “magical Fallopian tubes tying” pill, let that be a red flag. If you do fall for it and you buy her a day after pill and she doesn’t want to take it, don’t fret. What you do is buy her a small cup of ice cream, let it melt a bit, crush the pills into powder, mix it in with the melted ice cream, refreeze it, and take it to her with a loving smile. (This method works just as well with those “under the counter” abortion pills good up to three months, but you didn’t hear that from me)

All in all gentlemen remember that it only takes a penis to become a father but a REAL man to be a father. Don’t let the rest of us down because you were thinking with the wrong head. REPRESENT!!!

The chick’s friends

A female’s female friends can be such a curse without them even knowing it. If a chick ever needed a reality check about getting pregnant young and dealing with it, her female friends (ESPECIALLY the ones who’ve been there before) are the absolute LAST persons for her to go to (in a lot of cases). I say this for two reasons: 1) they are too supportive and 2) they sometimes have hidden agendas

Too supportive

"We got you boo!"

No matter what a chick does, once it’s not sleep with their man, her friends will always support her in it. When Karen, 19, tells her friends she’s going to have a baby, she’s not going to hear, “Damn girl you’re in school, have no money, and Kevin’s a bum. No worries I know this anonymous abortion clinic across town that’ll hook you up for $250 a pop!” Instead she’s showered with hugs, tears and girlish squeals. Then they move into planning a baby shower, helping her pick a name and also deciding on godparents. No concern at all about her economical situation. That always gets back burner treatment. Aren’t chicks supposed to be the ones who are more mature?

In the same situation where a guy (young/in school/jobless) tells his homies the same thing, it’s a more glum and gloomy event. That grey cloud only lifts when the father-to-be starts to sound enthused about it and everyone else chimes in so as not to be a “stick in the mud”. In actuality they’re all thinking, “How is Kevin going to deal with all of this?”

Hidden agendas
Some chicks have hidden agendas. It just makes their tits HARD to know they have company in something they went/are going through and that they have the chance to be the “mother figure” which the more inexperienced ones come to. Yeah they’ll tell the new mom how beautiful she’s going to be pregnant and how much she’s going to enjoy it, but they’ll never mention the 18 hours of labor and 10 feet of stretch marks running along her back until it’s too late. Nor will they mention their man running off while leaving them alone, or being the “shame” of the family. It’s always a success story of triumph and glory much like a bad Lifetime movie (or all of them for that matter). Secretly, some of them are just glad that you have to suffer in the same ways that they once did and that gives them a teeny weeny bit of joy.

Ladies (the young ones) PLEASE don’t consult your peers as your main source of advice in this situation. I’d suggest talking to someone who went through the same thing 10 years or more ago. They’d be the ones who’ll lay all the cards out in front of you.

MTV

MTV made it “cool” to do a lot of things from saying that you liked little girls to being an idiot/slut from New Jersey. Now being 16 (or at least under 21) and pregnant seems to be the latest fad. Even though the show may not necessarily be promoting the act, the chicks are being put on TV and being on TV makes them “popular”. I sat and watched the show a few times with my sister and was left rolling my eyes. I honestly thought it was going to show the REAL hardships of being a young mother. Not to knock on anyone, but these chicks were from the suburbs 99% of the time, in a good family, and had mothers they could swear at while forcing them to babysit or go run errands. Say what?

Can you imagine the contrast that would be there if they had a show called “16 and Pregnant in the Hood”? I’m sure most of these girls wouldn’t even want to give a hand job much less have sex after watching half a season. To make matters worse, at the end of each episode, they encourage you to go online and tell your story for a chance to be on the show. Most of these girls aren’t going to be looking at this as I’m being exploited for the sake of the Man. They see this as a way to get on MTV and all they have to do is take d!(k and miss a couple days worth of birth control. Word?

Final thoughts

I can understand how easy it may be to get caught up in the joys of wanting to be a parent. I for one await the day I have my first of two sons (please Lord, no daughters). It is important however to not be so caught up in that desire to raise a child that it makes you unable to see the bigger picture. The novelty of being a new parent is bound to wear off some day and you need to be prepared to deal with that as well as make the necessary sacrifices this new “job” requires.

Maybe entering into my mid 20’s is causing me to lose my ability to “get with the times”, and hold on to some of the more traditional values I was brought up around in Antigua. If this is the case then I guess I’ll be comfortable with that until someone can bring to me a solid argument proving that I’m overreacting to an issue that isn’t really that serious.

I’m out! *drops mic*