Author: Jackie Pick

Jackie Pick is a former teacher and current writer living in the Chicago area. She is a contributing author to multiple anthologies, including Multiples Illuminated, So Glad They Told Me: Women Get Real about Motherhood, Here in the Middle, as well as the and the literary magazines The Sun and Selfish. She received Honorable Mention from the Mark Twain House and Museum for her entry in the Royal Nonesuch Humor Writing Competition. Jackie is a contributing writer at Humor Outcasts, and her essays have been featured on various online sites including McSweeney's, Belladonna Comedy, Mamalode, The HerStories Project, and Scary Mommy. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, Jackie is co-creator and co-writer of the award-winning short film Fixed Up, and a proud member of the 2017 Chicago cast of Listen To Your Mother.

You Know the Only Reason I’m Like This* is That I Have No Self-control.

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* I’m a parent. 

Most people I work with are not parents. 

This is a love note to the childless 20- and 30-somethings who constantly snark that sure they like kids…medium rare.  (this is mildly funnier than the “I like kids a lot…especially when they leave!”)

I get it. You don’t like kids. Not just mine, kids in general.

This is why, when we are working/socializing/interacting, I rarely if ever talk about my kids or my being a mother.

I get that my kids are mine, that they are cute to no one but me, that you are bored with parent talk from most parents. I get that parenthood is decidedly uncool to you. You suffer other people’s kids on planes, in restaurants, in stores. You are offended that we take our kids out and they don’t behave.  I get that, to you, “Kids suck” and that, by extension, “Parents suck.” We’re weird, lame, obsessed, and incapable of discussing anything but our offspring.

I actually do get that. 

Instead, I smile and nod and listen to your endless stories about drinking and your job and how you can’t find a good date and how you want to get laid soooo badly. I listen to you check out and comment about every single person of the gender you prefer. I listen to you detail your parties, how hungover you are, how bored you are, how tired you are, how stressed you are  that you haven’t met the one/gotten to see a movie in a theater in a week/your sports team may or may not make the championship/that you haven’t progressed to the next level of The Latest Video Game.  (N.B., I’m sure if the video game involved shooting me dirty looks for taking my kids in public, you’d have advanced to the final level weeks ago.) I smile wanly when you thank me for not talking about my kids, my heart, the lives I’m trying to mold, the way I spend most of my day. 

I’m not always enamored with that kind of talk — but I don’t post on the Interwebs how much I hate your choices and how your hangovers, parties, macking, improv team, softball team, knitting circle, poker game, dead-end job, and penis/vaginal needs are ruining society and/or my day. 

Because I get it. I represent an end to you.

So let’s just talk about safer topics, like politics ramification of religious immigrants cutting their science classes to have abortions. 

Because something tells me that you’d respect my difference of opinion there. Right?

I kid. You know…the kind of kidding us fogies did before we became lame bred our little day-ruiners and dared to take them in public.

Now you’ll excuse me. I’m off to the weekly parenting meeting. This week, we’re discussing how to ruin your Target shopping experience.

(And to my friends who are parents…can you tell I’ve got two testing limits today? Discuss….)