A week ago we rolled out the red carpet for one of the most celebrated former residents of Wet Michigan I have ever known.  One of Shirley’s friends moved out to the California and every time she comes back to Michigan, or at least it seems like every time, we need to throw a party for her.  I like her and the party isn’t really in her honor, it’s just more convenient for her to go to one place to hang out with all of the friends she left behind, as opposed to having to go visit each one individually.  However, this is not about that.  What it is about is how much more fun life can be without kids.  I have heard of BYOB (Bring your own beer, bring your own booze, even bring your own brats would work I guess) and I am all for these types of parties.  What I am not for is BYOK (bring your own kids) parties.  There were at least twelve kids at this party and only two of them were mine.  I have stood by the fact that the only reason I like my kids is because I am genetically obligated to do so, so I sure as hell am not going to like, or want to be around someone else’s kids.  The party got off to a great start with the youngest mobile child at the party going down our 50 foot slip and slide and then crying for some unknown reason.  Someone asked why he was crying and I wanted to say “because he wants a haircut”, the kids two, a boy, and I don’t think has had a haircut yet.  It only got worse from there and I said to all the adults “I suggested no kids but no one listens to me”.

In response to the question you know what would make this better? The following are acceptable:

• More booze
• More lube
• More booze and lube

What is not acceptable response is: Kids or even worse, more kids.  The party ended up reaching a point where the adults grew so tired of the kids that they were put into our TV room to play video games and stop annoying the shit out of us. Now, when you get this many kids there is always that one kid who is a complete asshole and I can typically spot that kid immediately.  The reason I was able to spot this asshole so quickly is because he was jumping on our homemade corn hole game.  I yelled at him to get down because I have no qualms about being the adult asshole.  Towards the end of the evening, after multiple glasses of wine had been consumed by Shirley, one of the kids asked her where there was a scissors to which she responded “right over there”.  Moments later the asshole kid had punctured himself with the scissors and was bleeding all over our patio.  In my mind, as is often the case with my kids, he was being a gigantic pussy so I had no sympathy for him.  Surprisingly, Shirley, by far the nicest person in our marriage (kind of like being the world’s tallest midget, not really that much of an accomplishment) immediately went for the hose and was spraying blood off our patio.  Yes, he was dripping blood onto our patio but he was still being a pussy.

Within the same general time frame of the party I ended up going golfing with a couple buddies and my buddies 14 year old.  We teed off at 6:30 in the morning and the kid was on his phone from the first shot to the last.  Not sure what he was doing at the time of the morning on his phone since I am quite confident all of his friends were hours from waking up, but whatever it was it kept him from being able to do basic math.  He continually was unaware of how many strokes had been played on a hole and was often times seen sprinting to the golf cart after a shot so he could reunite with his precious phone.

Was I aware of the fact that teenagers are even more annoying and difficult than younger kids?  Of course I was, I was a teenager and I had three younger siblings who went through their teens and I had no choice but to soak most of it in as their older bother.  In addition, there was a large gap between myself and my next sibling making matters even worse and causing me to withdraw even more than a typical teenager would from their family.   So, I distanced myself form my family as much as I could but there was the obligatory birthday celebration for everyone of us.  Even though my parents despised us they always seemed to want to celebrate our birthdays, which seemed quite ironic.  However, looking back I realize it was more of a punishment due to how it was celebrated.  Bill Knapps, that was the destination for every single birthday celebration.  Free cake and the percentage of your age off your bill, no Hollander in their right mind could turn that down, and I am quite certain they didn’t, ultimately leading to the demise of Bill Knapps, giving away free chocolate cakes and knocking a percentage off a bill is no way to turn a profit, especially when most of your customers are older than Yoda.  “I turned 106 today, looks like you guys owe me some money this time”.

Had I had a cell phone when I was growing up it would have definitely eased the pain of the Bill Knapps birthday experience.  When one of my siblings threw the inevitable tantrum in the middle of the restaurant, I could have just put my ear buds in let music drown out the noise.  Better yet, I could also look at all the hot girls (there weren’t very many) I went to high school with on snap chat or Instagram or pull up a youtube video of somebody doing something really stupid that resulted in either death or loss of a limb.  Pretty sure had cell phones been around during my middle and high school days I wouldn’t have said a word to my parents.  Granted, my parents would have been way too cheap to buy me a cell phone or pay for a plan that would have given me enough data to keep my hourly porn needs satisfied, the fact that I got my first job at 7 would have allowed me to come up with the cash to finance my cell phone and data usage.

So where does this leave me as a parent?  My kids are kind of annoying, granted I still love them, but it doesn’t keep me from questioning why I had kids in the first place.  The only logical answer that I can come up with is people have kids so they don’t have to be alone on the holidays.  How depressing would it be to always be alone on the major holidays?  If you have kids it’s pretty much guaranteed that you will have somebody to hang out with you on the holidays.  Granted, if you didn’t have kids you could probably afford to go anywhere in the world when the holidays rolled around, easing the pain of being alone, but still there may be at least one purpose for kids that is legitimate an necessary.  However, my experience golfing with a 14 year old made me realize that I only have a few years left.  My kids, as much as they can be difficult, think I am great and actually want to hang out with me.  They look up to me, however misguided that may be, and I am a rather big part of their life right now.  My guess is that all that goes away even sooner than it did when I was growing up.  Phones and social media have brought about the demise of the parent child relationship much quicker than the erosion took place prior to the advent of phones, texting, and Instagram.  Just don’t buy them a phone, don’t cave in to the pressure.  That’s an easy position to take until you realize every other kid will have a phone and if your kids don’t they will be completely disconnected no matter how cool they may be in person.  So, to my may readers out there (I think I just cracked the double digit mark last month)  how do we solve this problem?  I need answers because I am running out of time.