Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Dungeons & Dragons

by Shelly Mazzanoble

  judy: Sounds right up your alley.

  me: And the little girl baby is all “Helllllp meeeeeeeee, I’m falling in the waaaaaaaaaaaaatttterrrrrrrrrrrr!” and then she tumbles out of chair and starts screaming her face off.

  judy: Was she hurt?

  me: No! She was acting. Pretending to drown! First of all, what kind of game is that?

  judy: Hmm, I seem to remember you and your brother playing Bonnie and Clyde. I’d say pretending to drown is on par with acting like mass-murdering bank robbers.

  me: Whatever. But in a restaurant? So the brother starts screaming, too, and tries pulling the sister back on her chair.

  judy: Admirable. Mike would have let you drown.

  me: And the whole time the parents are just sitting there sharing a Caesar salad and sipping their Chianti and offering the occasional, whisper of, “Kids …” I mean, really? Just a softly spoken “kids” as a means of discipline? As if reminding them of what they are will shock the a-hole behavior out of them?

  judy: You can’t call kids a-holes! They’re kids!

  me: Oh, please, you’re as bad as Bart!

  judy: Right. What was this horrible, insurmountable thing he did?

  me: He laughed! Like it was cute or something.

  judy: Unforgiveable!

  me: These kids were downright annoying and clearly not being parented! And yes, I am turning into you because I caught myself doing those loud sighs you tend to do when you’re irritated and want to passive-aggressively let the cause of your irritation know.

  judy: I seldom get irritated anymore. I just let everything roll right off my back because I believe it’s happening for a reason.

  me: Please. I was on the phone with you when that “minivan-driving highway Nazi asshat” took your parking space.

  judy: So Bart has more patience than you do. Big deal.

  me: It is a big deal and here’s why. Not only was he unfazed by the kids’ unruly behavior but he said he wished he could play, too. He said, “Kids get to have the most fun. Anytime. Anywhere.”

  judy: That can’t surprise you. You bought him Legos for Christmas.

  me: That wasn’t the surprising part. The look on his face was what surprised me. It was almost wistful. Like he enjoyed the noise and chaos of those kids.

  judy: Not everyone breaks out in hives and develops stomach upset at the sight of Thomas the Train like you do.

  me: So I have no choice but to ask him. ‘Bart, do you actually like kids?’ And he says … Oh, God, it’s too painful. I can’t say it.

  judy: Tell me!

  me: He said, “Sure!” Turns out Bart fancies himself a dad someday.

  judy: Yay, Bart! I like him more and more.

  me: Please. You just like what he represents: The Holy Grailmother.

  judy: Didn’t you guys ever talk about having kids? I thought it might have come up somewhere between your third date and talking about moving in together.

  me: Well, yeah, but in abstract terms. Like when we’re both lying on our respective couches and too lazy to get up we say things like “If we had a kid, we could make him get us a couple of beers and a bag of chips right now.”

  judy: I think you’d be a wonderful mother. You learned from the best.

  me: Did I? Hmm, I don’t remember her. Maybe I could Google her sometime.

  judy: You’re an a-hole.

  me: Hey! I thought we weren’t supposed to call kids a-holes!

  judy: I’m a mother. We make the rules and we can break the rules. You should try it sometime.

  So okay, I don’t have kids, and I think we established that I’m not their biggest fan. Childless adults are actually pretty common these days, especially in Seattle. Did you know there are more dogs than babies living in my fair city? I know—it’s the unmother ship, and I kind of love Seattle even more because of it. Here’s the weird thing: Judy apparently doesn’t know I don’t have kids. How is this possible? I mean, I know babies magically happen. I’ve seen their births reenacted on that television show where clueless women come out of Mexican restaurants thinking they should have taken it easy on those chips and guac and next thing you know they’re hunkering down behind the dumpster watching a baby head magically appear from beneath their miniskirt! But that would never happen to me. I’m much too old for miniskirts. (But I have been known to polish off a burrito the size of my thigh. Those women on TV are wimps.)

  It would appear that poor Judy is so blinded by Grandma Envy she has taken another cue from her beloved book, The Secret, and acts like I either have kids or am in the process of trying to get them. She sends me links to articles about parenting strategies and hot trends.

  Infant Stress Leads to Angry Adults!

  What stress? Pooping, eating, and sleeping? Bring it on, you big babies!

  Obese Women Have Less Sex but More Babies!

  (See “burrito the size of my thigh.”)

  40+ Baby Boom on the Rise as Moms Decide to Wait on Parenthood!

  I think this one speaks for itself.

  I’m not quite forty, but I’m sure Judy is reassured by this random study done by a small focus group somewhere off the coast of Suwarrow Island. My usual response to these news items is firing back with a study conducted somewhere off the coast of my couch proving that mothers who guilt their daughters into parenthood are ninety-seven times more likely to end up in subpar assisted-living homes.

  “Did you read the story about the girl who retaliated against her bullish mother by publishing a tell-all memoir that included pictures of her mom in a bathing suit?” I’d ask Judy.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” she would snap.

  “I have photos. And a scanner. Keep the baby books coming and see for yourself.”

  The spam usually stops. As much as I am terrified of not having contact solution (see Chapter 5), Judy lives in fear of someone other than those who were lucky enough to be sprung from her loins and the man who put them there (ew) ever seeing her in a bathing suit. But apparently her memory is as bad as mine and she’ll be back to her old tricks in no time.

  “The name Judith is making a comeback,” she said one morning. “I’d be honored, thank you.”

  “Get a goldfish.”

  Here’s the thing. I’m not against kids. I’m sure there are plenty of good ones out there. Some who will grow up to be the doctors who might cure my illness or go on to star in reality shows I’ll obsess over in my golden years. Some of my friends have kids, and I like spending time with them for a few minutes here and there. I just never felt the pull to be a mom. At least not to a human.

  Now show me a sad-eyed pit bull on a TV ad for the ASPCA and I’m in tears. I do feel the pull to adopt animals. As many as the city of Seattle and my homeowners association will allow me to. The other day I was watching a show called When Vacations Attack (don’t ask—there really is no bar when it comes to what I’ll watch on TV) and it showed amateur footage from that massive earthquake in Sichuan. It was chill-inducing. Totally awful. People were scattering in all directions, running for their lives. Mountains were literally exploding and tearing through towns ready to engulf those in their path. Tourists, locals, kids. Buildings collapsed like tindersticks. It was horrifying, to say the least.

  “That sucks,” I said to Bart. “How many faults is Seattle built on again?”

  “Remember when the power went out at our hotel in Bellingham?” Bart asked. “And we were pissed because we couldn’t chill our champagne in the minifridge? They should put that on this show.”

  I nodded, shoving another handful of Pirate’s Booty into my mouth. “Amen.”

  Then I saw something truly tragic—a man running toward the camera, carrying a baby panda by its armpits. I totally lost it.

  “Save the paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanda!!!!!!!! How can they show this stuff on television? I’m calling Comcast right now!”

  “You’re sick,” is what Judy would say about my reaction.

  She is not an animal lover. Doesn’t even li
ke to see squirrels in her yard. Therefore she cannot fathom how one can experience heart-bursting joy watching a dog’s paw move when she’s dreaming. And that little sleep woopf woopf woopf. I die every time. But I can relate to Judy’s animal apathy because I assume it’s the same feeling mothers and fathers to human children must have that prevent them from vomiting into their diaper genies at the mere sight of Desitin.

  With the exception of those that bear the same last name as my friends and loved ones, I don’t like kids. I don’t have an unfettered desire to hug a baby when it rolls by in its big pimped-out stroller. I don’t even know how to properly hold a baby, which is why I have rules about being in the same room with babies:

  1. Don’t assume I want to hold your baby and toss it in my arms. I most likely do not want to hold your baby, and forcing me to is one step away from child abuse.

  2. In the rare event that I do want to hold your baby, please don’t leave the room. My urge is subject to change on a dime.

  3. I will only hold babies while I am sitting down. Preferably on a couch. Preferably with a cushion to support my right arm. Babies get heavy really fast.

  4. If the baby cries, squirms, passes gas, smells funny, or soils its diapers, please take it back immediately.

  5. If the baby makes a poop face, he’s yours. Hope you can catch. I. Don’t. Do. Poop.

  “But you have a box of poop in your living room,” my friends kindly remind me, referring to Zelda’s bathroom. I have nowhere else to put it, okay? And scooping litter is a lot different than digging green snot bubbles out of your offspring’s nose—I can’t even go there.

  Ugh. I went there.

  Maybe I’m not a baby person because I wasn’t ever around them. My youngest cousins are only five and seven years my junior, so I was way too young to be trusted with their care. I only babysat once when I was twelve and that was for a toddler whose parents had MTV. I didn’t do as much babysitting as Bon Jovi-watching and calling my twelve-year-old girlfriends at their babysitting jobs to make sure they were watching Bon Jovi, too. The sounds of babies crying and kids acting up make my spine rigid and my teeth clench. I can practically feel my ovaries shriveling up and moving to Boca Raton when I see or hear a kid having a meltdown. I know I should feel sorry for the parents. It’s not their fault (I’m told) that their kids are acting like … well, kids. But still, how dare there be an unhappy child in my radius? (I am immune to barking dogs, by the way. I know … I know.…)

  “I think you’d be a really good mom,” Bart said out of the blue one day.

  “Why the hell would you say that?” I asked. I had a homemade apple crisp in the oven and was putting away laundry at the time so I sincerely hoped it wasn’t some antiquated 1950s stereotype he was secretly harboring. Jeez. Maybe we do need to spend more time “getting to know” one another.

  “You’re very nurturing and generous,” he said. “And you’re good at putting Ikea furniture together. I think that would come in handy.”

  I generously toss Zelda off the couch and spread three months worth of magazines and catalogs out on the Ikea bedside tables. “Thanks. I guess.” There are worse things he could have said to me, right?

  But this conversation wasn’t over. “And I think I would be a good dad.”

  “You’d be a playful one, for sure. But more important, do you want to be?”

  There was a long pause before he answered quite simply, “Yes.”

  It’s possible Bart’s fatherhood fantasies involve always having someone to play D&D with and a reason to buy Star Wars action figures again. Not to dismiss his feelings, but I think there are parts of parenthood he glossed over. Like the part about “your freedom to do pretty much anything on a whim is O.V.E.R.”

  One night we were at a German bar around the corner.

  “You know,” I began after taking a long, hearty sip of my Spezial, “If we had a kid we couldn’t just spontaneously decide to come out for a beer. These outings would have to be planned well in advance and likely cost us $10 an hour.”

  “Sure we could,” he answered back. “We’d just put the baby to bed and bring the monitor here. Those things have insane ranges.”

  Please tell me he’s not reading Consumer Reports for the latest in baby gear. “How do you know that?”

  “They’re the poor man’s walkie-talkie,” he answered. “Sean and I used them in our cars when we were moving his brother down to Eugene.”

  That made sense, but back to his initial statement. Even I knew there was something very wrong with bringing a baby monitor into a bar.

  “Let me get this straight. You think it’s okay to leave our baby home alone while we come to a bar a few doors down, prop the baby monitor on the bar, and proceed to get pie-eyed on Doppelbocks?”

  “Why not? We’d hear her if she cried and the time it would take to get home is probably the same amount it would take to get to her room.”

  “Or maybe sooner, considering Child Protective Services would probably drive us.”

  Bart just laughed. “It’s a great idea! But if you’re worried what people would think, we could probably just stick the monitor in your purse.”

  After the beer-versus-baby monitor incident, we found ourselves at Crate & Barrel shopping for our friend’s wedding gift.

  “Check that out,” Bart said, pointing to a wall-mounted tea light candle-holder. “Wouldn’t that be the coolest kid nightlight ever?”

  “You want to give a kid a wall of fire as a nightlight?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Why not? Sleeping by candlelight is very soothing.”

  “So is falling asleep to the sounds of your parents playing foosball and downing pints at the neighborhood bar, I guess.”

  Sometimes I think I have to have Bart’s kid just to save her from her father.

  “I think it might be slightly dangerous,” I said.

  Bart looked heartbroken. “Maybe when she’s older,” he said.

  I made the mistake of telling Judy about both of these incidents. Maybe I was hoping she’d agree—we should not be responsible for the care and well-being of anything on two legs—but it had the opposite effect.

  “He daydreams about nightlights and baby monitors? Oh, I just love him!”

  “Nightlights made of fire, Judy! Can you get footed PJs made out of gypsum? Because she’s going to need them!”

  “Oh, he’s just saying that now. Once he’s a father he won’t want to take any chances. He’ll be a great father.”

  That I agree with. I do think he’d be a great father. Me, I’m not so sure about.

  Everyone’s a self-help expert when it comes to raising someone else’s kids, imaginary or otherwise. Baby crying in a restaurant? Take him outside! Teenager stealing your Budweiser and Midol? Hello, Army! Toddler tossing a tantrum in the shoe department at Nordstrom? For the love of all things holy, teach that child to have some respect for culture! See? It’s easy! And I don’t even know how to change a diaper!

  That Dr. Spock guy seems cool enough, but wow, did he open the door for “well-meaning” experts to offer up the unsolicited child-rearing advice. But maybe the number of advice books out there teaching people how not to raise rude, inconsiderate, SAT-failing jackasses is telltale that it’s not easy to raise kids. Personally, I’d like to find the quack that encouraged mothers in the 1970s to take diet pills while preggers because they were “gaining too much weight.”

  Umm, Mom? You were growing a person inside you. A little weight gain is normal.

  There’s at least a common theme here. You don’t want your kids to suck and neither do the rest of us. Poking around the bookshelves of my breeder friends, I noticed two things.

  1. They have a lot of books on parenting.

  2. I bought a lot of these books on parenting for them. What? They make great shower gifts.

  Most of the books cover five basics: communication, involvement, education, discipline, and punishment. Once you master these, congratulations! Your kid can go outs
ide now.

  Is nothing left to instinct anymore? Look at how animal mothers protect their babies. I’m pretty sure they’re not reading books.

  Judy “Make Me a Grandma” Mazzanoble has another way of illustrating the joys of procreating. She tells me about how awesome other people’s kids are.

  “Little Hunter, the neighbor’s daughter’s best friend’s godson?” Judy began, “was in his second cousin’s wedding and burst out crying when he saw his tuxedo because he wanted to wear a red T-shirt like Winnie the Pooh! How cute is that?”

  “Who wears a red T-shirt to a wedding?” I asked. “Unless you’re a Star Trek security guard.”

  “He was a ring bearer!” she yelled. “Get it? bearer? Bear? Like Winnie the Pooh?”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh, come on! You’d think it was funny if it was a dog!”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “A dog who burst out crying because it was forced to wear a tuxedo instead of a red shirt like Winnie the Pooh? Anyone would find that funny. I’m laughing just thinking about it.”

  And then I got the whole why-are-you-so-heartless-and-cruel speech. Obviously I’m just torturing her by letting all that perfectly good DNA she passed on go to waste.

  There are people who swear they didn’t like kids until they had their own.

  “You like them when they’re yours,” my friend Stacy told me. “But I still think other people’s suck.”

  “But what if you don’t like them and they’re yours? It’s not like there’s a trial period.” I like to remind Stacy of Joan Crawford, who clearly did not like kids, even ones she willingly adopted.

  Another friend pointed out that you only notice kids who make themselves noticeable. How many sleeping, cuddly, quietly-playing-with-their-plastic-key-chain-set children do I walk by on a daily basis, unaware of their existence? Plenty, I’m sure. But I can’t help notice the crying, pooping, flopping-around-on-the-cool-tile-floor-like-Ice-T-in-Breakin’ babies. They, like Kim Kardashian’s butt, are just begging to be noticed.

  Those noticeable kids cross my path more times than I care to admit. Sometimes I wonder if we’re all born with a super power and mine is the ability to unleash the inner demon of those three feet tall and under.