WHAT'S HAPPENING, DADDY!

I've been thinking about having kids lately. After blithely coasting through a long period of my life in which I loathed children (for the typical reasons--they're selfish, uninteresting, and unread), I think I'm turning the corner. I'm not sure that this reflects some new found maturity or a willingness to abnegate my needs, priorities, and concerns for those of my child. Although I'd like to think that, of course. Instead, I suspect that my wanting a child is more or less a function of my penchant for acquisition. When I was a kid, I liked to collect stuff. The same holds true today. All the other kids in school--i.e., the senior associates that I work with--have young children and when we're out for lunch and they're zinging the table with cute little stories about their little kids, I feel a little left out. Plus, I think I'm partly driven by my desire to see a living, breathing child-like Claire in the flesh. Claire was a very cute child. She's perfectly fine now, but things have changed (it's not better, or worse, just different). Long story short, I kind of want to have my own little Ba Jr. running around my house, traumatizing her siblings, talking shit, and biting off more watermelon than she can chew.