One of the many, many things that children take from you, that you don't really see coming, is time. What seemed like an utterly unending resource during your 20s (well, my 20s at least. Perhaps you did more with your 20s. Fine. I hope your success keeps you warm at night. It does? Well...fuck. No-one likes a smart-ass, you know. Especially not rich, successful, happy, smart-asses) is suddenly the most precious thing in the world. Whereas previously a successful weekend may have gone something like: sleep, sleep more, eat, sleep, drink, drink more, sleep, stand around for a bit, drink, sleep, now suddenly the apogee of success is if you manage to read the first two pages of the weekend paper. I don't mean to imply that children actually destroy your time (though I'm only saying that because my dissertation proving that that's _exactly_ what they do hasn't made it through peer review yet) it's just that they occupy it. They sit in your time like...like gas. Expanding to fill absolutely every single spare bit of space. Spare space in time? Mixed metaphor or Dr Who homage? You decide!
But that's what brings me to my "You may be a parent if..." because frankly if a resource is that rare you'll do some pretty crazy things to obtain it. Or protect what small amount you have left. Me, I let my children destroy things. Precious things. Things I like. I have sat and watched my daughter rub my CDs on the floor, rendering Rebirth of Cool (volume 2, the good one. No, that's not opinion, that's fact) unreadable forever more. And why? Because it gave me 3 minutes of peace to finish reading the aforementioned first two pages of the paper. I've lain in bed and heard my kids destroying the kitchen and rolled over and gone back to sleep because a little kitchen anarchy is a small price to pay for 15 minutes more sleep. All of these have seemed like perfectly reasonable deals at the time but I'm concerned that it's a slippery slope. How far will I go? A small cat-fire in exchange for an uninterrupted shower? One slightly murdered neighbour as the price for 20 minutes on the computer without a small person implying that the Playschool website may be more enjoyable than whatever I'm currently doing? An existential, planet-busting, humanity-destroying event of biblical proportions in exchange for sleeping in til 11am on a Saturday morning like I used to? Yes. Yes to all those. Damn you, yes.
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