Smells like teen spirit...

Doctor McHenry says there is no
reason the boy shouldn't be working.

Well, it’s been eleven days now and the novelty has worn off. That wonderful new baby smell has faded and I’m left with the question of what to do with the boy until he turns eighteen and I can boot him out of the house. I’m already tired of listening to his music and if I hear that song about the farmer and his dell one more time I won’t be held responsible for what might happen. Darn kids and their rap music.

Yo, McDonald had dis farm, with a hoe-hoe here,
and a hoe-hoe dere,
here a hoe, dere a hoe, everywhere a hoe-hoe.
Man, I thought it was a Washington call girl service.

All the boy wants to do all day is lay around, suck the nipple and sleep. When I was his age I already had two paper routes, a fledging lawn service and I sold Band-Booster candy bars on the side. I can’t even get my son to empty the trash once a week and his diapers are two thirds of what we throw away now; except for the really soiled ones which I’m burying in the backyard in an attempt to recycle them as fertilizer for the herb garden. The idea will work too if I can just get the dogs to stop digging them back up and using them for chew toys.

He’s already giving me that look too. The one that says, “All the other kids have a big wheel, why can’t I have one too?” Oh yeah, like next he’ll be wanting some sunglasses and rub-on-tattoos so he looks real cool cruising around the block smoking candy cigarettes and hitting on the young girls. Does he think his dad was born yesterday? My kid ain’t leaving the yard until he’s twenty-five and even then I’ll be chaperoning.

I believe a child has got to have structure and discipline. That is why I’m now raising my boy in a Skinner box. Once he learns to push the right combination of buttons the food will flow again and he’ll put on enough weight to join the work force. I’ve been preparing to start him off on a career of weaving hemp and sea-shell necklaces. Once he pays me back for the initial investment of materials, the small wooden crutch and tin cup I had custom made for marketing I’ll begin salting away his three percent of the profits towards his community college fund.

Well, I’d write more but I’ve got to go and complete the once a week hosing down of the Skinner box. You’d be amazed at how nasty those things can get after five or six days of infant occupation.