Many of you who don't yet have kids are avoiding it out of a sense that you're not ready. After all, what do you when your kid tries to set the cat on fire with a lighter and a can of bug spray? What do you say when your son stumbles across your porn? How do you know you're not handling it in a way that will screw your kid up for life?

Well, most of you will use your own parents as a guide -- you'll raise your kids the way you were raised. But that's not so easy for some of us.

I grew up in two abusive households, one with a neglectful mother who would spend her days sleeping off a hangover. The other was spent with my dad, who was drunk, violent and had some pretty severe mental problems, which he treated with the, "doctors are for pussies, get me a beer" method. So, for example, when Dad decided it was time to teach us about sex, he didn't want to have an actual conversation about it, so he put in an instructional video. And by instructional video, I mean one of his hardcore porn VHS tapes.

In the middle of it, my grandma decided to pay us a visit, walked in without knocking and went absolutely apeshit. My brother and I later had to hear her explanation of what a homosexual was after my dad yelled at her his defense of, "Well, what the fuck do you want me to do? You want them to grow up to be a couple of queers?!" I was six. My brother was five.

But more on that in a moment. My point is everything I knew about parenting, I learned from these two fuckups. So where do people like me turn when we have questions? Well first of all ...