I have always disliked children. Perhaps not always, but as far back as I can remember being someone who makes my own mind up, I have not really liked them. I have a strange love for my niece and nephew, one that closely resembles concern, but there is only so much I can take of those two. I vaguely remember that being around my older cousin’s just felt more better than the ones my age. I’d much rather have a cat.

As I approach 26, and all my friends are popping off into the marriage zone one by one, like little lemmings who are throwing away their money, and eventually creating little people, I get asked about myself. It really isn’t socially acceptable for a girl (I can never refer to myself as woman) to not want children. We are meant to have accelerating biological clocks, that start beeping louder and louder like the alarm on my blackberry.

People ask me why I don’t like children, and I have my responses, prepared like an acceptance speech at an awards ceremony. They are annoying, I don’t want to clean their poop, they talk too much, they ask too many questions, I can’t be selfish around them, or tell them what I really think, for fear of permanently scarring them and leading to a life of psychopathy. These are my canned and bottled answers, and I always find them satisfactory. They don’t, their response response is always the same, when you have your own, these things won’t bother you. I agree to disagree because I really don’t care. (I use the ominous “them” so much here.)

I got asked the other day, do you relate to children. This threw me off. No of course I don’t, I hate them from the very bottom of my foot. But I do, i love all their toys, I want to play with them, and I just want to build sandcastles and go to school and learn and run around at recess. The idea of recess is amazing. I imagined my self on the jungle gym, and then conversely sneering at babies, because I didn’t want to hold them.

And this was a revelation. I hate children, because I am jealous. The same way we all hate the prettiest girl in the room. The same way we hate that giant monstrosity of a billion dollar single family home. I find ugliness in all these things, because on some level. No not some level, on many levels I want them all.

I want to be that baby, who is happy to be paling with a marigold flower, wildly amused by my friends beard (that always gets food in it!). I want to play with toys, I want to run around at recess and giggle in class, when someone tells me that the uterus very closely resembles a cows head.

Plus children are selfish selfish creatures, and I am a selfish selfish creature. If you have something that some little human creature wants you have to give it to them, and they ruin everything. I can’t imagine playing lego with a baby, I’d just steal them all and make something awesome, instead of of some lopsided idea of a house or some other idiot thing it would come up with. I don’t think I’d be able to let a child win at video games, or touch my RC heli, or intricate mechanical toys. They want everything, and I don’t want them to have it.

This isn’t a nicely packaged response in a box with a bow that I can present to the world. I will be told I will live vicariously through the child. But, that isn’t really true. I don’t like them, because I can’t be one of them. It’s the simplest most basic logic. Occam’s Razor wins again.