I Didn't Ask to Be Born

She’s a teenager. She’s angry. She’s almost always angry. She has developed that teenage eyeroll so many teenagers have when adults offer valid, intelligent advice to them. “Do not drive and text, it is distracting.” Eyeroll. “Do not get tattoos because if you don’t like it those things are hard to get rid of.” Eyeroll. “Pay attention in Scobe’s class because he’s a brilliant teacher.” Double eyeroll.

She spends most of her time self-pitying. Moody seems to be her disposition; with alternating moods of miserable and miserabler. Yes, yes, she’s a teenager. The world is against her except she knows little about the world or life in general. Her full experience of life has been as a child and even though she now has breasts and a period the be-all and end-all of her world view came mostly from being a little kid. That experience has now led her conclude she knows just about everything and just about everything she knows shows in the fact that her parents are almost always wrong.

She’s been a little girl far more years than she’s been a teenager and, of course, she has never been an adult. Thankfully, she does not feel any different than her friends who also bemoan their sad fates. Since they all do such bemoaning, they all must be right. Oh, how horrible life is; how horrible their parents are; how horrible school is; how horrible split ends are and how horrible that infection I got from the ring piercing I just did without permission. Why wouldn’t my parents give me permission to pierce my nipples if I want to? I mean they are my nipples!

Such is life in the suburbs where the schools are good to great; the teachers are basically intelligent and well prepared; the lawns are cut and the kids have so many activities that boredom seems impossible. Yet many of them are indeed bored.

“Why don’t you join the photography club?” asks Mom.

“It’s so boring,” she says.

“Why not try out for cheerleading?” asks Dad.

“I don’t want to go to all those practices,” she counters. “It’s so boring.”

“What about the science club?”

“Too boring. I hate science.”

“What about the French club?”

“I hate French. It’s boring.”

“What about the drama club?”

“All the guys are boring.”

“What about the ‘Helping the Poor’ club at church?”

“Boring. Nothing but poor people.”

Naturally, her parents are at their wits’ end. How do we get our former little girl to become more rational and understanding as she enters the world of those larger teenage bodies?

Finally, one day their daughter (in the large fully redone kitchen) has one of her epic meltdowns over the usual nothing and she lashes out and says, “I didn’t ask to be born!” Again, “Do you hear me? I didn’t ask to be born!”

Okay, let me step in now:

Oh, contraire, you whining brat; you did ask to be born. In fact, you were insistent on wanting to be born and here is proof positive that it was you who wanted to be born.

One night Daddy was feeling “the urge” and so was Mommy. That urge in Daddy builds up because he has so many microscopic sperm itching to get released for the race of their existences. Daddy and Mommy kiss, hug, drink champagne (who knows what the heck they did) leading up to the moment when YOU demanded that YOU come into existence.

In Daddy’s sperm there were between 40 million and 300 million sperm cells all hungering to get out of Daddy’s body and get into Mommy where they could win the race to Mommy’s awaiting egg. One of those 40- to 300 million sperm cells was YOU, Miss Sour-Face, the YOU who just finished whining, “I didn’t ask to be born!”

Hell, yes, you did. You demanded it.

You were able to knock out so many, many, many millions of your fellow sperm cells to win the race. They all wanted to be born; but you wanted it even more than they did. You swam as if your future life depended on it – because it did. You had to win that one, single race or you would cease to exist right then and there. You and all those 40- to 300-million sperm cells put the pressure on Daddy to come to Mommy and then you all did what you needed to do. Fight like crazy to get born.

Each one of these sperm wanted desperately to be “born.” If they could talk each one would have said, “Oh, please, let me be born. Please, please, please.” But they couldn’t talk; all they could do was try to win the race. And who won that race? You!

Your sperm and your egg (for Mommy’s egg is you too) coupled and the full you came into existence. That egg wanted to be fertilized. That sperm wanted to fertilize. Neither was forced into such an arrangement. YOU wanted it so badly that you made it happen.

So as she stands in the kitchen stomping her feet on the floor and grouchily snapping, “I didn’t ask to be born” her parents should say the following:

“I’ll bet you that you asked to be born. If I can prove that you asked to be born I win and you stop being a pain in the ass and if you win I’ll buy you a ticket to any place in the world you’d like to live.”

Sorry, the girl is correct: she didn't ask to be born.

She didn't exist at the moment of conception: it was a biological act on behalf of her parents that led to her conception, whether they intended it or not: the girl had no choice in the matter.

It was her parent's selfishness, or negligence, which led to her being born: the girl is blameless.

"Blameless" for being brought into a world she is not happy in.

Perhaps a better issue to explore would be "Why is there an increasing number of teenage suicides?"

Of course, this is somewhat tongue in cheek but still, she fought to be born even if you think of it as a blind natural drive. I also think I made clear she isn't in some horrible family. But you do make good points nevertheless.

wow, Mr. S., you come up with some wild stuff. But it is fun to listen in on you and what I presume to be your daughter.

No, I don't have a daughter and thankfully my sons never said that to me. But I did see this in living color at a local event in my village and I thought I'd go with it.

A good reply would be,"I'll give you $500 if you bring someone in here who did ask "

Who did ask to be born? Its a rather meaningless statement,
right up there with 'I didn't ask for these parents'.

Well written. I like it.

But a better reply might be, we didn't ask for you to be born either.

I once saw a father pushing a stroller with an infant in it. The infant had a t-shirt on that said:

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Well written. I like it.

But a better reply might be, we didn't ask for you to be born either.

I once saw a father pushing a stroller with an infant in it. The infant had a t-shirt on that said:

NSFW

Daddy wanted a blow job.

Wonder if daddy went out to play Big Six later that day?

I have a teenage daughter who is all "innocent" at age 15, and to some extent, she gets away with alot because her average hovers around 95%. Unfortunately, she's stupid enough to leave her computer skype sessions open and her cell phone with me at times, and yeah, I snoop, mostly to verify what I already know.

Any parent who thinks their kid is innocent has another thing waiting for them. The thing is -- I was 15 once, and if I recall correctly, I was experimenting with alcohol and girls at the time. I certainly did things that I wouldn't be proud of. However, there is no record of it except my own memory. I wasn't stupid enough to write it down. I didn't have email so I couldn't write experiences of it to my friends. I didn't have FaceBook so I couldn't post a stupid picture on line. Most of all, I didn't have texting or skype available which keeps a record of everything that you text.

The past is the present on the Internet.