You Ain't Got No Alibi

Disclaimer: The following post is simply to be funny. It's just a joke. It's only humor. It's merely in jest. So no comments about how horrible or mean or stupid or vain or shallow I am. Relax and know that I'm just kidding. K?

I think, in retrospect, I'd rather be ugly on the inside. Having been ugly on the outside for so long, I've come to the conclusion that it's easier to hide inner ugliness. Sure, I'd be a jerk. Yeah, I'd be full of myself. I'd probably be a lonely, sad man who cared little for other people's feelings. But I could have gotten as many first dates as I wanted to in high school. And I wouldn't have had to work so hard to convince my wife when we were 19 that I had a redeeming personality. And I definitely wouldn't be compared to a "tired-looking Dan Akroyd" anymore.

Okay, now that I think about it, my wife was not shallow enough to have stayed with someone like that, even at 19. So I guess I prefer it this way. But I still wish I had a little more attractivity. (Yeah, I made that word up. It sounds cool, leave me alone.) It would make life a little easier for me. For instance, I wouldn't have to keep hoping that our kids would take after my wife. My biggest fear when she was pregnant was that they would come out with her great personality but my giant forehead and hockey stick-shaped eyebrows. I've been lucky enough with our children that they take after her completely. And they seem to have a good balance of both of our personalities. So they've lucked out so far. But I feel like I carry a rare genetic disorder that is likely to pass to one of my kids. So I don't know if I can keep trying to beat the odds like this. Cute kids are great. So we may have to be satisfied with having a family of four.

And I promised my wife one thing each time she was pregnant. I told her that I would not be one of those dads who thinks his distorted ugly kid is cute. Because there are different rules for moms. They can look at their Gollum look-alikes and say, "Isn't she adorable?" And they will never catch my sarcasm when I say, "It really makes you wonder why some people don't want to have kids, doesn't it?" See, for moms it's different. They carried the baby for 9 months, so they're biased. But dads can be objective. I know enough about babies to know that they don't have a clue if I make fun of them. So there's no use in sparing my baby's feelings to make my friends feel awkward. I don't think it's nice to make your friends feel obligated to lie about how "cute" your kid is. I told my wife that if we had gangly, Gremlin-like children with faces like the characters in the Garbage Pail Kids movie (see picture on the right), I was going to openly mock them until they were old enough to know what I was doing. And by then, hopefully, they grew out of their ugly stage. But luckily, I didn't have to do that. Maybe we should adopt in the future, though... just to be safe.