What If Our Baby Grows Up To Be Prime Minister?
Personally, I find politics very frustrating and unappealing. Don't get me wrong: I think politicians are important people, and we need to have good people out there who aspire to be great politicians. For myself, though, I find the partisanship, hostility, and negative campaigning tactics really exhausting.
But if our baby decides to go into politics, then I'm going to do everything I can to help him be a good politician and to become Prime Minister! Because if our baby grows up to be Prime Minister, I'll probably get to meet lots of famous people, and that's always fun.
I'll help our baby run straightforward election campaigns and never stoop to smearing his opponents or trying to dig up their personal histories to make them look bad, like all the other politicians out there do. I'll advise our Prime Minister baby to do what he knows is good and right, regardless of the public outcry.
Then I'll get him to declare my birthday a national holiday, of course. Hooray!
What If Our Baby Grows Up To Be A Coal Miner?
Oh man. What if our baby grows up to be a coal miner?
Here's a job that would really worry me. It's scary, dirty, and dangerous. Plus the burning of coal is really bad for the environment! It's hard to imagine a more nerve-wracking job that our baby could grow up to have.
Okay, maybe it isn't that hard. I have a pretty good imagination. Our baby could be a test subject for poison research, or a body double for the Pope, or a soccer referee in South America, or a rodeo clown. Actually, a couple of those would be pretty awesome. I'd definitely rather have a rodeo clown than a coal miner.
If our baby was a coal miner, I'd buy her lots and lots of canaries to test for poisonous gases in the tunnels. She'd basically go to work every day surrounded by a solid bubble of canaries, so they could breathe all the black lung around her, like a filter system.
Aw, poor little canaries. They'd be dropping like flies, I bet. Maybe we shouldn't let our baby become a coal miner. I'm not sure I could have so many canary murders on my conscience.
What If Our Baby Grows Up To Be A Volcanologist
What if Larissa's and my baby grows up to be a volcanologist? It's a very real possibility!
I think I'd really like having a volcanologist in the family, if for no other reason than that I would get to say "volcanologist" a lot. The word's even fun to type, let alone speak out loud. Try this out: insert "volcanologist" into one conversation and see how much it improves your entire day. Add the word "eruption" on top of that, and you've got endless funtimes.
I'm not much of a worrier, but I think I'd probably get a little tense if I knew that my baby was staring into the mouths of volcanoes all day. I wouldn't want to hear that my kid was playing the starring role in a real-life disaster movie. And lava may be one of the most compellingly imaginative substances in the entire world (major props to God for inventing it, by the way), but it's also super scary. If there's one thing I've learned from classic video games, it's that touching lava will kill you instantly. And it destroys magic rings, too.
I think I could get over all that, especially if we continue to live in the Ring of Fire. Here on the west coast it would certainly be useful to have some inside connections with earthquake- and volcano-predicting agencies... That would be a definite plus!
As with anything, there would be positives and negatives to having a child who was a volcanologist.
Volcanologist. Tee hee.
Thanks to @meaganhogg, who suggested that I do a What If Our Baby post about being a geologist. I liked the suggestion, but I hope you don't mind that I decided to take it a step further.
What If Our Baby Becomes a Ninja?
Some day, there is a good chance that precious little baby growing inside Larissa could grow up to be a ninja. Talk about a career that could produce some mixed feelings in a parent!
On the one hand, having a ninja for a son could be really cool. Think of all the benefits! I'd never have to worry about my personal security, for one. I wouldn't have to stress about my son being killed in any kind of accident, either, because of his ninja reflexes. Plus we'd definitely be the most popular parents on the block. Everyone wants to be on a ninja's good side, so they'd probably bring us all kinds of presents, like gift cards to fancy restaurants and stuff.
On the other hand, how would we teach him that children are to be seen and not heard? He'd more likely be unseen, unheard, unsmelled... just generally undetected. Hard to show off your son to his grandparents when you have no idea where he's hiding. On top of that, it's hard to know how stable ninjahood is as a career choice. I don't have much personal knowledge of it, but I assume you have to work on contract, and that can be difficult. What happens during a recession, or if there's a decline in ninja demand? Is there a ninja union? Do ninjas get recognized for employment insurance? What kinds of pensions can they get?
It could be really interesting if our baby grows up to be a ninja, but I think I have some research to do before I'll be entirely comfortable with it.
What If Our Baby Becomes a Master Chef?
Larissa and I are really excited to become parents, and, Lord willing, we will be, come early April 2012. As a way to celebrate our anticipation, I'm going to write a series of blog posts about who our first child might become. We don't know if we're having a boy or a girl, so I'm going to alternate between posts.
What if our baby grows up to be a master chef?
As our budding restaurateur familiarizes herself with our kitchen, it's likely there will be a few cuts and a burn or two. We'd better make sure to keep some bandaids and balms handy, just in case. And I expect it will be important to practice suppressing our gag reflexes for the inevitable disastrous flavour combos we'll have to endure as the primary guinea pigs for our daughter's culinary experimentation.
Think of the payoff, though! I can't wait to get free meals at our little girl's fancy restaurant, and see the looks on all the other guests' faces as they enjoy their food. We'll be so proud, and we'll tell everyone we know to go and try our daughter's signature dish, whatever that turns out to be.
It will be really awesome if our baby grows up to be a master chef. I can't wait to watch it happen!
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