14 Children

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Can you imagine? 14 kids? How in the hell would you even remember their names? Would you have to count them every time you left the room? And changing diapers? That has to be a little like the guys who paint the Golden Gate Bridge - you finish it and then just start over.

A story broke yesterday that the woman who had 8 at once - like a Cocker Spaniel - is going to get a little financial help. They are talking thousands of dollars a month. Was that what the woman was after? Or does she sincerely believe that she has enough love for fourteen children?

I grew up in a family with five siblings - we are all as tight as hell - but man, there were moments. I can't imagine how the dinner table is going to look for those 14 in about ten years. We had a classic dinner where Corinne and John got into an argument and Corinne tossed a fork that stuck in the corner of John's eye. No damage, but man he was shocked. And who can forget the mashed potato war between my mother and brothers? It would have gotten ugly if there were, oh, eight more kids running around.

I wish the woman well, I really do, but I must question her sanity, her mother's sanity, and the sanity of the doctors who set up the pregnancy. And how in the hell is she ever going to get married now? Can you imagine a blind date where she tells her new beau that she has children?

"Oh, I love children," he'd say. "What do you have a boy and a girl?"
"Yes, a boy and a girl and seven more girls and five more boys," she'd answer. "Don't ask me their names though because I have no freaking idea."

That man would be the hell out faster than Flash.

I have three children - when someone asks me what grades they're in, I have to really stop and think. I spent half the school year believing that Matt went to East when he is really enrolled at West. I also firmly believed he was only in the 9th grade instead of 10th.

Add 11 more kids to my day and I'd be like the narrator in the Bruce song - Hungry Heart - Got a wife and kids in Buffalo, Jack. I went out for a ride and I never went back.

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