The Condom Lady
When I was a teenage male, it was very difficult to obtain condoms, because you had to buy them at the drugstore from the Condom Lady, who was about 65 and looked like your grandmother only more moral. She had a photographic memory so she knew exactly who you were, and as soon as you left the store, she would dial a special number that would connect her with a gigantic loudspeaker system so she could announce to your parents and your teachers and everybody in your church or synagogue and people on the street that you had just bought condoms. Now they sell condoms right out in the open on display racks, just like breath mints or something, and the Condom Lady has switched over to selling Penthouse magazine to middle-aged businessmen at the airport.
For older males, the most effective form of birth control is the vasectomy, which is a simple surgical procedure that can be done right in your doctor’s office. Notice I say your doctor’s office. I myself would insist on having it done at the Mayo Clinic surrounded by a team of several dozen crackerjack surgeons and leaders of all the world’s major religious groups. I don’t take any chances with so-called minor surgical procedures, because the last one I had was when the dentist took my wisdom teeth out, and subsequently I almost bled to death in the carpet department at Sears.
The way I understand it, what happens in a vasectomy is they tie some kind of medical knot in the male conduit so the sperm can’t get through. Of course, this leads to the obvious question, which is: Won’t the sperm back up? Will these poor pathetic males someday explode like water balloons, spewing sperm all over and possibly ruining an important sales presentation? I say the American Medical Association ought to get the hell off the golf course and answer this question before the public becomes needlessly alarmed.
Female Birth Control
Female birth control is much more complicated, because once sperm are safely inside a female, they become very aggressive. They barge up and down the various feminine tubes and canals, hooting and whistling, until they locate the egg. Then they strike up a conversation, feigning great interest in the egg’s personality, but actually looking for the first opportunity to penetrate.
There is no absolutely foolproof way to stop this fertilization process. The old wives’ tale, of course, is that a female could avoid getting pregnant by not having sex, but this was disproved by a recent experiment in which Harvard University biologists placed 50 old wives in a locked condominium for two years, and 35 percent of them got pregnant anyway merely by looking at pictures of Raymond Burr.
But there are things that a woman can do. She can insert one of the many feminine insertion devices shaped like alien space vehicles, which are designed to scare the sperm into stampeding right back out the vestibule. Or she can take the pill, which messes with her hormones in such a way that her body gets fooled into thinking it is already pregnant. The egg gets all bloated and starts to feel weepy and nauseous in the morning, and when it comes clomping down the fallopian tubes, the sperm all go stampeding right back out the vestibule.
What the public is eagerly awaiting, of course, is a birth-control pill for males. If you ever see members of the public gathering in eager little knots, that’s what they’re waiting for. The male medical establishment has been assuring us for years that such a pill is right around the corner. “Believe us,” they say, “there’s nothing we’d rather do than come up with a pill that messes with our hormones, so we can take this burden from the women, who have been unfairly forced to bear it for far too long. In fact, we’d probably finish developing the male birth-control pill tonight, but we have to play league softball.”
How Much Does It Cost to Have a Baby?
In primitive times, having a baby was very inexpensive. When women were ready to give birth, they simply went off and squatted in a field; this cost nothing except for a nominal field-rental charge. Today, of course, the medical profession prefers that you have your baby in a hospital, because only there can doctors, thanks to the many advances in medical equipment and techniques, receive large sums of money.
It is difficult to predict exactly what the doctor’s bill for your pregnancy will be, because every situation is different. If your doctor’s Mercedes-Benz is running well, he may charge you as little as $2,000; if there are complications, such as that he has been hearing a little ticking sound in the transmission lately, then he may be forced to charge you much more. It is a good idea to “shop around” before you settle on a doctor. Ask about the condition of his Mercedes. Ask about the competence of his mechanic. Don’t be shy! After all, you’re paying for it.
The Cost of Everything After the Baby Is Born Right Up Until It Goes to College or, God Help You, Graduate School
Again, it is very hard to be specific here, largely because I haven’t done any research. In my own case, I estimate that the cost of raising our son, Robert, to age three, which is where he is at the moment, breaks down as follows:
Little metal cars—$13,000
Everything else—$4,000
If we extrapolate this out for the next 18 years, assuming that inflation continues, and that we don’t have a nuclear war, which would pretty much render the point moot, we can conclude that in the long term a child can cost just scads of money. Maybe you should go back and read the section on birth control.
Should the Woman Quit Her Job to Have a Baby?
The advantage of quitting your job is that if you want to, you can make a really nasty speech to your boss, right in front of everybody, where you tell him he’s incompetent and has the worst case of bodily odor in the annals of medicine. The disadvantage is that you’ll lose your income, which means for the next eight or nine years the only new article of clothing you will be able to afford for yourself will be dress shields.
The advantage of keeping your job is that you will be able to stand around the Xerox machine for a couple of months showing pictures of your child to your co-workers, who will ooh and ahh even though very young infants tend to look like unwashed fruit.
What About Insurance?
Don’t worry. Your insurance needs will automatically be taken care of by squadrons of insurance salesmen, who can detect a pregnant woman up to 11 miles away on a calm day, and who will show up at your house carrying sleeping bags and enough freeze-dried food to enable them to stay for weeks if necessary.
The Intangible Benefits
Of course, you can’t reduce children to mere dollars and cents. There are many intangible benefits, by which
