I Can Barely Take Care of Myself

one man’s life, coming together over food and wine. (Okay, I was the only one with the wine.) Sort of semicasually, her knife hand holding the neck of a celery stalk hostage, she said to me, “So, I think we should talk about how you and Matt don’t plan to have children.”

I braced myself, expecting she’d take a blender, turn it on, and hold my hand over it, threatening, “Tell me again. Tell me one more time that you’re not giving me grandchildren. I dare you.” I figured she’d at the very least say something like, “You’re a horrible, soulless, morally barren woman who is stealing a future family from me and my son!”

Instead, she said very simply, “I support that decision. I participated in the women’s movement so that women could have more choices in life and this is one of those choices.” I felt relieved. She worked full-time and raised two kids but she didn’t try to make me feel like I needed to do the same.

But what would a conversation with your mother-in-law be without a little nugget of guilt that she gets to leave on your pillow before she turns down your metaphorical marital bed?

“Still, I can’t say that it isn’t a little bit sad to think that I’ll never see your children,” she continued. “And I know that you two would make great parents if that’s what you wanted.”

I THINK THAT people confuse a woman with empathy with someone who has the emotional means to raise a child. I’m not mother material but I’m a nice person, sure. And I’m a nice person because I’m usually in a good mood and I’m usually in a good mood because I’m not responsible for raising a child I don’t want.

There was this one time, back in 2002, where for a month I helped raise an eight-year-old boy—by accident, after he had an accident in his pants.

“Skyler defecated in his pants in the middle of class and he needs to be picked up from school, immediately.” That’s what the principal said to me over the phone as I was busy typing up invoices for my boss Jared’s flailing set design business that he ran out of his Glendale, California, home. Jared was home but he was locked in his bedroom downstairs, sleeping off a three-bottle wine bender. Skyler wasn’t Jared’s son. Skyler was Jared’s girlfriend’s son. Bethany, the girlfriend, wasn’t home. She was twenty miles away in Brentwood, taking a yoga class that, as she once bragged, “lots of celebrities and celebrity assistants attend.” Bethany was a former catalog model in the Midwest and moved to Los Angeles (well, Glendale) to pursue her dream of… some sort of ambiguous fame. She thought that once she was discovered, someone would figure out what to do with her now thirty-seven-year-old body. She would have been the cover model if there were a Los Angeles–based catalog called “Negligent Mothers with Delusions About Their Modeling Careers.”

Nobody wants to deal with an eight-year-old boy who pooped himself—especially the administrative assistant to the guy who lives with this kid’s biological mother. Although I was self-conscious about driving my two-door Hyundai, which made me feel like I was behind the wheel of an oversize plastic toy car, I still had some pride. It was my low-status, oversize plastic toy car and I didn’t want someone with shitty-pants to sit in my passenger seat.

The principal said that I wouldn’t be allowed to pick up Skyler because I wasn’t a relative. I phoned Bethany on her cell and told her that the next pose she needed to get into was “downward driving home” to pick up her son in his shit-stained Spider-Man Underoos. Bethany sighed and said that it would be rude to leave in the middle of class (as opposed to talking on a cell phone in the middle of class?) and that she wouldn’t be able to pick up Skyler. She whispered, “Listen, do you know the actor David Duchovny? Well, his personal psychic is here and we’re getting along really well. She says that things aren’t so good between him and Tea Leoni right now and that it might be the perfect time to introduce me to him. I mean, nothing romantic, but he could keep me in mind for any acting roles. I really shouldn’t leave class. I want to talk to her more after.” I tried to comprehend that David Duchovny had a psychic and that Bethany thought that she and her crystal ball would be good show business consultants.

Bethany had to call the principal and get me special permission to pick up her son, because the school had this pesky rule about strangers just showing up and grabbing other people’s children, putting them in their reasonably priced cars, and driving away.

Before I left to pick up Skyler, I had a momentary maternal (or simply logical) instinct. I brought a few pairs of underwear and a few pairs of his pants. I figured that if I brought him a bunch of clothes, he might feel like he had some control over the situation—it’s a task for him to do, pick out his own outfit like a big boy (and hopefully not lose control of his bowels in said outfit this time).

When I got to the school the mother of the other boy involved in the incident started yelling at me. First of all, I didn’t know there had been an “incident” and that there was an “other boy”—I thought this was a private matter of Skyler taking a dump in front of the entire classroom. I tried to calm this mother down and explain to her that she should not yell at me, because I’m not Skyler’s mother. This enraged her even more. “No wonder he’s starting fistfights! Then he shits his pants when my son fought back? He has no mother to teach him manners and no real father to teach him to defend himself. And then they send a secretary to pick up their son?”

I wanted to say, “I’m technically an administrative assistant/bookkeeper. Actually, what I really am is a stand-up comic but things are going a little slow right now.” But it didn’t seem like a good time to be defensive about my career. This woman had long acrylic nails and a crazed look in her eye that said, “Come at me, girl. I don’t care if these zebra-striped babies break on your cute little God-given nose.”

Skyler was hiding in the nurses’ bathroom because he didn’t want me to see him without his pants on. Trust me, I had no interest either. I handed him his clothes through the door—and he said, “Yes! These are my favorites and I’m not allowed to wear these pants to school!” Score one for me. Thank God the school nurse had already cleaned Skyler’s underwear and hosed him down or whatever you do when a kid does a number two in an unauthorized area. I took his hand as he left the bathroom, and as the other boy’s mother yelled, “Coward!” in Skyler’s face, I felt a wave of rage. I wanted justice. I put my finger to her lips and I said, “You do not speak to a child like that. He will be disciplined but not by you. Do you hear me?” And with that, I grabbed my son-for-a-day’s hand and we left. I felt like the mom from Good Times.

Just like I had done so many times in my own life, Skyler got into my car and immediately started crying. He sobbed, “Everyone is making fun of me for pooping at school.” I thought about my experience as a stand-up comedian and how when I get heckled I think, At least I get to stand here for a living, making money right now, and you people have to look at me. I’m the one who’s doing a fun thing no matter how much you think I suck. So I said to him, “It is pretty gross that you pooped yourself. Right? If it wasn’t gross, you wouldn’t have changed your pants!” He started to giggle. I figured I was onto something so I went on: “But it’s normal. You got scared. And you know what? You got to leave school early. All those kids who are making fun of you—still have to be at school for three more hours! So if they make fun of you tomorrow, maybe you can make a joke.”

“Yeah!” he said. “I’ll tell them that if they were smart, they would poop and get to leave school early. I’m a genius!”

I laughed. I have no idea if this was an appropriate way to handle the situation but at least I was there. His mother was doing a sun salutation and plotting to steal Tea Leoni’s husband.

Honestly I never liked Skyler that much. He was fresh. He would tip over my pen cup every day at my desk, which was in the living room. Since his mother never disciplined him, he would watch cartoons turned up really loud while I was trying to work. One time when I was feeling really badly and desperately trying to find another job by searching online job listings on my current employer’s computer, Skyler turned on a TV program superloud. He said, “Jen, do you think this guy is funny?” I turned around and was face-to-TV with Blake, my tuna-fish-stealing, feathered-hair-sporting ex-boyfriend from college. He was the host of a hugely popular children’s show on Nickelodeon. This show had been on TV for years, whereas the last show I had appeared on was GSN’s Funny Money—a now defunct game show where comedians did snippets of their acts in order to help contestants win money. The contestant I was paired up with lost all of her money and I bombed with a terrible “at least getting dumped is better than having cancer” joke.

“What’s wrong?” Skyler asked.

I wanted to stay strong in front of an eight-year-old but I started to cry a little bit. “I know him,” I said.

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“Not anymore.”

“How come he doesn’t love you anymore?” Skyler asked. “Is it because he’s on TV?”

Now I wanted to punch this kid but I also wanted to sit on the couch next to him and say, “Skyler, you’re