2006-04-19 - 2:01 p.m.

My guess is, if someone were to create a physical representation of my mind, it would look quite a bit like my apartment: papers strewn everywhere; books placed open, face down on the floor, open to a page I meant to save, only to find my place months down the road; a few scattered wires for connections no longer necessary; the occasional Slinky. For this reason, I generally don�t have immediate access to my core being. (In this metaphor my core being will be played by my infrequently seen floor.) Just to get at what in the hell I�m thinking I have to a good lot of rooting and neatening up. So when I do find that one floor board in the hardwood floor of my soul that tells me something of importance, I�ll often take a picture of it, frame it, and prop it up on the mantle so I don�t forget it.

One such keepsake: I know I�m not ready for kids because when I buy my first house, I honestly want to build a urinal into the hall closet.

I�ll repeat that. I want a urinal in my closet.

I get giddy at the idea of having company over to my domicile, and asking them to hang up their coats With the closet placed tantalizingly close, just a few feet from the front door, they'll approach the double doors, unaware of my eyes just barely peeking out of the kitchen. As they sort through jackets, coats, and scarves, suddenly a big ol� hunk o' porcelain with silver trim will leap out to stare them in the face.

While their mind starts grinding grey matter into withered husks, I�ll yell from the kitchen, �When you�re done, make sure to flush the closet.� And I�ll grin as I hear the unmistakable sound of sanity dying in my atrium.

As fun as this sounds, I recognize the damage that might be incurred upon the rugrats living in said household. It isn�t hard to picture my boy�s first day of school, when the teacher leans over and asks, �Aidan, where�s your coat?� To which my spawn will reply, �I put it in the special closet, and I made sure to flush.�

The whole kid thing scares me utterly. Not just the damage I might do to their calm, but how they will return the favor. It�s internationally known that each generation must shock and frighten the one that came before. Music gets crasser, skirts get shorter, and board games get replaced with video games featuring the ability to make macram� out of your enemy�s spines.

Just think of music. In my parents time, people were freaking out about Elvis� hip gyrations: a motion so barely sexual it resembled what every one else in the world at that time looked like when they played with a Hula-Hoop. (Not enough is said about the hedonistic influences of the devil�s circle. The countless hymens that were prepped for cracking while rhythmically jostled in the cylinder of sin. Truly the Hula-Hoop was the Juicy-pants of their time.) Now compare to our time. Elvis� fairly gentle side to side sweep ain�t no thang when put side to side with Shakira�s motor-boatin� booty. I have to wonder what the squares of the fifties would have done had they seen her hips slamming into their television screens with machine like regularity. (The King = pistol. Shakira = an automatic weapon.) I have to figure each time her posterior protruded into their perception, it would hit them like a jab from Ali, until she landed the belly roll upper-cut, nearly knocking their head right off. (Fun.)

So what is it going to look like when our kids tune in to MTV4? Will the singers be moving so fast, they basically look like a blur on the screen, or will they simply give up the innuendo, and just start having sex on stage? It would make it lot harder to lip-sync those performances, and bring expand doggie style out of Snoop's milieu.

The music itself is getting harder and more offensive anyway, so why wouldn�t the performances take the same path. My parents listened to Barbara Gaskin of �It�s My Party and I�ll Cry if I Want To�-fame. (By the way, didn�t think I�d get sexylegsplaygirl.com when I googled that.) I listen to Biggie Smalls of �Faster than I can say, �Who�s the man?� She says B-I-G! Then I bust in her E-Y-E�-fame. (Name of the song is �Dead Wrong,� and, oh, how it is.) Where exactly do we go from here?

I can only think of one option: Snuff-Rock.

Someday I�ll be smoking a pipe, reading the paper, and mulling over whether I should get a second hovercraft, when my kid will start playing music that hits my ear with the gentility of a rock hammer. Looking up, I�ll scream: �Will you turn down the Cambodians? Christ Almighty! It�s not even that good! Kid should listen to some old school, like the Mongolian Hordes, or the Huns. Those were the days when a death rattle meant something!�

Even if that does come to pass, you know Me First will still be doing covers.

I know this is messed up to consider, but someone somewhere will think it�s edgy, there�ll be some underground circuit of it, and it will slowly work it�s way into the mainstream via Hot Topic, which like cockroaches will still somehow remain after a nuclear holocaust.

My guess, in forty years, Hot Topic will have the same over-priced fake-vintage clothing, and, since black leather and spikes is so your-parents-rebellion, a whole line of nipple clips, tassels and cod-pieces will be apathetically offered by teenagers enjoying their frist taste of soul crushing employment. Man it�s going to be fun.

If this seems a bit odd to have warbled off this amount of conjecture over my future life as a beleaguered parent, it comes in this context: two of my college buddies are getting married. (And if you�re reading this congrats again!) I�m pretty damn excited about both of them. You could see it coming, and it makes sense, and they�re both happier than pigs in poo, which is large with the awesome. It doesn�t hurt that I have visions of a particular bachelor party rolling through my head, wherein I make take my revenge, dragging said reveler to the club, finding a stripper named Bambi, dropping a couple hundred in her palm and adding the footnote: �Just make sure you make him dance.� Ahhh, sweet malificence!

It's amazing for both of them, having that moment they're wondered about for years realized, and that promise of love issued with glee. It's real. And that reality, more than anything, has got me thinking. The stunning majority of my friends have live in girlfriends, and seem to be considering the rock for better or worse. People scoff when I say I feel different being twenty six, confusing my feeling older, with feeling old.

I know I�m still a youngin�, and these ideas of aging seem strange to those who have already broken the 3-0 barrier and the 4-0 barrier, and it�s all true. Really, I don�t feel old. I�ve still got a good couple liters of infantile-stupid in these bones. But it doesn�t change the fact that I�m feeling older.

The world is changing. We�re no longer little kids, running around with our toys. Rings and diaper dispensers are closing in. They�re not quite sitting on us yet. Most of us are quite unfamiliar with the Wiggles, but it�s coming. It�s a foreseeable future, and it makes for a different aura in our days, now that it's becoming real. We wonder what we�re ready for rather than what we want. We begin to lay plans that will take decades to see their fruition. Slowly, we�re being more defined by what we will be, instead of what we were. It�s happening. For me and my friends, these hazy shadows are taking shape, and our repertoire of actions is widening to take them in.

This probably should have happened earlier. This probably should have been something we looked into one of those boring nights in college, and I'll bet a bunch of us did. Maybe it�s just me.

After all, I still want a urinal in my closet.

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