Clearly, I Am A Monster

So, I went to a holiday party hosted by one of my old highschool friends last night. There was plenty of eats, fine times, nostalgia, and even a gift exchange. The gift exchange was funny because it was a $5 Maximum Gift Exchange, you know, to make it affordable. I have only had $1 for like 2 weeks now. So I copped out and just painted some bland scenery because I figure that they are all of the age where watercolors of landscapes can be fit into their decorating schemes. (As we are all adults now, we decorate with framed artwork and not posters pinned up to the walls. It is strange)

Anyway, the major drawback is that 90% of my highschool friends turned out to be total breeders.

Anyone who reads this site or knows me at all knows that I really don't like children. Their sounds, smells, looks... they all bother me. And the younger they are, the more uncomfortable I am.

A few people there had honest to god INFANTS there. As in, younger than even one year old. One was 6 weeks old. I could handle that because it was pretty stationary. But the other one crawled, which in turn made my skin crawl. Do you know why? Because it CRAWLED UP TO ME and held onto my pants, clearly wanting me to pick it up. I declined. It insisted. My friends began to call for me to pick it up, that it is "just a baby" and that the action "wouldn't kill" me.

I did not listen.

Eventually the child started to weep, and I still did not pick it up. I mentioned to its mother that it appeared to be crying, and that maybe she should intervene. A photograph was taken of the entire event. I haven't seen it yet, but I expect that it will depict me with my hands in my pants pockets, looking down without expression at a small baby thing that is clearly distressed that, for the first time in its life, it is experiencing the coldest shoulder of rejection ever experienced by a baby of 7 months. I was told that the photo will be titled "Amanda Wood is the Meanest Girl on Earth."

Their guilt and shame trips left me unmoved though. As I explained to them that spiders and babies are the two most horrible things on earth to me. One friend actually picked up the baby and tried to hand it to me, and I had to say "Seriously. Stop." Hard times.

Yes, I have a baby phobia. Actually, worse than that are visibly pregnant women since babies are sort of interesting in that "hey they are a blank canvas" kind of way. But visible pregnancy makes me want to retch. One of my friends there last night was pregnant, but not in a way that you can tell yet, so I kept forgetting, thankfully.

Oh, that was another odd thing. There were only women and babies there, so it was like some estrogen nightmare. I kept feeling very uneasy about seeing all of that evidence of fertility and kept sending messages to my uterus to not get any ideas. One of my childless friends shared my horror, and we chanted "petrify, petrify, petrify" to our wombs under our breath whenever we felt frightened that babies might be contagious.

We are superstitious fools.