Flee The House of Screaming Kids!

Cell group.

I'm the only one of two people who's single, and without any immediate or pending prospect of marriage. The other singleton, more swinging than I (he's male) is blissfully away and unaware.

Everyone else was smugly engaged in chatter and of course the kids were there to make things merry, to liven things beyond what is humanly possible for adults to do with the following contraptions: fake electronic phones, race car video games and high pitched vocal chords.

I've never left cell so early.

Don't get me wrong, I love kids, I want to have some someday. 'Some' being somewhere within the range of 2 and 3. Then I hear a siren, and realise that hey, it's the screaming kid inside of me.

Ally McBeal (yes I know how passe she is, but she's part of the small amounts of TV I've watched in my lifetime) had a dancing baby.

Here may I propose something a little more apt to represent the woman's biological clock — the aforementioned screaming kid. Dancing babies are fun, self-entertaining, and generally lovable. Screaming kids on the other hand, are a liability to the sanity of you and everyone else within a 5m radius. Now imagine this cacophonous oddity existing inside you.

Ever met a spinster with an attitude problem? A teacher or an ageing PA for instance? Yep. She more often than not has that screaming kid inside of her. What else could explain her grouchy distractedness, sudden snappiness and generally frazzled, forlorn demeanor? (In fact, I conclude that it's not her lack of motherhood instincts, but the overabundance and overgrowth of this organic phenomenon which used to mean good things until homosexuality and women's lib took over her instincts and suppressed her leaving that screaming kid no choice but to grow inside her psyche and make its existence felt with its random, incessant alarm clock cries.)

There are all sorts of screaming kids, though, who are not the exclusive property of biology. Kids that need to be fed, put to bed, handed in, hung out to dry, calculated and paid to the government... you catch my drift.

Chores. Deadlines. Writing that needs your regular attention. So right now, one screaming kid with an awful name is slowly being lullabyed into lalaland. This bratty little kid called Workawhorlic.