I Don't Have Kids, I Have Shows

I will never do anything even remotely as important or honorable as bringing life into this world, or adopting, or fostering, and raising that life to be a functioning, non-serial-killer adult. Let me get that out of the way first.

The reasons I've decided I'm probably never going to procreate are boring and for another blog and mostly boil down to "kids would really cut into my video game time" and also "ewww poop gross gross." 

I also don't have any pets for similar reasons. This really limits my material to share on the Facebooks, because you can only post about Shelley Long's khaki cape in Troop Beverly Hills so many times before people are like WE GET IT IT'S A KHAKI CAPE.

I do, however, give birth to comedy shows. I'm the fuckin' Michelle Duggar of the Chicago Comedy scene, bitches. I squeeze out sketch shows like it's my job (which it's not) (also, I'm available if someone would like to hire me to make sketch shows. I've made about a trillion so far, and everyone says I do a great job! I know I'm 32, which is OLD AS HELL, but I still got it!) 

I also give birth to improv shows. Improv scenes. Plays. Jokes. Pilots. Witty (to me) status updates. Dummmm blogz on my web site. And while each of these things are almost certainly not human, and are about 1/1,000,000,000,000th as important as an actual human, they're my creation. They're my offspring. They're encoded with my DNA and the closest thing I've realized I'll ever have to actual progeny. 

And I love them, occasionally loathe them, nurture them, feel disappointed in them for not turning out the way I wanted, feel pride in them when they surpass my petty expectations, I watch them develop, watch them take their first steps (this is usually called a preview), go full Dance Mom on them sometimes, and watch them mature and then watch them die little tiny, insignificant deaths usually capped with a toast at the theater bar with whoever in the cast didn't have to run immediately to another show afterwards. 

The biggest difference is, all my 1/1,000,000,000,000th children aren't alive, can't hug me, and won't be around in sixty years when I need my ass wiped (eww poop gross gross) and someone to visit me in the nursing home every two weeks for twenty awkward, cold minutes marked by me sobbing and/or thinking relatives who died decades ago are still alive. 

I watch, every day, as jokes I create ride a tide of success and then die and are buried in the giant depository of my news feed. Or they fail and I wonder what I did wrong, if I was too hard on the joke, if I didn't give the joke room to find itself and be what it wanted to be, oh GOD I'M A HORRIBLE JOKE MOM.

I watch as articles I write, videos I make, have their moment in the sun, usually an hour or two, and then trickle away and disappear forever. I give birth, raise, celebrate and mourn the shows I'm create all within a few months time, with nothing to show for them afterwards except for a few postcards or posters I hang on to and put in a drawer. I also get unreasonably offended when I announce a show and no one cares, like my baby is ugly. MY BABY IS NOT UGLY I WAS JUST DRINKING HEAVILY WHEN I MADE HIM.

It's hard to quantify and explain the meaning of these shows to me without sounding either over-dramatic, out of touch or completely stupid. And I'm sure if I were to ever had a kid, I would immediately be like SHOWS ARE THE STUPIDEST THING EVER I HAVE TO KEEP THIS LIVING CHILD ALIVE AND HAPPY WHILE IT CONSTANTLY TRIES TO KILL ITSELF OH GOD OH GOD OH JESUS I HAVEN'T SLEPT IN EIGHT MONTHS OH GOD.

But again, since kids would cut into my rull serious video game time and I likely won't have them, I have these shows. And maybe I get attached to them a little too much, like an empty nest mom with her cat, or a single gay guy with his bulldog, but that's only because shows are the closest proxy I have, and will likely have, to child or a pet.  

Shows are, so far, my way of procreating. They're little mes running around, tearing up the carpet, shitting on the walls, giggling and drooling and farting and smiling. I love them. And they're the best I can do. And I know they don't matter. But they kind of matter, in a different way. To me, at least.