Maybe I'll never have kids...

This is the thought that went through my head as soon as I was done with my meeting tonight with 11 middle schoolers. Wow, is that a tough age. I spent much of my evening doing crowd control, teaching the art of turn-taking "No J. we're going to listen to A talk now. We'll talk to you again in a minute."

I spent a good part of the evening listening to boys talk about violent video games. I came out of there swearing that I will never, ever allow my minor child to play those games. I know they'll see them at friends' houses, but hopefully they won't play enough to be good and they won't like it as a result. ugh, the thinks these 12 years olds see and do.

An example: "See, there's this really cool game, where if I use a crossbow, I can shoot people in the stomach and they get stuck to the wall!!"
And another: "yeah, and theres this one, where you can take an uzi and blow people in half! Its SOOO COOL!"

*shiver*

And don't even get me started on the kid who posted to an online dating service pretending to be a 19 year old man looking for a 32 year old man, which to him was "totally disgusting" and he said he'd emailed those who'd responded back saying YOU'RE GAY!!! As though there was something wrong with that. I'm hoping he was all talk, but you never know.

I'm not sure I could handle this, this parenthood thing. I have nightmares of having kids do things like become cheerleaders or join fraternities or sororities or play violent video games or insult gays just to get back at me. I guess I wouldn't have a problem if they did the first three in a thoughtful manner--defying stereotypes, thinking about the repercussions of their actions. The last would be insupportable, regardless.

Maybe I'm just more conservative in my liberalism than I thought.