You Can Always Spot the Loman Children. They're the Ones Shunning Others to Smoke Cigarettes and Drink Coffee beside the Slide

Friends, social life, sex, money, time; I anticipated difficulties with all these things before our son was born. What I hadn't anticipated was his complete lack of skepticism. His wide-eyed non-pessimism. His (ugh) optimism. And optimism is a bitch. . . .

. . . I want to tell him, but I can't.

I want to tell him that the applesauce in his "Organic Baby" applesauce is the same goddamn applesauce that's in Mommy and Daddy's applesauce, only with a picture of a baby girl on the label and three times the price.

"Baby," he says when I bring out the jar. "Girl!"

He leans over and kisses her.

There are so many, many things I want to tell him.

"Whore," I want to correct him. Shill. The blonde-haired, pink-ribboned brainchild of some pathetic Brand Manager — "V.P., Apple Sauce" — at some Allied Transglobal Foods and Heavy Machinery Concern, Inc. "Making Good Things for Good People!"

"Girl," says my son, pointing to the girl on the jar. "Hap-pee."

"She better be," I want to tell him, "or Mother Showbiz gives her the strap. If she's lucky she'll end up doing the weather on the Local 8 newscast; more than likely, she'll end up doing porn. You know how many Gerber babies grow up to do porn? A lot," I want to tell him. "Trust me." But I can't.

Because of my inability to understand why he can't, I would make a really terrible father. Actually, that's like Reason No. Eight Gazillion twenty-one Why I Would Be a Really Terrible Father, but who's counting.