Do not forget me

If all goes according to plan, I will die before any of My Future Kids. I will therefore entrust them with the dealings of my death. The first thing: My Future Eldest is keeping my dead body in their home until it is to be disposed of. Hopefully it won't take very long. I shouldn't have any organs or anything, so I don't think it will be that bad. Let's say my dead body or what's left of it is going to be hanging out there for three days. During that time, my other offspring will trek to return to the homeland. They will stay with My Future Eldest and in during their time with my lifeless body, they will receive my instructions. These instructions will come in the form of a handy video which they will each  receive a copy of to view at their leisures.
The video will contain the following:
Instructions on how to deal with my body:
My Future Kids will deal with my body on their own. They will wash, dress, and take tasteless photos on their own. They will dig my grave by hand and they will place my cloth-wrapped body into the ground. First, however, they will cut off my right pinky finger, wrap it tightly, and bury it in a wooden box. They will record the location of this box and pass on the location to their own children.
Where to find all my secrets:
When I am old and no longer working and with oodles of free time, I will construct a puzzle hunt. At the end of this hunt, My Future Kids will find my secrets. But only if they prove themselves worthy. I will need to think of a good test of worthiness. I would like to think that by that time I will have plenty of good secrets that may only be revealed upon my passing. Oh, and at least one of my dark, dark secrets will be totally false. Amongst these secrets there will be a slip of paper with a hastily written place and date, 200 years into the future. I will scrawl something urgent-sounding, and beg that the place and date be saved by My Future Kids.
There's no better troll than a troll by a dead person. Awww yeaaaaaah

Better Faster Stronger

My Future Kids will be better than me. Hopefully in a variety of life-improving ways. My Future Kids will be be strong and brave and willful. That's my hope, at least. As much as I may or may not rock at being alive, My Future Kids will do better. I know that there will come a period when My Future Kids will look on my pitiful existence with a vague mix of pity and revulsion. Perhaps that is the natural order of things. Maybe when My Future Kids stop being such pricks and get over themselves, we can be friends again.
Is it okay to be friends with your kids? What does that even mean? I don't want to be friends with my parents, but maybe I'm just in the prick stage of life and have yet to get over myself and my vague revulsion at my parents.
I wonder what my parents wanted for me. How they thought I would turn out. Did they notice flaws in themselves and decide to train me out of them? I know that's what I'm doing with My Future Kids. I feel that in some ways I have done better than my parents in much the same way that I hope My Future Kids will do better than me. I think that with several generations of training, my genetic line may very well become full of normal, intelligent, well-adjusted human beings. The epitome of evolution. Normal human beings. I have high hopes for My Future Progeny.
But seriously, my offspring is going to kick some serious ass. And so will their offspring. And their offspring will all meet on some specified day in the middle of the desert and they will not know why except that for generations from parent to child there has been passed down a set of coordinates and a time. They will gather, and they will wonder what it means. They will look to the sky, surrounded by their kin, and far off in the distance they will hear it. Echoing over the vast desert, "We're no strangers to love...."

Festivities

I love traditions. My Future Kids are going to have lots of them. Maybe instead of a religion they can have lots and lots of traditions instead. We are celebrating pi day every single year. I think a minor holiday every two or three weeks sounds good. We don't have to do much, maybe just go out to eat or do something silly as a family. Something different for each holiday, though, of course. Pi day will consist of the making and eating of a pie coupled with fun math! Oh, and Tau day, will, of course, mean two pies. Maybe all the holidays could be math holidays! Tautology day 1/1! Or 11/11 since 1/1 is already taken up. Identity Day 10/10! It will be so great. If I get them when they're young, it will all seem totally natural. "Oh my goodness," My Future Kids will say, "you've never celebrated Tau Day? What was wrong with your childhood?!"
Presidents' Day will of course require dressing up.
I should think of more non-day-specific traditions, too. Eating-related traditions are pretty easy. We be eating lefse all winter. What are other things people do as traditions? I just tried looking up weird traditions, but they were all about the ways people die in different cultures for various reasons. LAME. Oh! I got one! Traditions that involve trying something new for a week or a month! That would be great! Coincidentally, that's the only reason this post and/or the majority of the blog exists! Also traditions that are about trying something bizarre just once. That would be good too. Oh man, My Future Kids are going to be so awesome and well-rounded and accepting of other people and trying new things and it's all going to be thanks to me. This blog will be proof. Spouse better not have a similar blog, because I plan on taking all the credit. Except for the excellent genes, Spouse can take half the credit for that. But I still get credit for selecting Spouse for their superior genetic material. Of course, if they turn out badly, I still get stuck with the credit.

Dr. Danger Science Lastnamehere

My Future Kids will have very carefully chosen names. If were to be superstitious about anything, it would be about the power of a name. For this reason I will never name any of My Future Kids either Tiffany or Whitney for fear that they will become sluts. I'm sorry, to all the non-slutty Tiffanys and Whitneys out there, but you have a slut's name. 

The ideal name has two syllables, should be neither too hard nor too soft, and cannot end with an 'i.'

I think the tough part for me will be finding sufficiently unique names that aren't stupid. Especially for my boys. I think it's harder to have unique, non-stupid boy names. I think some of the best boy names are last names. Is it wrong to steal someone else's last name for My Future Kids? It seems like it's faking a culture to honor. Maybe a new age calls for new names to honor it. My high school biology teacher had a friend who wanted to name her daughter Plasmodesmata or maybe it was Plasmodesma, either way, crazy stuff. 

For some reason, I really like the name 'Wallice' for a girl. Also 'Arden.' I guess I like my names like I like my people: vaguely androgynous. 

I'm still trying to think of unique boy names that aren't already attached to a culture that isn't mine, and I'm telling you, it's a bit of work. I like the name Rodger, but it just makes me think of Rodger from His Dark Materials, and that makes me sad.
I think I might pick names that have fallen out of use in recent history. This would have the benefit of allowing most people to recognize their names as names with decent pronunciation but a low probability of encountering another person with the same name in everyday life. 

Thinking about it, I don't think there are many boys' names that instantly prejudice me, so maybe it's okay for boys to have less unique names, I'm not sure.

Oh, and I am excited for middle names. What an excellent opportunity to troll My Future Kids for the rest of theirs lives! I actually think that 'Danger' would not be a bad middle name. I'm completely serious. Or 'Torus,' that would not be a bad name either. 

Moral of the story: My Future Kids will have cool names and awesome middle names and Spouse will just have to consider themselves lucky if they get to give any input.

Oh my gosh, 'Science' actually would be a pretty great middle name. Thanks, SMBC!

Practice Kids

My Future Kids are going to grow up with pets. Awesome pets. I'm thinking one of those massive dogs. The ones that look like bears. Those dogs are the best. I bet you could get by for a couple months on one of those dogs. It will have to be a friendly and well-behaved dog because there's no way My Future Kids aren't going to decide to ride it. I'm thinking that I will also have some cool but possibly less high-maintenance. Maybe an outdoor cat or something in a tank. I think a pet would be a good way to teach responsibility. Especially if they learn to love it, so they are less inclined to just let their pets die. Fish are the worst pets. They are so boring. I think it would be cool to have an octopus. Those things are so cool. But I heard they escape? I would not be surprised if octopuses are wont to go rogue.
Apparently, everything I ever learned about pluralizing "octopus" in elementary school was wrong. Those jerks.
Anyway, pets! I never had any pets, I bet pets would be great. Like cheaper, more obedient versions of children. Maybe I could have a lizard! Lizards are so cool. I bet My Future Kids will get all the chicks if we have a lizard. Bitches love lizards. I suppose we could have a snake, but I think that would just make it too easy, and that's just not my job.
My Future Kids will learn how to take care of things, right? That's a good thing to teach them? They can learn all about conditioning yet still be totally unaware of the conditioning they've been put through! Maybe I can practice conditioning on the bear-dog before I use it on My Future Kids. Hmm!
Pets, man, I wish I had them. I think I was a lonely child. I don't know if I would have learned anything outside the realm of pet care, but maybe I would have been happier. Who knows!

Engineer Barbie

I think toys these days have all the wrong idea. I think they're too complex. Okay, it's totally baller that there are mind-control games, but really, My Future Kids aren't getting their hands onto a mind-control game until they're able to turn it into something actually cool. Good toys are all about the imagination, they're no good if that step has already been taken care. My Future Kids are getting Lego and dolls, regardless of gender.

I think dolls kind of get a worse rap than they deserve. The argument has been made (by SMBC, so there's that) that since we girls dolls to play with and boys Lego to play with, it's no wonder that boys grow up to be engineers and girls do not. Okay, it's possible that that argument is valid, I bet Lego are great for developing spacial reasoning. But that doesn't mean that dolls will make you dumb, even if only by taking up time that could be better spent with Lego. Dolls are largely inanimate, but that doesn't mean that playing with dolls means that any less is going on than with the infinite combinations of Lego. Where Lego concern physical interaction, dolls concern interpersonal interactions. If you say that giving girls dolls is the reason they don't go into math and science and engineering, you might as well say that giving boys Lego is why they suck at understanding other people. Just because Lego results in a physical product at the end, it doesn't mean that Lego are any more educational than dolls.

I can't really think of any other toys that a kid might need. Maybe a good set of dress-up clothes and props. 

I will play games with My Future Kids. I really like the idea of a family game night. I always loved board games as a kid, but I never had people to play them with. 

Back to dolls. I wonder if more realistic dolls results in less creativity in play. Do Barbies actually give people unrealistic body expectations? When a doll is designed as a character, do kids keep the doll in character? Does veterinarian Barbie actually spend a lot of her time taking care of animals or not? I had dolls as a kid, and I remember that some were definitely better than others, but that might have been the presence of fully articulating joints and flat feet.

Oh yeah, kids need crayons. Also markers and paint and whatnot, you get the idea. 

I think that might be it. They can figure out the rest. 

in retrospect, I'm and engineer, but I really only had a small collection of Lego that didn't get much use. I have no idea what I used my excessive childhood free time doing. Was it playing with my peers? I would find that surprising, considering how I turned out. I guess at daycare there isn't much choice. For some reason, I think I may have preferred stacking blocks to building things with Lego. I don't know why. I guess I might have spent a lot of time reading, but it can't have been that much time. Huh. There should be a book about the Life and Lies of Child Self.

I think I might have spent a lot of time playing pretend. I wonder if playing pretend actually helps. I guess it helps with relating to other people. I wonder if there's a study on the types of games kids play in relation to their mental development. 

Breaking Kids, Taking Names

You know those tricky, sleepless years? Man, those are going to be fun. I'm going to be so freaking high. Oh man, people will think that I'm coping magnificently for a first-time parent, but deep down in their subconscious, they will see they crazy-eyes. They will know that beneath my overly-excited demeanor, I am inches away from a baby-killing spree. Not just my babies. Any babies. You got an extra baby? Let me kill that for you, I'm having a sale.
Oh man, no sleep and parent-related hormones! That will be fun for Spouse. The previous statement was false. Good thing My Future Kids won't be able to remember anything that happens before the age of 3. I wonder if this means that won't be scarred by me chasing after them with a butcher knife, or if they will be scarred and they just won't know why. I don't especially want broken children, so I guess I leave that for some other future parent to test.
I wonder what it takes to break your children. A lot? Or just a little? I suppose you must be able to do it by accident. Does it become easy if you do it on purpose? I bet playing mind games with them would be the easiest way to break them. If they can't remember being broken, will they still be broken? How easy is it to fix children? I would guess that that depends on how old they are. Maybe children are like springs. Deform them a little and they snap right back, deform them too much and they lose elasticity. I don't know the physics or the materials science, so I don't even know if my analogy is accurate with itself, much less with children. According to those older and wiser than I, everything is a spring and everything is a bathtub, so maybe it works.
I really hope my efforts to design awesome children will not go horribly awry and break them. I can never decide whether children are really fragile or remarkably tough and adaptable. Or is it both? I guess I'll have a spare in case I break one.