The Fire Challenge: Why I'm Not Having Children

As a single woman, there are times when I imagine being a wife with kids: cooking dinner for my family, walking through the park with baby in stroller,   beaming with pride as I watch my little girl in her first dance recital or my son’s first T-Ball game.  But then I get on Facebook and I’m reminded why there might not be in little Ebonys running around anytime soon. 

The reality is I’m scared crapless to have kids because apparently it’s the “in thing” to set yourself on fire, film it, and post it to Facebook for the world to see.  What I have just described is the Fire Challenge.  These are videos where the world’s dumbest adolescents rub some flammable fluid on their chests and then set a lighter to it.   No, I’m not talking about some rite of passage in a tribe documented by National Geographic.  This is Man Man and Pookey in the bathroom giving themselves 6^th degree burns while some idiot is standing on the side using his phone to record instead of calling 911.

My mom use to say “If you think things can’t get any worse, just live a little longer.”  Well, I never thought I would live to see the day where someone sets fire to their own limbs.  Don’t they know being on fire is ranked the worst pain you can feel? Right up there with labor pains with no epidural.  So on top of parents having to make sure their kids don’t join a gang, get pregnant at 16, and don’t do crack, now they have to lock up all the lighters and lighting fluid because of a new trend?  Does Obamacare even cover self-inflicted burns? I can’t. 

We are becoming a society that is controlled by the number of likes on a post.  And honestly, I’m not sure if I want to bring kids into a world like that.  The day I hear my child say she set herself on fire because her friends were doing it is the day she learns to eat through a feeding tube because every tooth in her head is being knocked out.  I get that peer pressure can be something else but really?  Being popular can’t be that serious.  When a child has set his/her mind on causing bodily harm to themselves for a few hundred likes, who is to blame?  I’m not even sure how to start a conversation with someone who has that reasoning or logic. 

I fear for today’s youth.  There is already another challenge where kids are causing themselves to pass out.  I try my best to not imagine what the next challenge is going to be.  If any kids read my blog, please put the lighter down, it’s not worth it.  While I’m pretty sure that procreation is not for me, I pray that our youth will get it together soon.