Big Families

Raising kids is hard. Like having a couple extra full time jobs—if you do it right.

In the old days, parents had help. I remember that a couple doors down in either direction lived my grandma, three aunts, two uncles, someone called Tio Frank who drank a bit and no one knew for sure how he was related but he came to dinner a lot and taught me fishing, and a bunch of cousins of assorted ages with their various dogs and cats. We kids ran back and forth like wild monkeys and went to the wrong house to eat when they had spaghetti. But high-tailed it home when Mom yelled or we got feeling sick

Now, does any kid have enough cousins and uncles? No. That’s because it takes brothers and sisters to make cousins and there are not many of them any more. One spoiled child is all most people get. And a lot of work.

O.K. kids are a joy, too. It’s true. I’ve got to remind you of that because I have a plan for everyone to have lots of kids.

It’s those genetic engineers who can help again. They learned how to chop up DNA and replace lots of chunks. I heard the other day that they put DNA from a firefly into a pig and now he lights up when he grunts. If they can to that, then they can make more uncles and aunts.

The secret is to have more than two bio-parents. I suspect we still want primary parents—those who give more than 50% of the DNA, but why not get 5% here, 10% there, and have a whole collection of people making a baby. I don’t mean the sex in bed babymaking. I mean test-tube sex, and maybe a baby shower party or two.

Low percenters can’t really be called parents, just the 50%ers-plus get that name. I call the others are pair-aunts and pair-uncles. Because they give to that pair of DNA strands.

I hope this helps. Adults just don’t seem to care much about kids unless they have lots of similar DNA chunks (we used to call them blood relations or maybe just people-like-us). But kids need a bunch of love and work from lots of people.

Finally, when they say you have your pair-uncle’s eyes, you know they’re right, because he put in chromosome IV which makes your eyes brown and smiley, just like his.

Getting Synched

The world is out of sync. I mean it. When I call India they are a half day off. It’s that way everywhere.

I can’t fly for more than an hour without getting offered supper when I want lunch. And long-distance conference calls. I am lucky if half the people show up. They call in an hour early. They call in an hour late. They call the next morning. Let’s get synched up, world.

Some people want primitive synching--they tell me to use GMT. First of all, I have to explain to everyone what GMT is and half the people still cant figure out what I mean. And then they have to do math—most people can’t subtract 11 or 9 or whatever number from their time to get GMT time. And then I have to explain that, yes, England did try to rule the world and made themselves the center and that’s why the G means Greenwich. And I know they are just a little dib-dab these days, but . . .

What a pain.

If you think about it, this mess is all because our eyes are small and piggy and not so good in the dark. We used to hunt during the day and hide out at night. Who hides out at night anymore! We have full-spectrum lighting. It’s time to break free from the sun ruling our lives.

A lot of people say, well, just make everybody have my time. Russia did this. If it was 8AM in Moscow then it was 8 AM in Vladivostok where the sun had just gone down. Doing it this way just means whoever is in charge keeps their suntime and takes some sun away from everyone else. Sort of like England tried with their GMT. We need a better way.

The key is dropping sun-centeredness. We don’t have chlorophyll like plants. We are warm blooded. We have evolved way beyond our early sun-needs. And why do we want the sun to come up just before we wake up, anyway? Put a timer on your lights. We (most of us, that is) quit worshiping the sun a couple thousand years ago. So let go!

Now the solution--if every day has 25 hours (hours that are just the same length as they are now), then the sun would come up one hour earlier every day. Everyone gets the same about of sun-days as they do night-days and the big mix of in-between-days. We can look forward to night-days and watch the sun rise when we get off work at 6PM. Everyday would be different.

But when it is 8AM in Blatsville, Indiana, it is 8AM everywhere. And people are just getting up everywhere at 8AM and you can call up someone in China and start talking about breakfast and they can tell you about their cornflakes and you can tell them about yours. Life will be peachy—and all synched up. Just, in some places it’s sunny at 8AM and in others it’s dark—but it’s 8AM in the morning everywhere.

A couple of changes need to be made. First of all, everybody gets an extra hour off every day. That makes this an easy sell. You can use it for your rotten commute or catch up on sleep or whatever. Then there is a 13 o’clock PM-the new midnight. Some people might be superstitious but that just makes the night more adventurous. And there are only 350 25-hour days a year. That’s OK with me. I lose count about May anyway. And, finally, there are fewer days in the month, but that means payday comes around quicker.

OK, there are some down sides—we will all need new curtains. Big thick ones. To sleep thru the night when the sun is shining overhead.

And maybe a big, bright light over the garage so the kids can play outside during the dark, dark days.