I am a baby dropper. Sue me.

When I was young, I was always good with kids. Probably this had something to do with the fact that we used to get taken down the pub quite frequently, and there was always a tribe of kids from varying families that all got dumped into the play park, or similar, and we were left to fend for ourselves. I was generally one of the oldest ones present, and therefore tried to keep an eye ( boss around) the younger ones.

At that age it wasn't that hard. You ran around, arms flailing wildly, playing tag, or chase games, or climbed all over the ( suspiciously unstable ) climbing frames ( slide and rope ladder netting optional!), making up games and screaming to your heart's content. As long as nobody swallowed anything shiny, red or plastic, we were generally ok. But all of a sudden we stopped going out to play. I can't remember when it happened. It just does: one day you wake up and you realise you haven't done it in years. I was always a lazy child, preferring my own company and books/videos to other kids, so it happened quite quickly for me. It's sad though, and quite strange to accept that childhood has passed, and you can no longer remember the hundreds of things that seemed perfectly natural to know then, such as knowing when Going Live started, the names of every cartoon/show in existence, or how long you had to stuff cornflakes soaked in 16 grams of sugar into your mouth before your mum demanded you got dressed and helped her with the big Saturday shop ( this was in the days before Tesco had expanded into the Goliath sized super shop era, and we still bought everything from the local supermarket.)

But yes, approaching teens happened inevitably, and I began to forget. And in forgetting, I unlearned a lot of what I knew about children. I can't tell ages apart. To me a 3 year old looks old enough for school. 7 year olds seem far too big, and 10 year olds with mobile phones and sarcasm dripping from every pore are frightening beasts to perceive. I know I was no different, but hindsight clouds and confuses the memory. Anyway, I also discovered that I know almost nothing about children under the age of 3,which is when my own memory kicks in. I have fond recollections of half walking/running ( in that bouncy and endearing way toddlers do just after acquiring better control of motor functions,) around a small supermarket, losing my parents, but being quite happy to walk around unsupervised, knocking into things, tripping up pensioners, and probably trying to shop lift as many pots of bubbles - a frequent pastime of mine at this age- as my podgy, jam stained fingers could grab onto. I can remember saying helpful things to my mother when she was trying to change my sister's nappy, such as " erggghh, she smells really BAD mum!", and getting extremely excited when the birthday cards were read out on kids TV on the day of my actual birthday - standing up and squeaking " Me me, it's my birthday too !!".

But even so, I can't remember anything of use for when dealing with children as an adult. At a friend's 18th, before we all headed to town, I scared the wits out of several of her younger cousins by telling a long, rubbish scary story along the lines of " In a dark dark house, down a dark dark stair" - it was rubbish because
the scary monster turned out to be an Algebra teacher, but the tone of voice, plus hideous face combined to create an atmosphere of tension that would have relieved the bowels of all but the severest cases of constipated members of the public. Panicked children screeching and crying for their mum was not the desired effect, even if it did get the little buggers out of the hostess' hair for a while.

However, the worst example of child faux pas involved an ex and his 3 month old niece. I went over to see the baby for the first time and was horrified to discover just how small she was...I had no idea they looked so fragile and delicate, and tried to resist going near her, as I'm clumsy at the best of times. To the ever foolish chorus of " Don't be silly, you'll be fine!" the poor child was plonked into my care. She returned my look of fearful mistrust and began to squirm like hampster stuck in a skirting board, so I propped her up on her dumpy little legs, and held her under her armpits. She began to settle and coo, and I began to relax... and relaxed enough to the point that when the mother ( and sister of my partner) began talking to me, I turned to reply, FORGETTING THE BABY, and released my grip.

In slow motion she FELL FORWARD, onto her FACE, and started screaming in a manner that suggested she was being slow roasted in the bbq pit of hell. I stammered out an apology, and tried to soothe the infant, who was instantly swept up into her mother's bosom, rapidly checked for broken bones, and then tried to reassure me that it happened to everyone. Clearly it was a common enough occurrence that I did exactly the same thing 20 minutes later. I nearly died, and we left quickly afterwards. He still teases me about that to this day, especially as the next time we went around to his sister's, the child took one look at us, and started howling, trying to climb/dig her way out of the baby play pen she was sitting in, and refused to let me touch her. How she knew it was me, I have no idea, only that it must have scarred her deeply.

That is my confession...I am a baby dropper. I have almost no maternal instinct, no knowledge of children, and will probably be better off raising whippets and weasels than my own brood in later life.I have some consolation with the dream of becoming the cool aunty to my friends' children. I'll teach them to whistle, and shop, and swear like a trooper, before depositing them back, pumped full of e-numbers, eyes bulging and swirling like a freak in a Carnival, hyped up and wriggling like conga eels before shrieking " I wanna stay with aunty Joooooooooooooooooo!!!!". Mwahaha! The only sad thing about this is that inevitably it'll happen with my sister...and she's bound to have the twins from the Shining, who'll ditch them on my doorstep, and the green eyed un-blinking, pigtailed, Nazi-poster pair of doom will mutter something in their spooky twin voices like " Hello aunty, we want to play dollies..forever, and ever, and EVER!" (shudder).

As frightened as I am of reducing any future offspring of mine to pancaked faced blobs, or mentally wounding them. I suppose it's important to remember that kids are tough. I deserve someone to torture with embarrassment as my parents tortured my. Besides...who else is going to pay for my nursing home and gardening trips?