TEAM LAST CALL

I recognized immediately that it was a joke, and the way I knew it was a joke is because babies can't hold their liquor. Not only that, but they're terrible at video games and it takes them forever to work their way through a piece of beef jerky. And that's why, for my friends and me, having a baby is simply not an option. A baby would threaten everything that we, as a group of young, spirited and most of all, flatulent males, hold dear. By which I mean Guys Night.

Because everybody knows that Guys Night and babies do not go together.

First of all, when you're in the middle of a heated competition to see who can fit the most M&Ms up his nose, you can't afford to lose your focus because some baby is shrieking his head off in the background. Just because the baby decided to poop his own pants doesn't mean that he should ruin the night for everyone else. I mean, look at my friend Patrick: he pooped his pants hours ago, and is he sitting in the middle of the floor crying about it? No! He's outside grilling burgers and throwing horseshoes like a real man!

And secondly, no one, and I mean no one, can defeat Sauron's army of orcs and banish the One Ring into the fires of Mordor with a baby in his arms. I'm sorry, but there's just no way you can execute Aragorn's Wrath of Numenor attack move with one hand - not to mention the Orc Bane! I mean, please! While you're at it, why don't you just march into Shelob's lair without activating the light of Erendil? Loser.

So needless to say, when my friend started flapping his lips about babies and fatherhood and responsibility, I didn't buy it for a second. Between playing rock and roll and watching football, most of us barely have enough free time to change our socks each week. Making one of us responsible for the welfare of a whole other human being would be like putting someone who can't even pronounce the word "nuclear" in charge of the deadliest military force on the planet.

I tried to explain all of this to my friend, but he kept insisting that he and his wife really were going to have a baby. I felt bad for him, because I could tell that he really believed it. It was cute, in a little-kid-leaving-milk-and-cookies-for-Santa kind of way. So I just let it go, figuring that sooner or later my friend would realize that having a baby wasn't even in realm of possibility. It would be like a pig flying, or Nickelback writing a good song.

A few months passed, and I didn't give the issue any thought. But then, by early fall, I started picking up on a few signals that made me suspect my friend was right about having a baby. Just little things, like how he painted one of his rooms blue and set up a crib. And how his wife started waddling when she walked, and how her belly puffed up like she was trying to smuggle Emmanuel Lewis around under her shirt. And how someone threw her a baby shower. And how she totally had a baby.

When I first got news of the baby's birth, I felt a little conflicted. I was excited for my friend, but I just wasn't ready for a baby. I needed time. But did my friend ever stop to consider my feelings? Did he have the decency to consult with me before having a baby? No. Evidently, I'm not even part of this equation. Evidently, anyone can just run off and make a baby whenever he feels like it, without any regard for how its going to affect his friends and/or the integrity of their booger-flicking contests.

And that's when it occurred to me that the booger-flicking contests might be a thing of the past. Maybe it's time to grow up. Our whole group of friends is hovering around the 30-year mark. We are old. We have passed our prime. We are like shriveled old raisins floating numbly in the breakfast cereal of life. It's time to accept our fate.

Full of melancholy and regret, I trudged into the hospital to see this new baby, this living symbol of the mundane adult life that loomed on the horizon.

I found the hospital room, rapped on the door and pushed my way in to meet baby Owen.

And there he was, a baby boy, a picture-perfect baby boy with glistening eyes, a wispy patch of hair and these impossibly small hands, his tiny fingers wrapped around his mother's thumb, his little heart bravely thumping away inside his tiny little frame, all warm and fragile and miraculous. He was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen.

I knew immediately that I had to have one. Babies are like iPods - you have to actually hold one in your hand before you realize how meaningless life is without them. They're even better than Guys Night.

There are definitely a few logistical problems I need to work out before I get a baby, like how I'm going to keep my Jack Russell from eating it. And I need to find somewhere to keep it. But then again, babies aren't that big, so finding storage space shouldn't really be a problem. I'll just clear off a shelf somewhere.

And then I guess I kind of need to run the idea past my wife. I definitely need her on board if this baby thing is going to work out. Either that or I need to get my own uterus.

Until I get it all sorted out, feel free to send any extra babies you've got lying around the house to the Fly Magazine office, attention Team Last Call. It would make for a really great Christmas gift, and I'm pretty sure babies are tax deductible. Unless they're not. I don't really know.

Anyway, Happy Holidays from all of us here at Team Last Call.