The situation is: a man calls your house—it could be an apartment, it could be a woman; for the sake of arguing, it’s a man and you live in a house. The call comes in and you are shaking, white-knuckling the phone because this is the call, the call regarding your child. Last Friday you took your child to go buy Uggs® because: “Mommy, Daddy, I want them.” And you never deny your child any expensive item of clothing or technology, even when they already own a couple iPhones™ and pairs of Uggs® which are just lying around collecting a sedentary sheath of dust. During your debacle with the cashier—your coupon was voided—your child’s incessant voice had gone quiet and you observe that he/she is gone; taken.

So, this is the call, the one where your child’s captors ask for a million dollars that you don’t have—you are lower class, Jerry from upstairs got the promotion—to get your kid back. Instead, you give the captors your house, the one you are living in—this includes the car—and you are now homeless, with a child, and your partner has left you because you neglected to tell them you lost the kid—oops. The remaining money you have is quickly used up and your job is gone—you, idiotically, blame Jerry for this—because you couldn’t leave your child alone for fear someone else would want to kidnap him/her. Your family doesn’t care because last Thanksgiving you told them all to: “Stick it up a turkey” after they suggested you discipline your kid—Aunt Suzie said it twice so you were especially angry at her.

Now, instead of making the decision to have a child in the first place; you and your partner go in on a fish, and name it some cliché first-pet name. In the off chance Fido gets fish-napped and ransom money is required to get it back, you have the option to: “Go ahead, kill Jerry.” (You re-named Fido at the last moment because Jerry-from-upstairs ate your sandwich at lunch today.) The next morning you drive—because you still have your car—the mile to pay the 50¢ to get Fido 2. Because your time wasn’t soullessly consumed by your kid, you proved that you deserved the promotion more than Jerry, and you got it—suck a duck you lunch stealing cretin. Months down the line Fido 2 dies. The funeral is small—no reception, a dollar spent in total, and your mom couldn’t make it—you and your partner flush your silent friend down the swirly to the great beyond and continue about your business, occasionally bringing up the bizarre story of how you got Fido 2 and how Jerry-Fido died. Fido 2 was swell and all, but your partner now thinks you can’t commit and have a kid so your relationship falls apart, you are single, and every night you drown your sorrows with a bottle of Fireball.

The figurative-child was the best thing that ever happened to you. Despite everything it did to annoy you, and slowly ruin your life; they had some redeeming qualities that made you love them unconditionally, like all good parents should. In reality you wouldn’t let your child out of your sights in a store, and you wouldn’t let Jerry-from-upstairs take your sandwich without stealing his stapler. You also wouldn’t offer your house for your kid, and forget to tell your spouse that your kid is missing—you may have also called the Police, but that’s preference. The same goes for Fido-Jerry and Fido 2. When buying a fish there is a sense of responsibility that tends to develop once you realize that the fish is a living thing and that it is maybe-kind-of-cute-if-you-squint. While it may be true that you can leave your pet fish alone in a bowl of water while you go out with friends; but if you do the same with a kid you will be placed in jail, and while attempting to place your kid in said bowl you may have felt nothing, you will feel something when you come home to a dead child and a broken bowl.