Eighteen Years

There are a lot of reasons why I have never acquired a parrot. The mess. The cost. The noise. But probably the number one reason is the responsibility: everyone knows that parrots can easliy live seventy years or more, which means that you will be responsible for that parrot not only throughout your entire lifetime, but in all likelihood beyond your lifetime as well. And who in their right mind would sign up for that kind of commitment? It’s a ridiculous thought.

Of course, then I went and had children.

I know that the fact that children tend to stick around as long as parrots do should have been obvious to me from the start, but somehow I missed that memo. Personally, I blame Kanye. “Eighteen years, eighteen years,” he sang so catchily that somehow that refrain got stuck in my head as a sort of mantra. “Eighteen years, eighteen years,” I would mutter to myself as I pried up multiple pieces of gum from a wooden floor. “Eighteen years, eighteen years,” as I caught a catnap in the car between my (unpaid) chauffeur duties. “Eighteen years, eighteen years,” as I listened to a bedroom door slam for the third time in one night.

The truth of it is that “Eighteen years” is really just the downpayment—no, worse than that, “Eighteen years” is the time you have spent sitting in the back office of the car dealership, haggling over “undercoating” and “extended warranties,” before the real payments have even begun. “Eighteen years” is a joke.

Oh, sure, eighteen years is the end of your legal responsibility—you are no longer legally and financially responsible for the bad decisions someone else makes—but the line between “legally responsible” and just “responsible” becomes somewhat blurred when the person on the other end of the phone still needs to buy groceries and pay for car insurance. Or maybe just needs step-by-step instructions on how to cook a hamburger in a frying pan.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not complaining. (Well, maybe I am complaining a little.) And, realistically, I know that at some point the financial hits will stop coming. But the emotional ones? Never.

When they warn you that you will be responsible for that parrot for seventy years or more, they don’t just mean financially. In fact, I’m sure that the finances involved in taking care of even the fussiest parrot are miniscule when compared to the cost of taking care of a child (and this will be true up until the day someone comes up with the idea of sports travel teams for parrots). No, they are talking about being emotionally responsible. Which, again, pales when compared to what you go through with a child—even when that child is now an adult.

I’m not saying you don’t love your parrot—but do you worry about it taking up vaping? Do you worry that it will one day visit the wrong Wal-Mart, concert, or classroom and get shot by another, angry parrot (which, statistically, would probably be a cockatoo)? Do you worry that your parrot will have a bad day and not want to bother you by calling to talk about it, and from there will spiral into a parrot depression? I’m not a parrot owner, but I’m going to guess that the answer to all of those questions is “no.”

For years my husband and I have have explained away our lack of a dog (a rarity in this dog-loving town) by saying that we’re waiting to see how the children work out first. I used to worry that this excuse would lose its validity after “Eighteen years,” but now I realize that that excuse will still be going strong fifty years from now.

And, just to be clear: we’re also not getting a parrot.