I was in Mount Temple school in Dublin recently giving a talk to transition year students. Much as I enjoy talking to students, my stomach always sinks slightly before these gigs when I think back to exactly how interested I was when people came to give talks in my school.
My aim back then was to have as much fun as possible at the visitor's expense, no matter how many interesting things they might have had to say. In fact, the more interesting their stories, the more likely I was to misbehave. I remember giggling moronically through a school talk by the late, great actor Ray McAnally, who had fascinating things to say about starring in a Hollywood blockbuster. A jumped-up journalist with a milk stain on her jacket would have been devoured alive.
Visiting Mount Temple made me wish I had grown up on the north side, so my mother could have sent me there. It's a multi-denominational school with no uniform code and a less pronounced "them and us" attitude when it comes to pupils and teachers. The relaxed atmosphere doesn't suit everyone, but I know it would have suited me. Famously, Mount Temple is where a guy called Larry pinned up a notice on the school board for people to form a band, which led to Feedback - an early version of a certain musical combo called U2 - taking shape in the school music room. As I shared scones with a few of the staff, I was told that Adam Clayton's music teacher despaired of trying to teach him to read sheet music. Funny, the things you learn when you go back to school.
The reason I mention Mount Temple is because four of the students who gathered in the library were nursing babies. Not real babies you understand. Baby dolls with computer chips embedded to make them behave like real babies. They may as well be real. These faux-babies cry when they need changing or feeding or attention and don't stop until their guardians perform the appropriate task. It leads to the cutest scenes around the school. Such as two 15-year-old boys concentrating hard as they change the nappies of their charges.
Not everyone is as committed. Some got so sick of the crying that they left the babies outside in the car all night. But there is no escape from the all-knowing computer chip which diligently registers any doll-related abuse.
The babies are provided by the health board. They are designed to encourage students to abstain from unprotected sex in order to avoid accidentally ending up parents before their time. It hadn't worked with two of the young women I spoke to. They call their babies Amy and Jamie. They love them. They don't want to give them back. So that plan has backfired.
Anyway, I was looking at these girls with their little brown babies, and for probably the 50th time that week I asked myself whether I wanted one of those. I'm at that age where one thinks about these things. And there are plenty of reasons why the answer should be yes.
Reason number one: I am sartorially prepared. I wouldn't have to buy any maternity clothes because I already seem to have quite a lot of items on my clothes rail that fall into that category. In work today, I am wearing tracksuit bottoms masquerading as trousers and a top that sports a smock-like frontal area. Pregnant Colleague (PC) informs me these would do quite nicely should I get myself up the Damien.
Reason number two. I am physically prepared. Initially I was a bit worried about the fact that I already have a bit of a belly - which is kind of like saying Ray Burke took a bit of a bribe - and that pregnancy would render this area elephantine. But, helpfully, PC pointed out that in fact the baby could nestle comfortably into the bulge and hide there for at least four months before anybody noticed there was something different about me.
Reason number three: Everybody else is doing it. Well, everybody except my friend and I, who spend a lot of time talking about trying to do it, but not much else. Meanwhile, people are getting pregnant all over the place. Congratulations to them and all that, but pregnancy-related peer pressure is a bit of burden. What if we can't? What if we don't want to? What? You're having another one?
Reason number four: I've finally accepted the fact that we won't be perfect parents. What has been holding us back is that we might say or do something that will ruin any new being's life. I asked a relatively new parent about this. "What if we mess up," I said. "You definitely will, to some degree," he replied. But he managed to convince me that when the child grew up, it would have developed the capacity to undo any of the damage we have done.
It seems I've no excuses left. Perhaps it's time I started on the folic acid. I think what I'll do first, though, is ring the health board and see if they have any of those other babies left.
roisiningle@irish-times.ie