There comes a time, whether due to wedding bells chiming or biological clocks ticking louder, when most couples start to ponder one of life's biggest questions: "Are we ready to have a baby?"
And if this is you, on the brink of thinking life is just a bundle of joy away from utter bliss, you might want to take this hilarious test first – and we'll see
just how ready you really are:
Test 1: Preparation
Women: To prepare for pregnancy
1. Put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front.
2. Leave it there.
3. After nine months remove 5 per cent of the beans.
Men: To prepare for children
1. Go to a local chemist, tip the contents of your wallet onto the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself.
2. Go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
3. Go home. Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time.
Test 2: Knowledge
Find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels and how they have allowed their children to run wild.
Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behaviour.
Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.
Test 3: Nights
To discover how the nights will feel:
1. Walk around the living room from 5 pm to 10 pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 4 - 6kg, with the radio turned to static playing loudly.
2. At 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 11 pm and walk the bag around the living room until 1am.
4. Set the alarm for 3am.
5. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2 am and make a cup of tea.
6. Go to bed at 2.45am.
7. Get up again at 3 am when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs in the dark until 4am.
9. Put the alarm on for 5 am. Get up when it goes off.
10. Make breakfast.
Keep this up for five years. LOOK CHEERFUL.
Test 4: Dressing Small Children
1. Buy a live octopus and a string bag.
2. Try to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hang out.
Time Allowed: Five minutes.
Test 5: Cars
1. Forget the BMW. Buy a practical 5-door wagon.
2. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.
3. Get a coin. Insert it into the CD player.
4. Take a box of chocolate biscuits; mash them into the back seat.
5. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.
Test 7: Conversations with children
Repeat everything you say at least five times.
Test 8: Grocery Shopping
1. Go to the local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child – a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat.
2. Buy your weekly groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight.
3. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.
Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.
Test 9: Feeding a 1-year old
1. Hollow out a melon.
2. Make a small hole in the side.
3. Suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it side to side.
4. Now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon while pretending to be an aeroplane.
5. Continue until half the cornflakes are gone.
6. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor.
Test 10: Mess
Can you stand the mess children make? To find out:
1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.
2. Hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds and then rub them on clean walls. Cover the stains with crayon. How does that look?
4. Empty every drawer/cupboard/storage box in your house onto the floor and proceed to step 5.
5. Drag randomly items from one room to another room and leave them there.
Test 11: Long Trips with Toddlers
1. Make a recording of someone shouting 'Mummy' repeatedly. Important Notes: No more than a four-second delay between each Mummy. Include occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet.
2. Play this tape in your car, everywhere you go for the next four years.
You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.
Test 12: Getting ready for work
1. Pick a day on which you have an important meeting. 2. Put on your finest work attire. 3. Take a cup of cream and put 1 cup of lemon juice in it 4. Stir 5. Dump half of it on your nice silk shirt.
6. Saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture.
7. Attempt to clean your shirt with the same saturated towel.
8. Do not change (you have no time).
9. Go directly to work.
You are now ready to have children. ENJOY!!
This test was originally printed in Colin Falconer's book, "A beginners guide to fatherhood".
