All these years, I've been waiting for my sister to announce her pregnancy, thus bringing the joys of children into my life...from a safe distance. Not that I think she's falling behind schedule or is under any obligation to procreate and proliferate, but it just makes sense that the first person to be fruitful and multiply in my general vicinity should be the seven-years-my-elder, five-years-married sister. Thus, I'd be an official aunt--learning to understand the finer points of parenthood (like morning sickness, Diaper Genies, and onesies) from a few hundred miles away before anyone stuck an actual infant in my arms. Then my friends all went and got pregnant. Okay, not all of them. Actually, two of them. But that's two more than I was counting on. Before you get up in arms, I'm really and truly happy for them. My friends (all four if you count the daddies-in-waiting) want this. It makes them happy. They're excited for the baby, if not the hemorrhoids. More important, those Bundles of JoyTM will have darn loving, kind, wonderful parents. So I'm not bashing parenthood, you see? And I'm not trying to tell my friends to plan their milestones around my maturity. And I definitely don't believe that my friends are as inept as I fear I am when it comes to human-like-creatures-who-are-even-shorter-than-I-am. And no matter what some people might whisper behind my back at our Post-College Parade of Weddings, I'm certainly not covering up bitterness at a recalcitrant boyfriend's need for a few more years before he can contemplate firmer plans in Commitmentland. But I will admit, it still freaks me out. I try to cover it. The wonders of little, tiny baby socks are my camouflage of well-adjusted, infant-craving womanhood. Good plan, huh? Who can't love little, tiny baby socks? (As one daddy-to-be pointed out, who can't love little, tiny baby fill-in-the-blank-heres? Shrink anything down to that size, and it's undeniably adorable.) You know what's best about these socks, though? They're cute with or without that baby to fill 'em. Rather than thinking about becoming an unofficial aunt (read: a babysitter that my friends think they can trust, but I think will disappoint), I can think about buying little tiny socks. Rather than thinking about my seldom-voiced fear that children fear me--and my friends' offspring will therefore cry when Auntie Me enters the room, I can think about wrapping little tiny socks in a little tiny box. Rather than thinking about falling even further behind my friends in the calendar of Life (I've spun ones since graduation and got stuck on the hill; everyone else has passed the big red square in front of me and a few paydays besides), I can think about carrying the tiny little box in a tiny little bag to those last minutes of baby-free celebration called a baby shower. After all, think about what these baby socks represent: Tiny feet--I like tiny feet! Tiny feet can't hold you up; you just occasionally kick the air with them, or maybe find a way to work them into your mouth for a tasty afternoon snack. Sounds like a great way to be. What's more, tiny feet can't spit up on you. Tiny feet can't cry when you hold them wrong. Tiny feet don't require a changing table. Tiny feet are really, really, really hard to screw up. And isn't that what it all comes down to? My fear of screwing up. Many of my friends know I'm less openly enthusiastic about my own projected parenting skills than most 20-something women. I have a recurring nightmare that my child--cute as a bug, of course--will go into a classroom filled with kids. At the front will be a friendly-looking, fresh-out-of-college teacher, with that TV-approved brunette intelligence with a dash of spunk (or maybe it's perk?). Mini-My-Genes joins the class, and you think everything's okay. Then that unassuming, unsuspected villain-teacher asks the kids to make a circle and join hands. That's when it happens. My progeny--my pride and joy--says, "Don't touch me. I don't like being touched." It's the greatest denial of humankind that a five-year-old can give. And I might unleash one of those on the playground someday--to blossom into a short, acne-ridden, oversized-glasses-sporting style-mishap with a hopelessly out-of-date haircut, whose (the mishap's, not the haircut's) daily routine includes hiding lunch money from the bullies on the bus and/or snorting milk when the cute guy looks vaguely in her direction, but without the best buddy to exclaim afterwards that he didn't notice it. So you see, I'd rather think of little, tiny baby socks. After all, as soon as the socks get filled, I'll be confronted with my friends' triumphs and tragedies. The rest of us (waiting for the right time, the right home, the right guy, the right girl, the right job, the right bank balance) will smugly say to ourselves, "We won't make that mistake." Of course, what we mean is, "Lord help me, I don't want to know what horrible mistakes I will make!"