Having just spent a week assisting at a day trip destination for 1,000 screaming Grade 4ish-sized people, I no longer doubt the maternal, and to a lesser degree, paternal instincts. No one could love these children except their mothers. Unless it is their fathers. And I'm not 100% sure on that one.

I have one child of my own. She is 28, I think. Don't bother harrassing me about being a bad father for not being sure of her age. Most days I have to think hard to remember my own. And I recall once even failing at that task.

I love my daughter. But would I do it again, knowing what I do now?

They scream. They wander off when you want them to stay put. They stay put when you need them to be somewhere else. They scream. They don't listen when you're talking to them. They do listen when you're talking to someone else. They scream. You have to keep pumping liquids in one end, knowing that you'll have to stop the bus to let them get rid of the liquids from the other end. They scream. Geez, how do people put up with it?

Once, I thought I should be a math teacher. I thought this because math comes fairly simply to me, and I am able to explain it to at least semi-intelligent people. But I didn't think about the rest of the whole deal. The knowledge part is good; imparting the knowledge to a willing disciple is good. But teaching children? Not so good.

I consider myself lucky, to have taken the part I did at the event. I was the "hired gun" at a medieval adventure day. By that I mean that there were a number of stations that the kids rotated through in small groups, learning about various medieval activities, and I had nothing to do with it. I came in at the end, when the whole group got back together, to perform the death defying joust - full contact on charging horses. I love my hobby.

The children screamed. They also booed me. Not because I'm a bad guy (arguably, I am - but how would they know that?) but because I hadn't established that all important rapport with them during the earlier part of the day. I'm fine with that.

God, in whatever form he or she takes, spared both me and many generations of small impressionable children, and their parents, a whole lot of horrendous pain when I stroked that career path off of my "that could be fun to do" list.