...to answer to; or to be responsible for; or to fight over the television remote with.

Almost sounds worth it. But humans aren’t wired that way. Instead, we’re insane. Actually, not insane so much as we don’t mind putting up with some of the negative sides of family life because of the joy and happiness it brings to us.

Although, we can’t rule out that it could be our insane wiring which is convincing us that we are experiencing joy and happiness. Maybe we only think we are joyous and happy. This might be the same wiring that convinces some people that they like the taste of Scotch, despite the obvious fact that Scotch tastes how kerosene would taste if it were aged several years in oak barrels.

I wouldn’t be surprised if our screwed up wiring had something to do with the popularity of spicy foods, too. I am one of these people who are of the opinion that the spicier the better. I willingly eat spicy foods knowing full well that my mouth is about to feel as though a small incendiary device just went off inside it.

The experience is very similar to the way spicy foods are graphically depicted in cartoons from the 1940s, with flames shooting from the cartoon character’s mouth, along with a bright red face and smoke billowing out of the ears.

So the wiring flaw that makes some of us enjoy Scotch, spicy foods, and old cartoons is probably the same flaw that makes us enjoy being a part of a family.

But, come on, there’s a limit even to family happiness.

And the family in the news the other week who just had their 17th child and says they would still like more has far surpassed that limit. They have lapped the limit at least twice already. They so totally blew by the limit they can barely see the limit in their rearview mirror.

Having a big family is one thing, but 17 children. These people are the Waltons on steroids.

Put another way, there used to be a television show about a large family called “Eight is Enough.” The key words here being “eight” and “enough.” And even if that weren’t enough, a recent movie, actually a remake of a 1950 movie, about a big family was called “Cheaper by the Dozen.” A dozen. The people in the news with the 17 kids have nearly a half dozen more.

I’ll make one more attempt at helping readers to fully understand just how nuts it would be to have a family that large, as if you hadn’t already reached that conclusion.

The next time you are watching a football game and you realize that you don’t know who half of the players on the field are, and you have difficulty keeping track of what each player is doing as the play unfolds, remember this: that family has only three less members than the two teams combined.

If we can’t keep track of 22 football players when they are all on the television screen at the same time how is any parent of 17 children expected to keep track and stay on top of each of their children’s lives in terms of knowing who they hang out with, what their interests are, their hobbies, their name, birthday, any identifying marks, gender, etc.

Another thing that I, as a parent, was greatly concerned about, knowing how important it is to the overall family dynamic, was exactly how many bathrooms does this family have? Because without the proper number of bathrooms many happy households quickly turn into a soccer-riot type scene. (Little known fact: Most soccer riots stem not from the intense rivalries among fans, but from a severe lack of public restrooms typically found in European soccer stadiums.)

According to the newspaper article, this family has nine bathrooms, which even with 19 family members is a perfectly acceptable family-member-to-bathroom ratio.

So we see that one potential problem was avoided. Unless you happed to be the parent that has to make sure all nine bathrooms are kept clean every week. That alone would be enough to make me into a serious Scotch drinker.

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