So you have decided to have a child. You have decided to give up quiet evenings with good books and lazy weekends with good music, intimate meals during which you finish whole sentences, sweet private times when you have savored the thought that just the two of you and your love are all you will ever need. You have decided to turn your sofas into trampolines and to abandon the joys of leisurely contemplating reproductions of great art for the joys of frantically coping with reproductions of yourselves.
Why?

Poets have said that the reason to have children is to give yourself immortality, and I must admit I did ask God to give me a son because I wanted someone to carry on the family name. Well, God did just that and now I confess that there have been times when I have told my son not to reveal who his father is.
“You make up a name,” I have said. “Just don’t tell anybody who you are.”
Immortality? Now that I have had five children, my only hope is that they all are out of the house before I die.
No, immortality was not the reason why my wife and I produced these beloved sources of dirty laundry and ceaseless noise. And we also did not have them because we thought it would be fun to see one of them sit in a chair and stick out his leg so that another one of them running by was launched like Explorer I. After which I said to the child who was the launching pad, “Why did you do that?”

“Do what?” He replied

“Stick out your leg.”
“Dad, I didn’t know my leg was going out. My leg, it does that a lot.”
If you cannot function in a world where things like this are said, then you better forget about raising children and go for daffodils.

My wife and I also did not have children so they could yell at each other all over the house, moving me to say, “What’s the problem?”
“She’s waving her foot in my room,” my daughter replied.
“And something like that bothers you?”
“Yes, I don’t want her foot in my room.”
“Well, I said, dipping into my storehouse of paternal wisdom, why don’t you just close the door?”
“Then I can’t see what she’s doing!”
Furthermore, we did not have the children because we thought it would be rewarding to watch them do things that should be studied by the Menninger Clinic.

“Okay,” I said to all five one day, “Go get into the car.”All five then ran to the same car door, grabbed the same handle, and spent the next few minutes beating each other up. Not one of them had the intelligence to say, “Hey look. There are three more doors.” The dog, however, was already inside.

And we did not have the children to help my wife develop new lines for her face or because she had always had a desire to talk out loud to herself. “Don’t tell me you’re not going to do something when I tell you to move!” And we did not have children so I could always be saying to someone, “Where’s my change?”

Like so many young couples, my wife and I simply were unable to project. In restaurants we did not see the small children who were casting their bread on the water in the glasses the waiter had brought, and we did not see the mother who was fasting because she was both cutting the food for one child while pulling another from the floor to a chair that he would use for slipping to the floor again. And we did not project beyond those lovely Saturdays of buying precious little things after leisurely brunches together. We did not see that other precious little things would be coming along to destroy the first batch.
(Adapted from Fatherhood by Bill Cosby, 1986.)

연습문제

Exposition

Who are the key characters in the reading?
Where does the story take place–what is the setting as it relates to location (this may or may not apply to the essay)?
When does the story take place–what is the setting as it relates to time (of day, year, life)?
What mood is set by the language used in the early passages?

Rising Action