I swear to you, I never knew I had a kid.
Once she showed up on my doorstep, one look told me everything I needed to know.
She looked just like her mother, a woman I had loved dearly a decade before. She also looked a little like me. As I reeled from the shock of it all, the news just kept coming – her name was Jill, she was nine, and her mother had recently passed away. I had no choice but to accept my responsibilities as a man and take Jill into my care. The first step on this road was improving the indoor air quality of my home, which meant a full ductwork cleaning. I lived alone, so I had no reason not to smoke cigarettes and pot inside my house. After several years of such behavior, my indoor air quality was abysmal, and my sense of smell was too wrecked to notice. With Jill in the house I needed to strip the place down to the walls to improve the air quality. I got new carpets and drapes, bought two air purifiers, one for the main room and one for Jill’s bedroom. I upgraded the cheapo air filters I had been using to the fancy HEPA air filters. Finally, I called the local cleaning company and had them send out a specialist to clear out my filthy ductwork and air vents. I don’t know the first thing about being a kid, but I knew that air quality was something I had to provide. If I can’t even give my kid clean air to breathe, what good am I?