Every reaches that age: adult­hood. For some, it’s a mat­ter of mov­ing out of the house and into the big city. For oth­ers, it’s a mat­ter of grad­u­at­ing high school and get­ting a real job. For still oth­ers, it’s marriage.

I am, I fear, on the cusp of adult­hood. I’ve moved out of my par­ents house, I’ve grad­u­ated high school (and col­lege) and have a job, and I’m on the path to get­ting mar­ried. I’ll be an awk­ward adult in no time.

Being an adult means pos­ses­sion. You begin to buy cool things like: cars, boats, com­put­ers, RVs, and liv­ing things. No, not SLAVES (haha)! I mean PUPPY ver­sus BABY ver­sus ROBOT.

There is no mon­key because they are essen­tial lit­tle babies that never learn to talk or to hold their bow­els. There are no Ninja or Pirates because a pirate will only break your heart, and you don’t own a ninja, a ninja owns you. PUPPY can be sub­sti­tuted with KITTY or TURTLE or FERRET (if you dare).

PUPPY

Name: A puppy can be named any­thing. It can be made up word, or your favorite Lord of the Rings char­ac­ter, or a food. The truth is, the stranger the name, the bet­ter for the dog.
Age: Dogs don’t out­live humans. Our fam­ily has had patches since Bryce could actu­ally fit into that pur­ple Big Stone City shirt he wears all the time, but a num­ber of our other dogs have died since then. The truth is, if you buy a new dog when your old one dies, you can have almost a dozen dif­fer­ent dogs in your life­time.
Finan­cial Cost: Some dogs can be up to $1,000, plus dog food and groom­ing (if you go that route)
Emo­tional Cost: Peo­ple get very attached to dogs, but they are just soul­less fur shells
In case of emer­gency: Call a vet! But you can prob­a­bly let it slide a few days.
In case of death: Cry, bury it in the back­yard, and buy a new one.

BABY

Name: WARNING! What you name a baby can and will come back to haunt you. By no means should you apply BABY or ROBOT nam­ing con­ven­tions to human chil­dren. They will either grow up hat­ing you, or every­one else they meet will. Pick those stan­dard names that every­one else uses: reli­gious names, names of other fam­ily mem­bers, or names of famous peo­ple.
Age: Babies live a life­time, lit­er­ally.
Finan­cial Cost: Pretty high. Not only is there a high ini­tial cost (birth), but you pretty much pay for every­thing until they become 25 or so. This can add to mil­lions of dol­lars.
Emo­tional Cost: Also pretty high. Most peo­ple are more attached to chil­dren than to pets. This is not always the case, sadly.
In case of emer­gency: Call a doc­tor. They’re good at that stuff. There’s even a ver­sion of doc­tor spe­cific to babies called a Pedi­a­tri­cian.
In case of death: You’re screwed. Hope­fully, you’re sad, and, hope­fully, you’re not the cause of death. That’s call mur­der or infan­ti­cide, and it means jail time and angry emails. DO NOT CAUSE THE DEATH OF A BABY UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

ROBOT

Name: Any­thing. Typ­i­cally some­thing that trig­gers an emo­tion: gizmo (light-hearted hap­pi­ness), R2D2 (cold indif­fer­ence), or DESTRUCTOR (vio­lence).
Age: As demon­strated in Futu­rama, a robot can live to be infin­ity years old. A robot will out live you, if kept in good con­di­tion. That’s a fright­en­ing feel­ing.
Finan­cial Cost: Not bad. Robots can be pretty cheap, it just depends on how com­pli­cated and self-relient you want the robot to be.
Emo­tional Cost: Also, not bad. It’s hard to get too attached to a robot. I have a Mac­Book. I love my Mac­Book, but if it sud­denly died, I’d toss it, give it to Holli (and not tell her it’s bro­ken), or sell it on eBay (and say that it’s bro­ken, but in a lit­tle font). Then I’d buy another one. Easy come, easy go.
In case of emer­gency: Call an engi­neer. A com­puter sci­en­tist might be help­ful, too, but if it’s a major prob­lem, you’ll want an Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer or a Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer (like Tony!).
In case of death: Scrap it, use the money to buy a new one, and go on with your life.

That’s the score — which one do you choose: PUPPY, BABY, or ROBOT?