You have to believe that your parents tried their damndest for you not to be here right now. One month in to her pregnancy, your mother went Oh shit... this thing is alive. And it's going to be fucking up my life until I die. From that moment on, your life was in dire jeapordy. But, despite being the liberals they were, your parents couldn't bring themselves to drink drain cleaner, or practise their wire-moulding skills on nearby coathangers. And once you're out, it's too late. The law frowns on post partem abortion. And since there's nothing they can do directly to off you, your parents had to put all their chips on the one bet still available to them: fatal accidents. Kids are always dropping off rusty jungle-jims, falling into conveniently uncovered storm drains, or being run the fuck over while persuing too-casually tossed tennis balls. Did you think these things were accidental? Well, only in the sense that no-one can be prosecuted for it. The Red Cross — that famously do-gooder and imminently believable institution — has reported that accidents are the most common cause of death of children over the age of one.

Of course the risk you take trying to get your kids killed is that you don't get them killed enough and you end up with a drooling idiot in a wheelchair. Then the only chance you have is to get them cast in an irritating sitcom that vaguely pokes fun at the disabled on one hand, while educating us on how making fun of them is wrong on the other. And I don't think the world can handle another Corky.

Consider this: a child is strangled to death when her poncho catches on a slide in Rustenburg. A 7-year-old Japanese kid gets crushed beneath a swing. Another one catches her bicycle helmet in a jungle jim and suffocates. I know adults who still don't speak all that well since being smacked in the nuts by a see-saw. These are not the freak accidents they might seem, but a calculated attempt to bring children and dangerous objects together in one space as often as possible. They call it "The Playground". As a five-year old, that's a pretty appealing sounding place to go. A study found that playground injuries are more severe than car accident injuries. And that's no fucking coincidence. What with all the sharp metal objects and soft, childlike flesh coming into contact with one another all the time, accidents are inevitable. Yet your parents took you, didn't they? And probably lined you up behind the slide, with as many dangly-catchy bits as possible, to get strung up until you were no longer such a drain on family finances. Most often, parents carry cameras with them on these occasions, to supply proof of their non-involvement in your unfortuate demise.

Centrifugal force can be a killer — this child was hurled a full 10 feet! Take note of the gravelly tar used for maximum scraping effect.	Notice the parka with many strings. Even if the child survives the attempted strangulation, the slide can be oh-so- fucking-slippery and always points towards hard bit of the ground.	Heights are also invaluable in the persuit of pedocide. And gravity can't be held legally liable for said messy death.
Aaah, the classic see-saw double- header. One child gets hit in the crotch and jumps off. No longer counterbalanced, the other child hits the tarmac soon after.	And here's one I prepared earlier. Note the complete lack of movement or ability to ask for a R500 Playstation game.

Of all the commercial products available to assist you in getting your kid to croak, the Slip n' Slide deserves a special mention: 20 metres of ultra-slippy yellow plastic you then wet with water so you could fling yourself headlong into whatever was 20.1 metres away. Meanwhile, sharp stones and sticks buried in the soil underneath tear your small, childlike body apart. But the efficacy of the Slip n' Slide depended largely on the creativity of its setup: downhill was best, over a particularly undulating stretch of lawn with nasty, stabby plants on either side, and pointed straight at a garden wall. The Whammo Corporation, makers of the Slip n' Slide, should be commended for doing their bit to keep the child population well-culled through completely accidental spinal injuries. Note to parents: Take care with the Slip n' Slide method not to merely paralyse your child, but completely kill it. Coccyx injuries are, unfortunately, not fatal.

The Hepatitis-B vaccine has been known to cause chronic immune and neurological disease in children and adults including multiple sclerosis and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. (The latter is a carte blanche for parents who can't come up with anything better than "she just dropped dead, officer, really".) In return, you receive quentionable immunity against a disease that is not highly contagious, has a 95% recovery rate, and is mostly sexually transmitted. Yet they gave it to you — injected you with a potentially fatal disease while you were still too young to question it. Fucking brilliant, mom.

For the parent who could wait a few years, a vicious dog is the obvious answer. Given to you as a "present" (another thing kids can't resist), the idea is to allow you to neglect the animal, until it becomes older and consumed by resentment towards you. Secretly, your parents are feeding it gunpowder and showing it A Cry in the Dark over and over. Then, on your seventh birthday, they "forget" to tie it up and "accidentally" lock you outside. Not a month goes by without a report of some toddler who was violently mauled by a "pack of wild dogs" who, for some inexplicable reason, were hiding in the child's bedroom. The beauty of this strategy, of course, is that you get to shoot the dog once it has done its job. Dogs can't defend themselves and they make brillint scapegoats, that's why they're man's best friend. Not because of this loyalty crap.

Kids put anything in their mouths, so food would be an obvious way to kill them. Parents will always make you eat shit that will kill you. Potatoes have arsenic in them. Maltabella? What was that shit? Glue to seal up your airway so you choke to death. That's all. It had no nutritional value because that would've cost money. And then they say, "have some honey with it!" Well, of course. Make it more sticky you bitch. The Japanese have managed to produce the best child-culling device known to man and turned it into a sweet. That's some serious fucking innovation. A gel sweet, shaped exactly like a large dummy, that slips easily into the child's throat where it gets stuck. The gel then partially liquifies, sealing the airway shut despite the best efforts of paramedics. And the issues with bed-wetting and arson just kinda solve themselves.

Despite popular culture's pretense to the contrary, the unfortunate reality is that many times, the last thing a child sees before they croak, is their parents smiling.