Thinking Long-Term

Three intrepid adventurers set out one lunch-time to search for a Christening present.

Danny: I don't even want to be a bloody god-parent.
J-Dawg: Why?
Danny: Because if his parent's cop it I'll have to look after the little brat. And given Daddy Dearest's alcohol intake, it's only a matter of time before his liver explodes.
SS: Surely this nipper in question has other family members? A mother, for example.
J-Dawg: I'd imagine you'd have to scythe through a good many relatives to get to you.
Danny: It could happen.
SS: How, exactly? What kind of family-centric apocalypse are you imagining that this apparently indestructible child can crawl away from?
Danny: They could all die in a plane crash.
J-Dawg: Having left you with the toddler?
Danny: Yeah. And then he'll be bound to get hold of a copy of Jumanji, and it'll be rhinos in the sodding living room.
J-Dawg: Your worst-case scenario is that the child gets hold of a magic board game?
Danny: As a statistician I am highly trained in the field of long term prediction.
SS: Why not just tell your mate the truth? You don't want to commit yourself to his ankle-biter for fear of magical rampaging ungulates.
Danny: It's not just the rhinos. There's also the giant bastard mosquitoes.
SS: Man, I hear you.
Danny: And the massive spiders.
SS: Well, that could go either way. What else is going to take out the over-sized bugs?
Danny: I could attack them using the kiddie as a swatter.
SS: I think nets and sprays are the traditional methods for combating mosquitoes. Rather than, y'know, the child who is now legally your son.
J-Dawg: I'm still confused as to where this enterprising tot has got hold of a fictional board game.
Danny: You saw the film! They threw it in a river!
SS: Not the Wear, though, surely.
J-Dawg: Presumably somewhere in America.
Danny: Fine! New scenario: the whole family get on a plane to the States, which crashes on landing, so we have to go to the funeral there.
SS: Taking the child, too.
Danny: Yes, and possibly having a holiday. You wouldn't pass up a chance like that.
SS: A chance thrown up by the horrific deaths of your closest friend as his entire family save one mystically-attuned prepubescent. I would point out that you keep taking subsets of your previous worse-case scenarios, but then since we're already in the subset where magic exists, what'd be the point?
J-Dawg: You need to stop working on set theory. Or just keep quiet, whatever.
Danny: And then while we're there, he finds the game, and those drums go BOM BOM BOBBABOBBA BOM!
SS: Just so you know, you have a problem with percussion that will cost a fortune in psychiatric bills to correct.
Danny: Then before we know it we've got sociopaths chasing us around the house with automatic weapons.
SS: Isn't that a risk during any trip to the States?
J-Dawg: Political comedy with SpaceSquid.
Danny: We're not actually any closer to deciding what to get, present-wise.
SS: Given the current topic of conversation I'd suggest implanting a bomb inside Junior's torso that detonates the moment his father snuffs it.
J-Dawg: Tricky to wrap.
Danny: We'd need a trigger, too.
SS: The trigger's no problem, we just hand it to the proud father inside a pint of beer.
Danny: And the bomb?
SS: Similarly hidden within, erm, alcoholic breast milk?
J-Dawg: Alcoholic breast-milk? How the Hell would we even-
Danny: SOLD!

Exeunt our heroes, searching for drunken students in the early stages of post-natal depression.