First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.

For the nonbelievers out there, let’s just set the record straight. Giving birth to 10 children at once, breaking a world record, with a handful of staff and absolutely no evidence that this ever took place, is totally realistic. I know, I’ve seen them. And as my contribution to society, here is my review.

Upon entering the house, I saw Decumom surrounded by what looked like a scene out of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, except, instead of dwarfs, these were children. Instead of seven of them, there were 10, and instead of Snow White, there was a fatigued woman who looked like she had already participated in an Ironman competition, even though it was only six in the morning.

The room where all the children found themselves was like any other – a box with four walls. Hang on … it was a box.

I soon realised this was a means of survival. To contain and conquer. Only, because this is a very realistic version of real reality real-ing in the most realist way, the mom has to be in the box with the 10 kids.

Like any box, it had four corners. In each of the corners stood one kid facing the wall. So four kids in total. First I thought they must have been in time-out. That left only six to care for. Alas, I was wrong. The four kids stood there puking while the mom shuffled from right angle to right angle as an additional kid hung on to the bottom of her skirt, shouting at her because he was angry with his own arm.

What was wrong with the arm, you ask? Nothing, it was just … there. That’s five kids “busy”. Five to go.

Of the remainder, two had to have an online parent-teacher conference because the teacher had spied them trying to hang the family cat from the ceiling when Mom forgot to turn off the camera and end the call during an online class, one was trying to sleep on her mom’s shoulder, no less, and the additional two were running around in circles making said mother extremely dizzy and naturally knocking into other kids as well.

The only way I could give an honest review and observe the situation for more than five minutes was if I thought of Decumom’s life as a video game, which is the best way to approach it. I decided it would be called Get out the Door of the Box in One Piece. Which is exactly what she tried to do, several times.

As a full-time supercaregiver and behaviourist specialist of children and parents, I was able to spy on her with my superadvanced peripheral vision, and escape is exactly what she tried to do.

Bad mom, right? But who can blame her? Being a mom of 10 draws publicity, especially if you make it into the Guinness World Records, but it was obvious to me that the shininess of the fame faded fast.

In a nutshell, the pros were that being a Decumom is definitely an immersive idea and the observation of it makes you forget you’re in the real world, which is great because the real world is quite crap at the moment. The cons, however, are that all of this just doesn’t make sense.

Not the beginning of this story, not the end and certainly not the middle. The question I asked myself most, since I approached this as a video game, was “What could make this better?” Or even more interesting? Not necessarily for the mom, but for the “players” of the game. There are only so many times you can watch a mom try to escape with her children through a single door.

My upgraded version idea is thus: There should be a secret mom room that Decumom can escape to, where she can keep the cat safe and read only 140 characters at a time without being disturbed.

The box container will have more doors, even if they go nowhere; it just makes for better design. There should also be a big observation window, so that I never have to go in the box again.

Overall, Decumom scores a fair 2.7 fallopian tubes out of five. DM168

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper which is available for free to Pick n Pay Smart Shoppers at these Pick n Pay stores.