By Art Buchwald
Thursday, March 23, 2006

As some people might know, I'm in a hospice. I don't know when my time will be up, but I've been giving thought to a lot of things that I ordinarily would have ignored.

Last Sunday I saw a cover story in the New York Times Magazine and also a piece on "60 Minutes" about women who want children but don't want men. And because sperm banks are getting more popular all the time, a man can now make a deposit into a sperm bank and the recipient can pick out what kind of baby she will have (baseball player, stand-up comedian, White House aide). The sperm banks are so sophisticated the mother can select the color of the baby's hair, eyes and so on.

When I saw both these stories, I decided it was a sign. Why not me? This would be a wonderful way to achieve immortality.

Monday I called the sperm bank in California and asked them where I could leave a deposit. They said, "We're always open to new accounts. We'll send you a specimen jar and put you in our computer. Then you'll have to tell us how many women you'll allow to receive your donation. If, for example, you'd like to make a lot of women happy, you would have to make more than one donation. The specimen will be frozen and good for six months."

This is a fantastic discovery. I had been under the impression I wouldn't be able to leave anything behind. Since reading the article, I have been sitting here dreaming about the little Arties and Ariannas running around all over the place. I can follow them in my mind to school and even dream about their going to college.

Believe it or not, the sperm banks pay for deposits in cash, but they don't promise you a toaster like other banks.

Since it's my deposit, I want my offspring to go to good schools. Not necessarily an Ivy League college, but if it's a boy, and he gets a football scholarship to USC, that would be nice. If it happens to be a girl and she becomes a champion tennis player for Sweet Briar, it's very exciting. My idea now is not to go without leaving something worthwhile for posterity. There are a lot of sperm banks in the country. I've even heard of some with drive-in branches.

The other thing is, I keep looking at women and wondering which one of them I want to be the mother of my child.

To make life easy for everybody, I'm putting up a Web site with all the information. I do have faults, but I still think whatever they are they can be overcome.

I know this article is going produce a lot of mail from single women, but I don't want them to get their hopes up. At my age, I have to be very careful about how many deposits I make.

2006Tribune Media Services