I’m pretty sure not many people can say they’ve had an epiphany while listening to D.C. shock jock Elliot Segal. Last Tuesday I did.

Elliot interviewed journalist and author David Sheff about his book, “Beautiful Boy,” which chronicles his son’s drug addition. Throughout the book, Sheff struggles with how to help his son and how to handle the increasing drama swirling around his new wife and two young children. It began with Sheff finding a bag of weed in his then-12-year-old son’s backpack. By 17, the kid was hooked on crystal meth and living on the street.

“This is why I don’t want kids,” I said to Jason, who was in the passenger seat. “One minute it’s cute and playing tee-ball, and the next it’s stealing money out of your wallet to go by heroin.”

As my words festered in my head, I realized their true meaning: It’s not that I don’t want children, I’m just utterly paralyzed with fear at the thought of it. Forget bringing the kid home in a blanket, I’m swaddling it in bubble wrap and strapping at helmet on its head. And then I’m locking it in its room until its 35.

Honestly, though, it will hate me. I will be the one setting and enforcing rules, and Jason will be the one playing games and taking it to soccer practice. It won’t live on soda, McDonalds, Oreos, or powered “cheese” stuff out of a box. It’s not going to dress like a skank or a thug at 13 either, and it sure as hell isn’t dating until it’s a junior in high school at the earliest. TV will be strictly limited when it’s little, as will video games. Here’s a book; read it. And don’t think I won’t secretly be searching its room and backpack like every day. It’s called “not being an idiot.”

But of course, my doting and extreme overprotectiveness will just push little Johnny or Jane away further, and my spawn will probably run off and join a sideshow or turn tricks at a truck stop when it’s 14. Or it will inevitably outfox me and mange to stay within curfew and do bad shit anyway.  It’s grades will probably suck and then I’ll have to eat Raman for the rest of my life to put it through a shitty state school, that is, if it doesn’t get a meth addiction before college is a possibility.

Or, even worse, it will be exactly like me.

God help us all.

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