musings . . .

When I meet people for the first time and they find out that I was 20 when I got married, the first question they ask is how many children we have. It’s rather funny to me that people automatically assume that a young marriage happens only because of pregnancy, but it’s true. However, that’s not always the case. Jerry and I were madly in love then – and still are! Most often, when I reply to these people that we have no children, they go on to ask if we plan on having any (answer: no, but we’re open to changing our minds) and why not. It appalls me that people would even begin to think that the answers to these questions are any of their business.

We have plenty of reasons not to have children. There are medical conditions that we chance passing on to offspring. There’s the fact that we’re trying to end the cycle of abuse, and we can’t be certain of our ability to do that with children in our home. There’s the desire to give our potential children the best life that we can – stability, hard work, values, diverse interests, etc. There are the standard ideas that we can lessen the environmental impact of the world community by not contributing more Americans to it. There’s the fact that our siblings were born after we both entered double-digit ages, enabling us to experience firsthand the effort involved and the challenges faced in parenthood. There’s the recognition that so many children already exist in this world in abject poverty, parent-less, and disease-ridden. Those children need loving homes and guidance more than we need to continue our genetic makeup. And then there’s the fact that the medication I am on would definitely harm any fetus – and going through the process of pregnancy without my medication would be a harrowing experience at best.

With all these reasons not to have children (in addition to the others that I cannot recall at the moment), we see no need or reason to have children. From our perspective (on the outside, I understand) it seems that people have children for one of a very few reasons. These can be “wanting” them, accidental pregnancy, and meeting social expectations. I’m sure there are more, it’s just so hard to gauge people’s reasoning and even more difficult to ask them how they came to the conclusion that having children was the right choice. I can only imagine that from the parents’ perspective that question would seem as a direct challenge to their decisions.

Without wanting to challenge anyone one about their decisions to become parents, I am constantly seeking a reason to have children. And I don’t mean something like having someone to take care of us in our old-age or finding out what combining our genes would do. I’m seeking something concrete. For example, we just decided NOT to get a Blu-Ray player for a Christmas present this year. We used reason in coming to this decision. We looked at our DVD collection and assessed how often we actually watch the DVD’s that we own. We estimated how often we rent DVD’s vs renting video on demand. It turns out that we probably have absolutely no use for a Blu-Ray player, despite the fact that they are cool and we love new gadgets. That money would be more wisely spent elsewhere – or saved. Now that’s the kind of reasoning I’m looking for in making a decision to have children. Something that follows logic and makes sense. So, please, if you can think of a logical reason to have children, please let us know. Leave a comment, send an email, anything.

In the meantime, please enjoy reading this article explaining some additional reasons for choosing to be child-free.

Sometimes you’re just in awe at the weirdness and scope of the news.  Today is one of those days for me.  Here goes.

The local Maserati dealership closed (as if every community has one) – after being open for only a few months.  I could never have predicted that, with the abounding prosperity everywhere.  I mean, who doesn’t want to spend  $140,000 on a car?

Think your mail smells funny?  You might want to make sure your postal worker isn’t smoking crack on the job.  Seriously – what the heck is going on?  I don’t really care what you do outside of the job as long as it doesn’t affect your work.  But smoking crack is going to definitely affect your work, especially when part of your job is driving around residential neighborhoods.

Ridiculously, McDonald’s is trying to defend the french fry with claims that it’s high in potassium and fiber.  Anyone who buys that as a reason to feel okay about eating McDonald’s fries has absolutely no brain.  If you’ve ever had some of these fries, you know that they’re soaked in grease (fat) and covered in salt (sodium) and that continued consumption is just a recipe for early death via heart attack.  If, despite that, you still want to eat them because you think they taste fantastic, that’s your bad decision to make.  But don’t claim you are eating them for the potassium and fiber, that’s not fooling anyone.

As with anything involving money and property damage, there is now a dispute about the responsibility for the demise of Lake Delton due to the flooding back in June.  Everyone wants the dam to be rebuilt and the lake re-filled.  I’ve got a different perspective.  Being a man-made lake, the flooding in the area and consequential draining of the lake showed how risky it is to interfere with nature’s existing landscape.  We should learn that filling the lake and rebuilding homes on the land surrounding it is a mistake, only to be wiped away again in the wake of another natural disaster.

When I was 14, I would have turned my mom in for smoking pot, too.  But the disturbing part of this story is that the mother is 30 … that means she gave birth when she was 16 (which is not unheard of, but still should be highlighted).  Also disturbing is that she didn’t try to keep her drug use secret from her children to at least create the illusion that she didn’t condone such behavior.  Once again, I don’t really care what you do in your free time.  But if you do illegal things in front of your children (like smoke pot), the state needs to come in and put those kids in a home with responsible parents.

A ten-year-old sixth grader is being investigated for the kill list she wrote.  People are arguing both sides of this, that she’s just a child and needs guidance, and that she should be punished like anyone else.  Here’s the truth: anyone who takes the time to do this is severely disturbed and needs professional help.  Whatever else they decide is irrelevant, as long as she gets professional treatment.  Without it, this girl’s future is seriously at risk.

Perhaps the weirdest story, one couple is stuck in Florida with their pet kangaroo and pet goat.  Residents of Wisconsin, they were on vacation with their pets when their RV went up in flames.  It’s not crazy to me that they have a kangaroo and goat – I’d love to have a kangaroo.  But what’s really weird is that they have their own clothes and designer diapers … and they have a daybed for one of them (the other sleeps with them).

I’ve got nothing to say … the news is crazy enough all on its own.