You know you don't want kids when you can demolish each of the following reasons without flinching
Caught on cf_hardcore early morning today; a member had gotten this through e-mail from a family member. I still don't know whether I should chuckle or not, but the fact that I feel so alien to all of this tells me I've taken the good decision.
Bolded comments are mine; the rest is the text from the e-mail. Don't read if you're happy having kids. It's just not for me. ;)
The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 and came up with $160,140 for a middle income family. This does not include college costs OR costs beyond the age of 18....
Per child, it translates into:
* $8,896.66 a year,
* $741.38 a month, or
* $171.08 a week.
* That's a mere $24.24 a day!
* Just over a dollar an hour
If I was able to spare 24 bucks a day, and place the money in a bank account instead, the amount of things I could do with it in 18 years would be high. Besides, this just doesn't include the heavy costs of casualties, a.k.a the kid falling and breaking its front teeth, trips to the ER, casualties resulting from the kid's stupidity (and its friends, oh my), and the likes).
The benefits include:
* More love than your heart can hold. I already have tons with my BF and my dog. And dog's love is inconditional. For all his life.
* Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs. I can have that with my man as well. Alright, they're better hugs than that, I admit.
* Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies. And endless answers to give as well... uhm, no.
* A hand to hold, usually covered with jelly or chocolate. I love being clean and not covered with fluids coming from hands you don't even know where they've been.
* A partner for blowing bubbles, flying kites. No child can ever fly kites as well and funnily as we do with my BF on Normandy beaches.
* Someone to laugh yourself silly with, no matter what the boss said or how your stocks performed that day. That's called "friends".
* finger-paint, I'm a vector artist, I don't use paint.
* carve pumpkins, I don't like that
* play hide-and-seek, I'm not keen of that either
* catch lightning bugs What for?
* never stop believing in Santa Claus. Sounds more like a perv clad in red who comes visit children at night anyway
* keep reading the Adventures of Piglet and Pooh, You want to kill me, right? Right?
* watching Saturday morning cartoons, And feel my neurons commit suicide one after the other in my brain
* going to Disney movies, Half of them suck; the other half works just as well for my BF and I on DVD, while we're quietly sitting near the stove
* You get to frame rainbows, hearts, and flowers under refrigerator magnets and collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas, hand prints set in clay for Mother's Day, and cards with backward letters for Father's Day. I've always wondered why my mother would never wear the noodles necklace I made when I was a kid. Now I understand, and I know I wouldn't wear them or want to see them either
* retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof, Sorry, I suffer from vertigo
* taking the training wheels off a bike, Can't I get a bike for me instead?
* removing a splinter, I get to do that often enough on myself as it is. Anyway, the only good splinter is when it's followed by the words "cell","chaos theory" and "pandora tomorrow"
* filling a wading pool, Do I really need a child to do that?
* coaxing a wad of gum out of bangs, and coaching a baseball team that never wins but always gets treated to ice cream regardless. The base-ball team may be fun, but can't I volunteer to do that without having kids? And the gum part is icky. Plain icky.
* first time behind the wheel I still remember mine. It's enough.
*** an endless list of wonderful moments. I can write down another endless list that DOESN'T involve kids, and sounds less disgusting...
You get to be immortal. Oh for fuck's sake. Can I go piss in the gene pool, too? You get another branch added to your family tree, and if you're lucky, a long list of limbs in your obituary called grandchildren and great grandchildren. So that they get my Tourette-filled genes and my assholes of a couple of grandparents? Great gift. You get an education in psychology, nursing, criminal justice,communications, and human sexuality that no college can match. What could a child teach me regarding that? Books and real people I meet and can talk with are just as good as well. In the eyes of a child, you rank right up there under God. In the eyes of my dog, I rank AS God (and at least, when he reaches puberty, I don't get to be considered like a piece of shit). You have all the power to heal a boo-boo, scare away the monsters under the bed, patch a broken heart, police a slumber party, ground them forever, and love them without limits. Yeah, but this doesn't get my interest, sorry. And "ground them forever"? Way to let some sadistic instincts out. Ha, ha.
How this should be convincing eludes me.
Now please excuse me, I think I need to vomit.
Bolded comments are mine; the rest is the text from the e-mail. Don't read if you're happy having kids. It's just not for me. ;)
The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 and came up with $160,140 for a middle income family. This does not include college costs OR costs beyond the age of 18....
Per child, it translates into:
* $8,896.66 a year,
* $741.38 a month, or
* $171.08 a week.
* That's a mere $24.24 a day!
* Just over a dollar an hour
If I was able to spare 24 bucks a day, and place the money in a bank account instead, the amount of things I could do with it in 18 years would be high. Besides, this just doesn't include the heavy costs of casualties, a.k.a the kid falling and breaking its front teeth, trips to the ER, casualties resulting from the kid's stupidity (and its friends, oh my), and the likes).
The benefits include:
* More love than your heart can hold. I already have tons with my BF and my dog. And dog's love is inconditional. For all his life.
* Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs. I can have that with my man as well. Alright, they're better hugs than that, I admit.
* Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies. And endless answers to give as well... uhm, no.
* A hand to hold, usually covered with jelly or chocolate. I love being clean and not covered with fluids coming from hands you don't even know where they've been.
* A partner for blowing bubbles, flying kites. No child can ever fly kites as well and funnily as we do with my BF on Normandy beaches.
* Someone to laugh yourself silly with, no matter what the boss said or how your stocks performed that day. That's called "friends".
* finger-paint, I'm a vector artist, I don't use paint.
* carve pumpkins, I don't like that
* play hide-and-seek, I'm not keen of that either
* catch lightning bugs What for?
* never stop believing in Santa Claus. Sounds more like a perv clad in red who comes visit children at night anyway
* keep reading the Adventures of Piglet and Pooh, You want to kill me, right? Right?
* watching Saturday morning cartoons, And feel my neurons commit suicide one after the other in my brain
* going to Disney movies, Half of them suck; the other half works just as well for my BF and I on DVD, while we're quietly sitting near the stove
* You get to frame rainbows, hearts, and flowers under refrigerator magnets and collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas, hand prints set in clay for Mother's Day, and cards with backward letters for Father's Day. I've always wondered why my mother would never wear the noodles necklace I made when I was a kid. Now I understand, and I know I wouldn't wear them or want to see them either
* retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof, Sorry, I suffer from vertigo
* taking the training wheels off a bike, Can't I get a bike for me instead?
* removing a splinter, I get to do that often enough on myself as it is. Anyway, the only good splinter is when it's followed by the words "cell","chaos theory" and "pandora tomorrow"
* filling a wading pool, Do I really need a child to do that?
* coaxing a wad of gum out of bangs, and coaching a baseball team that never wins but always gets treated to ice cream regardless. The base-ball team may be fun, but can't I volunteer to do that without having kids? And the gum part is icky. Plain icky.
* first time behind the wheel I still remember mine. It's enough.
*** an endless list of wonderful moments. I can write down another endless list that DOESN'T involve kids, and sounds less disgusting...
You get to be immortal. Oh for fuck's sake. Can I go piss in the gene pool, too? You get another branch added to your family tree, and if you're lucky, a long list of limbs in your obituary called grandchildren and great grandchildren. So that they get my Tourette-filled genes and my assholes of a couple of grandparents? Great gift. You get an education in psychology, nursing, criminal justice,communications, and human sexuality that no college can match. What could a child teach me regarding that? Books and real people I meet and can talk with are just as good as well. In the eyes of a child, you rank right up there under God. In the eyes of my dog, I rank AS God (and at least, when he reaches puberty, I don't get to be considered like a piece of shit). You have all the power to heal a boo-boo, scare away the monsters under the bed, patch a broken heart, police a slumber party, ground them forever, and love them without limits. Yeah, but this doesn't get my interest, sorry. And "ground them forever"? Way to let some sadistic instincts out. Ha, ha.
How this should be convincing eludes me.
Now please excuse me, I think I need to vomit.