Just curious to get your reactions to the video below. How does it make you feel and what thoughts come to mind?

 I called my dad who lives in Oklahoma, and explained to him that I would have called earlier except that having no kids I was able to sleep in until 11a.m. My dad has a great sense of humor. 

My wife and I are both 40 years old, and with no kids we are met with a variety of responses when people learn about our Double-Income No Kids status. We’ve lived in metros such as Los Angeles, but mostly in small towns such as San Luis Obispo or Visalia where we currently reside. The reaction is the same regardless of demographic: some feel sorry for us (which we find rather an odd reaction), some have actually asked us what’s wrong (again, we don’t quite understand that), and some (more than not) have said they love their kids, but wouldn’t do it again. It’s this 3rd response which always surprises us most. It’s also the most common response, which is a bit disturbing.

Without exception we always find ourselves in the position of having to explain why we don’t have kids, and most of the time it’s nothing more than a passing subject in conversation with new friends who are simply getting to know me or my wife. At first there is a bit of surprise, some interest, and then it passes into the background. Often it becomes the subject of good-natured jokes and the banter is terrific among friends. But with family, this can actually get very uncomfortable, and in our late 20′s even became an “off limits” topic during family gatherings because the women in our family (mothers in particular) decided there must be something wrong. Like peer pressure to conform, the family unit can be relentless in its demands, and resourceful in the variety of psychological tactics used to exert such pressure. Thankfully, at 40 years old, this has ceased to be a topic of interest within the family.

Our response, which has never changed, is one of open honesty. We just shrug our shoulders and explain that having kids has never been something we’ve felt compelled to do. It’s just not something we have ever felt tied to any sort of feeling of fulfillment. If pressed further we repeat the answer. What more can we do? There really isn’t any more to it than that. Some have finally realized that our world view and their world view are not the same and the things they require to be happy are not the same as ours. Hard to imagine I guess.

As is often the case with people who live outside the normative curve, I have no opinion about people who choose to have kids. If I were gay it might be the case that I wouldn’t have an opinion about people that are straight. It’s just not something that occurs to me to have an opinion about. However, I do have some strong feelings about the subject of having kids, and raising them, in general. And here they are:

1. Judging by the behavior of many parents, I don’t believe their kids stand a chance.
2. Judging by the behavior of many kids, I don’t think their parents stand a chance.
3. Most people shouldn’t be allowed to have kids, and most kids deserve better than the parents they got.
4. Most kids want to please their parents and other adults. The rest are sociopaths that eventually go to work for the IRS.
5. In the age of the internet and cell phones, grounding a child for bad behavior is as useless as the UN imposing sanctions on a country for bad behavior.
6. Most kids think their parents are idiots whose opinions don’t matter, but will pay close attention and take it to heart if their parents think the same of them.
7. Teaching a kid how to fight doesn’t mean they will go out and pick fights, any more than sex education will promote promiscuity, or driver’s education will cause car accidents.
8. There are bad kids. Kids that are just mean, nasty, cruel, and hateful by nature. If your kid is one of these, fix this situation soon or society will end up doing it for you. Consider the odds of ignoring the problem turning out well for everyone involved and act accordingly.
9 My wife is a fantastic gardener. In fact she is a genius in my opinion. In my many years of not raising kids I have come to believe that if parents tended their children like my wife tends her garden, society as a whole would be better for it. Sometimes you have to nip things in the bud, sometimes you have to give up and change your approach. But you must always commit to helping that garden grow. You must not get into gardening unless you can be sure it will be a labor of love, and you must not rely on someone else to do the hardest work for you.
10. Those who wish they never had kids probably have kids who wish they never had parents.

Happy Father’s Day.

Recently we had a violent storm roll through. 60mph gusts with hail and fork lightning is not a big deal in Oklahoma, but here in our little anti-burgh it is definitely not common. I thought it would be fun to go outside and try to capture it with my camera. Turns out it had the same idea about me and got way too close for comfort. The glare where you can’t see anything is a single angry bolt that overexposed. And there’s it’s little brother that showed up about 5 seconds later, seen in the next picture. Thing is, I didn’t capture the really big bolts, which were being hurled around like the gods playing a drunken game of lawn darts.

 
I thought it was interesting the way the underside of the clouds is illuminated here, but found it more interesting that I continued to behave like an idiot and stand outside photographing this insanity. I learned something about myself, which is that my self-preservation instinct apparently is not as strong as I would like to believe.

Just saw a TV ad for steak at WalMart. Really? Would YOU be the first in line for that?