Great Minds Think Alike

On Buddy's first birthday, I was invited to a party. They made a big deal of it. He was surrounded by just about everyone he knew as the traditional picture of trying to eat cake was taken. He was presented with every age appropriate toy on the market.

The following Christmas, there seemed no point in getting him anything, as he received just about everything I could think of already for his birthday. Still, his grandparents managed to find a few toys that he didn't already have. I don't remember getting him anything.

For his second birthday, I don't remember them doing much of anything, and I don't remember getting him anything. As it turns out, his birthday was celebrated in combination with some other event, to which I was not invited. So that explains why I don't remember it.

The following Christmas, I didn't think that he needed anymore toys, even if I could have found something not already given to him by one of his grandparents. I knit hats for both him and his little sister. I was surprised that he seemed happy with it and wore it the rest of the day in the house.

For his third birthday, I did not expect to be invited to a party, but I thought that I would get him something anyway, if I found something I thought that he'd like. While shopping on eBay, I found just the thing. Benji. I used to like that movie when I was younger. And I found a dvd with three other stories that I don't remember seeing. It sounded like a good deal, and I ordered it.

The week before Buddy's birthday, while I was waiting for the dvd to come in the mail, I get invited to a party put together at the last minute. It isn't going to be the big deal that the first one was, and I would have to miss out on something else that I'd already planned. But, I decided not to miss Buddy's birthday. He doesn't speak a lot of complete sentences, but he does know everyone's name, and he knows who is missing and asks about them. It is usually men who are missing, and we usually tell him "he's at work." I have no such excuse.

The day before the party, the dvd had not yet appeared, and might still not come in the mail for another week. That didn't matter before, when he either wasn't having a party, or wasn't celebrating with a bunch of adults. I'd just give him the gift later.

But now that there was a party, I'd rather be there with something for him to unwrap. And it was too late for me to go in with someone else and buy something nice. Not that I'd know what that should be anyway. He sort of has five grandparents, and they buy him a lot of stuff.

While at a nearby store buying groceries, I found a slip and slide. Okay, not really a slip and slide, some rival company, but you get the idea. Also there were small blow-up pools made to look like turtles and such. I called his mother, and she said that she did not really want a pool that looked like a turtle. They already had something similar, and they didn't use it much because it was such a hassle to empty the pool later, and you can't leave even a small pool with water unattended. But the slip and slide sounded like a good idea.

So I gave him a slip and slide. Just after that was all wrapped up and ready to go, the Benji dvd arrived in the mail. Oh, well. Benji can be a Christmas present.

Yesterday, we all went to dinner. I asked if Buddy'd had a chance to try out the slip and slide.

Out comes his dad's phone, with pictures. "He ended up with two of them, but we decided to keep them both. Everything breaks eventually, and he'll already have a spare."

Okay.

"It's broke," Buddy said.

"Yes," his dad said. "He gets stuff handed down from cousins who don't need it anymore. Both the other kids used stuff for years, but he gets it and it's broke a week or two later."

Okay.

His mother then tells me that the thought of the Benji dvd was appreciated, but it turns out that they already have that one. His Aunt K already got it for him.

I think Aunt K must have also got him the other slip and slide. She wasn't at the party, and they were planning to see her somewhere else the next day.

I hope that Aunt K doesn't knit.

The baby is in the hospital

First let me say that the baby formally known as the baby will now be known as Buddy. He is perhaps a little bit big to be called the baby, and as he now has a baby sister, calling him the baby would be confusing.

Anyway, just as Buddy was getting used to his baby sister, she got a temperature of 101, and apparently babies with temperatures above 100.4 get a trip to the hospital, even if there does not appear to be anything else wrong. And there does not appear to be anything else wrong, but they are not done looking.

The baby's temperature has gone back down, and if there is nothing else wrong she'll get to go back home tomorrow or the next day.

I will not say who the babies are or who their parents are. There are just too many weirdos out on the Internet, and I don't intend to help them find their next targets.

It just so happens that these are the only babies I've had in my life since I've been married. Not that most of my friends and family haven't had babies, just somehow they haven't had any when I was around. There are a few couples I am friends with who don't want children, but most have either had them when I wasn't around, or else they had babies and then somehow ended up not being friends anymore. It just seems to happen that way. Like people in the club who start families tend to stop being in the club. Family stuff is more important, and they just don't have time for some of the social stuff they did before.

So somehow there are these two babies who have come along at a time when I was not away on a long trip, and their parents didn't up and move, and while they don't have as much free time as they used to they haven't completely disappeared.

Now I have to be more careful about things. I've had a flu shot. Not that I shouldn't have a flu shot anyway, but in years past the decision to get one was made mostly on factors like whether or not I had the cash in my pocket when someone was given vaccinations at school or maybe Walmart. Anyway, I made a point of getting it this year, and now I'm thinking about the dtap. There's like an outbreak of whooping cough in California or something, and they are afraid it might come here. Besides, I should have gotten a tetanus shot a couple of years ago anyway.

The dtap is eighty dollars in Dallas (I hate Dallas) or a hundred and twenty-nine if I can get it at a certain Walgreens. I don't have either amount, so I haven't gotten it yet. I wish I had thought about it earlier. There's a place about a mile away from where I'm staying that probably has them here (though I don't know for how much), and I wish I'd have heard about it earlier. Maybe I could have gotten the shot instead of going to that restaurant.

Anyway, I will be heading home tomorrow, and Sunday I'll have to decide if I should see the baby, since I haven't had this shot.

I will be glad to go home. I had fun yesterday, but it will be good to sleep in my own bed again.

I have created a monster

Okay, so as I go through my little routine of looking at the stuff and trying to decide what goes where, or what I should get rid of, or whatever, I am now trying to find stuff that I would like to give to someone. Like, I paid good money for this, and it is still in good shape, and even if I'm not using it right now I still don't want to throw it away or give it to Goodwill. But giving some of this stuff to specific people is somehow different, and it makes me feel better, sometimes.

Like, I thought at one time I would get into beads, but then I didn't really. D was into beads. Apparently, D is still into beads. So, I picked out just a few that I just really like and might still make something with someday, and I divided the rest into already made stuff that only a kid would like, and stuff still in the packages that D would want. I gave D most of it, and some necklaces that were already put together (not by me) were given to a little girl that one of my neighbors babysits.

D was just thrilled with the beads and has promised to give me something in return. I really like the promised thing, but I don't need it. I was just wanting the beads to go to someone who would appreciate them. Anyway, D tends to be a bit forgetful. I'll be happy if she gives me what she said that she would, but I won't be mad if she doesn't.

The little girl got a few more things. Basically, if I don't need it anymore, and it's something a kid would want, she probably got it. Except that I'm putting a few things away for someone else, and I'm thinking that some things should go to the club for when we have kid parties or do something in public that involves kids. Like, I have a bunch of little things that were toys from Happy Meals. We could just give those away to random kids if we are out in costume.

So the last thing that I decided to part with was my VHS tape of Watership Down. Watership Down is just the best animated movie, based on a very long novel of the same name. It is about rabbits. I love this movie, but, I am getting rid of most of my VHS tapes, and, my brother has the DVD, which I can borrow any time that I want. So, I saw my neighbor, asked if she still had a VHS player, and said either she or the little girl could have the tape. She asked to make sure that I meant to give it away for keeps, and then she said thank you and all of that.

A few days later, I asked the little girl if she had watched the rabbit movie, and she said not yet. And then she asked if I was still cleaning out my closets, and if I still had any toys, and if I had any play food. (I'm not sure why I should have any play food, but she asks me that a lot.) I told her that I might have a few more toys, but that they were for someone else.

And then she asks me if she can have a toy.

No, I already gave you one. (By now she has been given a VHS tape, jewelry, a plastic tiara, and a stuffed bunny, plus the neighbor has been given microwave bakeware in case she ever wants to try that or to use them as Jello molds.)

Again, she asks me if she can have a toy. Again, I say no.

I move to the other side of the yard to talk to someone else, and she asks again. She just keeps yelling.

Can I have a toy. Can I please have a toy. Can I have just one.

This goes on for a bit, until the neighbor hears her and comes outside to see what all the yelling is about.

We both shake our heads and go back into our houses.

I've created a monster.

A few thoughts on being an adult

I was reading another blog, and I tried to leave a comment, cause I disagreed with the author. Most of the other thought out comments also disagreed with the author, but I didn't think that they went far enough, so I proceeded to write this really long comment.

And then there were technical difficulties, and my comment was eaten.

So rather than have that happen again, I will write some things here, and then maybe later I will go back to copy some of it there.

The author of the blog sometimes gets letters from other readers, asking for advice. This week's letter was from a girl who was twenty-two years old, still living with her parents, and in her last year of college. She complained that her mother treats her like a child and wants to know where she is and what she is doing at all times.

There was no mention of the college student paying rent, just that she still lived with her parents and didn't like that they weren't treating her like an adult.

I don't think the college student is an adult. She has lived a certain number of years, and the law says that she's old enough to know better and follow the rules and such, and that she is old enough to vote and old enough to drink if she chooses. But that is about it. If she has in anyway earned adulthood, it wasn't mentioned.

Our civilization doesn't require an adulthood test, just that we reach a certain age, and if we reach that certain age, that probably isn't something we can take much credit for either. If we didn't die when we were younger, it was probably due to our parents, or some other family member, or maybe a teacher, or maybe a doctor or a cop or someone else in emergency services. But you probably didn't get to the magic age of eighteen or twenty-one because of anything brilliant you did. If left to your own devices, you would have done something really stupid before then, you would be a face on a milk carton, you would have died in a car wreck, you would have drank yourself to death or overdosed on some other drug, ended up in jail with some of your buddies, etc....

In other cultures, it is different. You don't just magically become an adult just because you have lived long enough. You have to do something to earn it. You have to get married or become a good parent. You might be expected to safely bungee jump or dive off of a cliff. You might have to prove that you can hunt for food or kill a dangerous predator. You might have to join the military. You might have to mutilate your body without anesthesia.

But we don't do any of that. We don't even have a test. You don't even have to graduate from high school. You don't even have to prove you can balance a checkbook.

So eighteen year olds and people in college complain when some of us don't treat them like adults, but what have they done to be an adult?

Are they married? Are they good parents? Do they take care of children or elderly people? Do they have jobs and pay their own bills? Or do they spend all their money on going out and having a good time? Did they pay for college or earn a scholarship, or did mommy and daddy pay for that?

The complaining college student probably isn't a bad person, or even a lazy person. She at least is going to college, which is what we want most people her age to do. Other people who think that they are adults didn't even graduate from high school. But she probably is not an adult yet. Probably if she were really even that close to being an adult, she would not be whining about all this stuff, most of which was probably done for her own safety.

At the other end of the spectrum, those of us who have actually been adults for a long time and have done something to be called an adult other than just living to be a certain age might have some life changing thing happen that takes away whatever it was that made us feel like adults. People who had bill paying jobs have lost them. People who were buying cars and houses have lost them. People who choose to cook and clean and otherwise take care of a spouse instead of pursuing a career might not have their spouses anymore. Stay at home parents might not have the child at home anymore or might have to go out and get a job. People who take care of elderly people or invalids eventually have to deal with the death of the person they cared for, and after that they aren't quite sure what to do with their time.

I don't guess that you stop being an adult after something like that happens, but losing that thing that was a major part of your life is hard, and sometimes you don't feel like an adult afterward. Even when it is something normal, like when you get old enough to retire or when your youngest child grows up and goes to college or moves away, it is still sometimes a difficult adjustment.

Adults have real problems to deal with. If you were really an adult, complaints about your mother wanting to know where you're going wouldn't even make the list.

Yesterday

Yesterday was nice. A group of us went out to lunch, seeing as with this and that we'd somehow missed celebrating a few birthdays and such. I hardly ever eat steak, but one of the birthday boys is quite fond of the stuff, so we all headed to Texas Land & Cattle Steakhouse.

I had never been to this place before. We arrived a bit early and stood off to the side for a bit looking over the menu. Being the first couple there, we should have put our names on the list or whatever, but then I didn't know what to do. I didn't know if they had made reservations or what, and then I didn't know if I should say that we would be a party of six or a party of seven.

I totally forgot to ask if they were bringing the baby.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, I'm pretty clueless about babies. I don't know at what age the new parents start taking the babies out to public places like that, and I don't at what age the babies are big enough to sit in highchairs, and if they are not big enough to sit in a highchair do you ask for an extra seat so that you have a place to put the baby carrier, etc....

So the new parents and baby showed up, soon to be followed by the other couple. The new daddy asked for "table for six and a sling." A sling. This I had never heard of before. But it's rather like a little foldout mesh hammock, and then you sit the baby carrier on the mesh and that puts the baby at a height where everybody at the table can see him.

This was only my third time to see the baby. Everybody is saying how much he's grown, etc.... He looks about the same to me.

When they first got to the restaurant, the baby had this look on his face, like why the hell are we here? Later, at the table, he seemed to discover his feet. It was like he had never seen them before. He'd raise his feet and look at one of them, and then he'd look over to the other side and there was another one. Wow, two feet. He spent a long time doing that, and then he went to sleep.

After lunch we all said our goodbyes and wondered if we'd all get together again before Thanksgiving. That seems so far away, but considering that was the first time we had all gotten together like that since before the baby was born, maybe it wasn't such a silly question. Then the husband did not want to go straight home, and we ended up at the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens.

It was hot, but not so unbearably hot as it had been. We walked to parts of the park that we don't normally go to. We even wandered over to the building with the conservatory, though we decided not to go in and look at the plants. We did go in just long enough to get some water and have a look at the fish tank. I hadn't realized what a nice tank it was. It has about half the cast of Finding Nemo, minus the sharks and sea turtles.

Anyway, I can finally go in the place and not be upset about Dad. I can't imagine ever going to the place and not thinking about Dad, but I didn't get sad over it. Dad's astronomy club used to meet there, and I went with him a couple of times right before he died.

We wandered around the park some more and maybe got a bit lost. And then we headed for home, but stopped for a Slurpee first. It isn't as hot as it had been, but it was still August in Texas.

Yesterday

Yesterday I had this moment of panic when I saw that S from Fort Worth had left a comment on my blog. S from Fort Worth has found my blog! Yikes! But on closer inspection, I think that it is a different S from Fort Worth. There are many people named S, and I'm sure that there's a lot of them in Fort Worth. Still, my first thought was that out of all those people that it must be the S from Fort Worth that I knew. Silly of me to think that, and more so to think it was something to get upset over. It isn't. "--if I did not want it heard, I would not have said it--" and all of that. And I've never said anything bad about S anyway.

Still, I would rather keep things the way that they are.

Anyway, that was just a minor thing that happened yesterday after I came home. The major thing that happened yesterday was I went to see the baby. I had seen the baby before, but that was more than a month ago when he was still in the hospital.

I have not spent any considerable time around either babies or pregnant women since I was maybe ten or eleven. You wouldn't think it was possible for a forty year old woman to spend so little time around babies and/or pregnant women. You would think that while you may or may not have been around babies and pregnant women when you were younger, depending on chance and the size of your family and your family's social contacts, you would be more and more likely to be around them as you get older. You might have a baby yourself, or friends might have babies.

But I did not want a baby myself, and I have been lucky so far that I've not gotten pregnant. I do not have many of the romantic notions about it that most women do. Not that I don't have them at all, but my main thoughts on pregnancy tend to run towards it must be a lot like carrying a parasite from an Alien movie, only that it takes much longer to die from it and you get really fat while you are waiting to die.

Also, I've never been overly impressed with the babies themselves. It seems that most other women automatically think that all babies are really cute and at some point they will just be unable to go on with life if they don't have one. I don't share that feeling at all, and I fail to see what is so wonderful about a person who just happens to be very small and bald. They can't talk or really do anything cute. I don't really get it.

So you might think that the reason I've not been around babies or pregnant women is that I've deliberately avoided them. You wonder if maybe I'm going along in my life, hear that one of my friends is pregnant, and then avoid her for the next five years or so.

Perhaps it is the reverse. Perhaps the pregnant women are avoiding me. And maybe this is true in a few cases. As a teenager I would sometimes here that someone from school or even from church "had to get married", but this was something I usually heard after the fact from somebody else. None of them ever came to tell me that they were expecting. Well, I suppose that if they didn't feel comfortable telling me that they were having sex it shouldn't surprise me that they weren't comfortable telling me that they were pregnant. So that was probably part of it. But mostly in those cases it was just that the friend and I had drifted apart somewhat before all of that happened, and then after there was actually a baby to think about she had a whole different life that did not include school or whatever it was where we normally saw each other.

Similar things happened as I became an adult. It wasn't that I refused to be friends with them anymore, but people get older and get married, and sometimes the getting married part means that they move away. And even when they don't move away, they tend to make other friends, and those other friends also want babies, so by the time there's actually a baby in the picture we don't see each other that much cause they spend more time with their new friends.

So at some point I was a single person with other single friends who didn't have any babies, and then a bit after that I was a married person who didn't want any babies, and I mostly had friends that were married and didn't have any babies. It just sort of worked out that way. Later still, I ended up being friends with either people who didn't have children, or people who were older and did have children but the children had all grown up.

Now there's someone who I've drifted away from somewhat, but not entirely. And she did not move to a different state or even a different county after getting married. Sure, she wants to make new friends who also have babies, that's only natural, but she hasn't yet done much in that direction yet. So I'm hearing this and that about being pregnant and baby stuff that I'd never heard about before.

I am so glad that I'm not going through any of this myself.

I'm not completely in the dark about such things. I did know that while a woman is pregnant that the baby moves around, that babies "kick". What I did not know was that it is something you can actually see happening. Really. It looks like something from Stan Winston's special effects studio.

Guess the Alien parasite bit wasn't too far off.

And I knew that pregnant women were always running off to the bathroom, because of the baby pushing on the bladder. And I knew that there was such a thing as an episiotomy, that often the doctor will cut a woman to help deliver the baby. And I knew that even under the best of circumstances the couple isn't supposed to have sex for at least six weeks. What I didn't know was that sometimes even after the episiotomy the poor woman tears even more tissue than the doctors thought to cut, and that after delivery the poor woman might still be running off to the bathroom and having gas and all of that. Sometimes, in a really bad case, it isn't just the baby wearing the diapers.

I am really glad that none of this is happening to me.

She looks really good now. You wouldn't know that she'd been pregnant less than two months ago, unless you maybe look at the stretch marks. And she didn't have a Hollywood trainer getting her back in shape or anything like that. I think she looks just the same is she did before, but she says she still has a bit left to go. But however she looks, she still hurts from the delivery.

As for the baby, he didn't cry much in the hospital. The new parents were then fooled into taking him home, where he cries whenever the mood strikes. But after a miserable two or three weeks, they are getting used to him. And the baby squirms a lot when held. I didn't think that babies this age moved around so much.

Other than that, it appears that he does nothing but eat and sleep. I know that isn't quite the case and that he is already learning stuff, like the important people speak English with a Texas accent.

The summer that I met the real Santa Claus

Everyone seems to think that his name is Nick. They're wrong. His name's Rick. I don't remember his last name, but his first name was definitely Rick.

Rick didn't have elves. I heard that he had a bunch of kids, like maybe ten. I never met the kids. I don't know if they were really his kids or step-kids or foster kids. Maybe a combination. Or maybe they were all grown up by then. Anyway, I never met the kids, but I heard that he had a lot of them.

I worked one summer at an arcade that had lots of skeeball machines. Rick would come in and play skeeball several times a week. He didn't have a beard or white hair, just brown. He was tall and fat. He always wore suspenders to hold up his pants.

He was a very friendly guy who did nothing but play skeeball. A lot of skeeball. Like twenty dollars a night.

Some people play skeeball for fun. This guy played to win toys. He only occasionally looked up to see how much he'd won. He won a lot. He played some perfect games of 450, a lot of near perfect games of 410, and occasionally only a 370 or so. You win tickets depending on how high your score is, and sometimes you win extra stuffed animals for perfect games. Every time he came in he got one of those extra stuffed animals and spent enough tickets to buy between three and six more stuffed animals. And every time he came in he gave away a stuffed animal, or maybe two, or maybe three. He took home at least three stuffed animals and a bunch of tickets.

The stuffed animals he took home were stored until Christmas. In December he brought back the rest of his tickets and bought pretty much all of the cool stuff in the prize counter. Then he took the stuffed animals and other stuff and gave them to some orphans for Christmas.

Once in a while we'd have a slow day at the arcade, and there weren't really any kids around when he got ready to leave for the day. A couple of times he didn't see any kids he thought needed the stuffed animal, so he gave it to me instead. I had two stuffed animals given to me by the real Santa Claus. I don't have them anymore. I'm afraid I must have lost them when we moved from Fort Worth.

The mall with that arcade isn't there anymore. I wonder where Santa Claus moved to?

Good News?

Well, I thought I would take a break from the usual "this is what I've been doing" post and write about something a bit serious. And I'm not sure how to ease into the subject, so here goes.

A lot of women are going to have miscarriages. Someone did a survey and found out that one out of five pregnant women lost their babies. So that's kind of sad, but these things happen.

Someone else did a survey and found out that our pets and horses and cows and such were also having miscarriages. But the animals had miscarriages at a higher rate. One in three pregnancies ended in miscarriage.

So someone was wondering why the animals were having more miscarriages than people. So they did another study. And in this study, humans and animals both miscarried at the same rate. One in three pregnancies ended in miscarriage.

Why the discrepancy?

In the original human survey, the patients were asked if they had miscarried, and one in five of them reported miscarriages. In the animal study, well, you can't ask animals if they have miscarried. Instead, the information was gathered from veterinarians and people who bred dogs and horses and other people who keep up with such things. Their numbers were based on lab tests.

So, in the joint study, the human patients were asked if they had miscarried, and still one out of five said yes. But, in addition to that, lab work was done, and according to the lab work, one out of three had miscarried. A lot of these women had miscarried without even knowing.

Let me explain. Say that a hundred women are pregnant. But they have only just become pregnant today, and they don't know that they are pregnant yet. In the next two or three weeks, before they even know that they're pregnant, thirteen or fourteen of them have miscarriages. Only they don't think that they are having miscarriages, cause they don't know that they're pregnant. They just think that they are having periods. Maybe it is a bit more painful than usual, or maybe it didn't start on the exact day that it was supposed to, but it was still pretty much just like a period. So they don't report the miscarriage or go to the doctor or anything like that. In the next month or two, the remaining pregnant women find out that they are pregnant, but then later twenty of them have miscarriages. The rest of the women (except maybe one who will have a serious problem that might end either her life and/or the life of her baby) will be fine if they can avoid angry boyfriends, car accidents, falling down stairs, etc....

Enter the early home pregnancy test.

So now we have a bunch of women who are trying to get pregnant, and every week they go to the drugstore and buy these tests. And every morning a bunch of them are looking at these little sticks and wondering if they've done the test right, and maybe it just takes longer for it to change color, and what does this look like to you? And some of them happily run out and buy some sparkling grape juice, cause they're giving up alcohol cause it's bad for the baby.

And a couple of weeks later, about ten percent of them are crying in the bathroom.

Okay, someone I know went to the drugstore and bought two of the early home pregnancy tests. And the little sticks changed color and all of that stuff. And later a blood test confirmed the results of the first two.

Don't worry, it isn't me.

Anyway, this person doesn't want everyone to know, cause she's afraid she's going to be the one in three who has a miscarriage. Telling someone who would tell me was probably not the best idea, if you don't want people to know. On the one hand, they are happily doing things that couples do when they are expecting, only they are trying to do it without anyone noticing. On the other hand, she's trying not to get too excited, since sometimes she doesn't feel well, and she doesn't feel well in a way that is like how she feels right before she has a period. Every little twinge makes her panic.

She's had about six tests now. She's definitely pregnant. She's wondering when she should tell people.

Personally, I think that she should tell everyone right away. I understand wanting some privacy and all that. I understand not wanting everyone to know that you're going to have a baby and then find out later that you're not having a baby and have to deal with all these people coming to tell you how sorry they are. I get it.

But if you're really concerned that you might lose the baby, don't you want as much help as you can get? Don't you want people you work with to know that you shouldn't be doing the heavy lifting and such that is usally part of the job? Don't you want someone to kind of check up on you when your husband is out of town? Don't you want a few people to be ready to help out if there's a problem?

Of course, I don't want any babies. Maybe I'm just imagining the situation all wrong, because I have trouble picturing myself being in it. I don't know.

Maybe they shouldn't have told me.

When I take over the world, everyone will be a single parent

This one was originally in another blog. A funny thing about that is that on the other blog the title was too long for the whole title to be listed on the previous blogs. So it said that When I take over the world, everyone will be a sin....

So, hopefully, when I take over the world, everyone will get the title right and not be a sin.

Another thing is that I happened to write it on what would have been my dad's 65th birthday.

But never mind. Read on. And I have included the two comments from the original post


(the following was originally posted in another blog on Febuary 9th)

I was going to start a new blog to talk about how I would fix things if I had a magic wand. But I have several blogs already, and I've hardly used this one at all. So I'll just make the when I take over the world stuff a section of this blog.

I wasn't sure which of the take over the world posts to start with. Recently I read someone else's blog, and she was talking about being a single mom. So I guess I'll start with that.

Every once in a while, I hear that someone has a plan to pay people to volunteer for a sterilization procedure. A mathematical formula would determine how much of a potential financial drain your future children would have on society. If you agreed to be sterilized instead of having these children, the government would pay you a percentage of the estimated tax money saved.

Sounds great to me. I don't want any kids anyway. If someone offered me a free and safe permanent method of birth-control, I'd probably take it. If someone offered pay me to do it...wow.

Of course, I like to think that my high I.Q. would prevent me from being paid much money. On the other hand, my low personal income would also be factored in, and the two would probably cancel each other out. But if I'm offered any amount of money before I'm too old to have children, I'm going to take it.

Not that it will ever happen. I like the idea, but everyone else seems to hate it. And I really don't get most of the arguments. Like a bunch of poor people will go and have the procedure, or a bunch of black people will go have the procedure. So what? What if a bunch of poor black people willingly go have a sterilization procedure done and get paid for it. A bunch of other poor black people won't go and have the procedure. That would forever put an end to the discussions about welfare moms cranking out babies to get more money. If some people were really doing that sort of thing, and you offered them something like this instead, wouldn't they take the easy money up front?

Several years ago I read a book, and I can't remember the name of the book, or even who wrote it. It was a woman, I remember that much, so I want to say it was by Anne McCaffrey or Vonda McIntyre, because that was who I was reading at the time. Anyway, in this book all the people were legally allowed custody of one child. Period. But they had sole custody. There were no custody fights and arguments about visitation or how someone thought their child's other parent wasn't raising the child right. You have custody of one child, and everyone else back off, including the child's other biological parent.

Wouldn't that just solve all kinds of problems? Custody of children is decided before they are even conceived. If a couple gets a divorce, there is no custody battle. If the custodial parent wants to pick up and move to Alaska, that's okay. There is no arguing about how much child support the non-custodial parent will have to pay, because there is no such thing as child support. If you can't afford to take care of a child yourself, don't have one. You and you alone are responsible for that one child.

Which is not to say that you couldn't have custody of one child and live with someone who has custody of another child. You could raise them together, share living expenses and all of that. For that matter, you could live with ten other people who have custody of ten other children, and raise them all together and share living expenses and all of that. But it would be very clear who had custody of a particular child, and who had the final word on all things concerning that child.

There were a lot of things in the book that would probably never work in America. In the book the custodial parent paid the other biological parent for creating the child. In general, women were paid more than men per child. On the other hand, in an individual's lifetime, a man could father many more children than a woman would be able to have. In the book, the main character's custodial parent was paid to be the biological father of over three hundred children, but he still owed money to the biological mother of the child he had custody of. Paying someone to have sex with you, even for the purpose of creating a child, is still prostitution. And it might seem too much like babies for sell. We don't buy and sell people anymore.

There are other things that did not happen in this book that I would also think about. If you have bad genes, besides paying someone of the opposite sex to help you create a child, couldn't you also hire someone of the same sex for the same purpose, so that the resulting child would not have your bad genes. And since I don't want any children anyway, could I sell my legal right to have custody of one child to someone who would like to raise more than one child?

A lot of things will be different after I take over the world.


2 comments:

a friend said...

Concerning high IQ vs low income: I don't think Einstein was ever rolling in the dough, and who really wants to see the Donald Trump or Paris Hilton genes propagated! In other words, the high IQ probably matters, but the level of personal income really might not matter much.

Concerning the author: Did you read Ursula Le Guin? She liked to deal with similar issues, as I recall. The only McCaffrey's I read were "light" and never got into such serious issues. I only read one McIntyre ("Star Trek II")

What was done in the book if a parent happened to be a very bad parent who should not have custody at all? Or did they ever go into such things?

"There were a lot of things in the book that would probably never work in America."

You'd have the opposition from Catholics and others who want larger and larger families.

"Paying someone to have sex with you, even for the purpose of creating a child, is still prostitution."

Actually, this is legal in many countries, and in a small part of the US. If you make insemination artificial, this gets rid of any of this concern if it is necessary to get rid of such a concern. Then it takes us one step toward "Logan's Run" by disconnecting sex with procreation.

Concerning bad genes: Yes, some people have very bad genes. The problem right now is that there are a lot of bad genes out there and there is probably no ability to identify them and screen everyone readily. This is changing, however. The advances in genetics, even in the past 6 or so years, are rather significant.

"And since I don't want any children anyway, could I sell my legal right to have custody of one child to someone who would like to raise more than one child?"

That would make sense as part of this. However, the same complainers would call this "exploitation".

"A lot of things will be different after I take over the world."

With or without the help of lab rats...



Laughingattheslut said...

The proper question is with or without lab mice, not lab rats.

And I guess it will have to be without, cause I'm sure he'd soon find a way to get rid of me.

No, the level of personal income matters, because the point was to lower the number of children of parents who can't financially take care of them. It's a math problem--spend X amount of money now to convince someone not to have children, or spend several times X amount on the children through welfare, food stamps, unpaid medical bills, etc....

McIntyre wants to cure everything with virus therapy. And I hear that her day job is scientist, so she might actually do it. Once she's cured everything, she'll move on to making people who can fly and people who can live underwater.

The book did not get into such things. The woman in the book had a very loving father, who was a bit upset that he still hadn't been able to meet his financial obligations to the biological mother.

I don't doubt it would be done artificially a lot of the time, but this was not the implication in the book. The man was well liked and had been paid to father over 300 children. It probably wasn't entirely for his high IQ. I did wonder about the phrasing of the contract. If a pregnancy doesn't happen right away, how long do the people have to keep having sex before one of them is allowed to disolve the contract, and is there a fine one of them pays to get out of the contract, etc....

There's always someone complaining about exploitation in this sort of thing, so I don't think it would happen anytime soon. I still think it's a cool idea.