I was at my brother’s birthday party this
evening – he’s 27, but that doesn’t stop my mom from wanting to
bake a cake and feed everyone. A couple of his friends came, with
their respective wives and sons. Two little boys, generally under
the age of 2. I think Garrett is about a year and Dylan is about
7-8 months, but I don’t know his friends very well and I’m a
miserable judge of ages when kids are that young.

Dylan’s mother and Garrett’s mother were
talking about naps – Dylan doesn’t really take naps, she said, if
they’re lucky, he’ll lay down for 20 minutes. Garrett’s mother
was surprised, and said that Garrett usually takes a couple of naps
a day, sometimes for up to a couple of hours.

“Two hours?!? You could get something
DONE with that kind of time.”

…….

And people WONDER why I don’t want
kids. Because that was an honest reaction from a parent, that a
stretch of time two hours long is an astounding occurrence. I have
a hard enough time finding two hours NOW to get stuff done
in between working, cooking, and hobbies.

I’m just so utterly glad that other
people are willing to put the effort into child-raising that’s
necessary to propagate the species so that I don’t have to.

Note: I do have other reasons for being
childless, like not wanting to contribute to what I consider the
population problem we-as-a-planet will be facing soon enough. But
it all started with not wanting to put that time into child-raising
that it takes to do it right.