Boys and girls

In Judyland today, our hostess addresses a frequent increasingly urgent question for our particular age bracket, the one about whether or not you want kids. Her answer is "I dunno", for a trio of excellent reasons.

Leslie and I got asked this question fairly often when we first got married, but not as often as you might expect, perhaps because we were fortunate to not be inclined toward ambiguity on the issue. The fact that we were both emphatically disinterested in having children was probably the second clue we each had on our very first date that we should be together (the first clue for me was that her very presence indicated inexplicably low standards in men for a girl that pretty, and for her it was the fact that I don't watch any sports).

Like many childless couples, our pets have become our kids and I keep a list of handy reasons why we consider this arrangement preferable:

1) As long as you don't get a puppy, dogs don't require toilet training and they always stay pretty much as cute as they were when you first got them;
2) If your dog is annoying you, you can scream obscenities at him without doing any lasting psychological harm;
3) Stupidity is charming in dogs;
4) No matter how smart your dog is, he's never going to get into college and rack up big tuition bills. Obediance classes are fifty bucks; and
5) When your dog gets sick and craps all over himself, it is considered socially acceptable to just hose him off in the driveway.

This could go on forever, but you get the idea. When I first started rattling those things off for inquiring minds at parties or wherever I was just kidding of course, but to be honest, all of those things actually are good reasons to me, or at least enough to tip me toward the much less-expensive canine option.

We've been fortunate to be enabled in this decision by my brother and sister-in-law, who were courteous and forward-thinking enough several years ago to provide a niece and nephew for our amusement during our visits home. This way we get a good concentrated dose of adorableness, frivolity and that good kid stuff a few times a year, but whenever one of them craps themselves during a game of tag or something, either Steve or Deanne will swoop in for mop-up duty while I quickly find something else to do. Fortunately, these interruptions seem to have tailed off as the kids approach college.

But here's a tip for anyone out there who gets asked this question and isn't a shallow wise-ass and would therefore prefer a serious response, especially for particularly nosey or judgemental types. The real reason we haven't had kids is because we don't particularly want them, and we think every kid should be particularly wanted. That'll shut 'em up every time.

Needless to say, that's just us. Millions of happy parents can't all be wrong, after all. And now that I think about it, somebody's going to have to pay those 85 percent tax rates to fund our social security payments, so disregard everything I just said and get out there and make some babies, people!