I learned something today.

I’ll start by saying that I really don’t understand why humans are so set in their routines. My entire life has been bombarded by “after you finish high school, you go to college, then you get a job, get married and start a family.” High school was a given, as you’ve got a serious issue in your life if you couldn’t (or simply didn’t) finish high school. College was expected, though I wasn’t really ever “forced” to go, I certainly was encouraged to and never hindered in any way or given reason to believe that I shouldn’t. I met Erin and suddenly people started giving me their advice. It started with “don’t get married until after you finish school” and “finish school first!” Okay, thanks, that was my plan from the get go, but I’ll allow you to take credit for steering my life in the right path in your eyes.

After we got engaged it became worse. Mostly the same opinions coming in from the same kind of people…People who followed this “plan.” People I didn’t want to be like. And even though it would have been awesome to do opposite of what these people were telling us, we stuck to our plan of finishing school first. It was around this time that we were bombarded with “Have you set a date?” Can a couple not be engaged and not be in a hurry to set a date? Answer: yes. We did it. Get over it. We finished school, started working a bit, then got married. There was no more school, no more engagement, no more getting married, but people still found something to force the “plan” on us with the infamous “When are the kids coming?”

There are no kids. There will be no kids. I know my mom is laughing in the back of her head because she thinks I’m going to change my mind, but it’s not happening, Mum, I’m sorry to tell you. Kids are not for me, they’re not for Erin, so why would they be for us? There are so many kids who have broken homes or who need good homes, and if you love kids so much, go adopt them and quit pestering us about when we’re having children. We hate them. As ugly as it sounds, we majorly do not like children. Period.

We witness how people with children handle themselves and how children handle themselves at different points of their lives. We remember how we were at different portions of our lives, and seriously, knowing and witnessing all of this, who in the right mind would WANT to have kids, aside from people who are sticking to the “plan?”

We went to a meeting at church tonight in an attempt to get into a “small group.” Without getting into any detail, it wasn’t what we thought it was going to be, and while it wasn’t a waste of our time, we didn’t really walk away with anything that we thought we’d walk away with. We started to go with the “young adult (ages 18-29)” small group and was immediately driven away, which is the second time this has happened. We’re not into showing everyone how “hip” we are, so we automatically are disqualified from hanging out with people our own age.

Over to the 37922 zip code group (and company) and we immediately met a couple who were a bit older than us who were incredibly friendly and started a conversation with us. We ended up with 10 other people, ages ranging from us (the youngest) to early 40s. We THOUGHT this was going to work for us, but as it turns out, it really didn’t. Everybody had kids. And although they weren’t miserable, they didn’t really seem happy about it, often moping about not having any time off and not getting to go on vacation and having to specially plan dates and times solely because they had to see that their kids were looked after. If you’re so damned tired of it, then why’d you have a child in the first place? Is it really that hard to figure out?

We left the meeting tonight talking about how our age is a goofy one. We don’t like people our own age, we’d obviously not be too “in” with a group of senior citizens and when we get in a group with people who are just a little older than we are, we’re surrounded by the parents of children who are going to want to talk about their kids and “mommy-daddy” stuff. Newsflash, I don’t want to talk about your kid and I don’t want one of my own. This made me think:

We walked away not in a small group and feeling like we were grouches because it was so hard for us to find someone we “got on” with immediately because the public is largely made up of people we don’t like. The people we’d more than likely get along with have no lives because of their kids and I wondered if the reason they had those kids was to go along with the “plan” and to avoid the weird situation Erin and I are now in?

For the record, we’re still not buying in to that. No kids. Again, sorry Mum. We also pretty much decided that the small group of myself, Erin and Trudy is good enough for us :-)

Enjoy today’s haiku:

My dear 6 a.m.
I would appreciate it
If you’d come later