JD - I hope you don't let those comments become a burr under your saddle. I want to personally thank you for what you do to help those who need it. Thank you! Sounds to me like you made the right choices for you, your life, and your circumstances. I saw too many breakups, splits, divorces and children with 1 parent among my shipmates while deployed overseas. That's life, they say, but it's a tough life, for sure.
A tip of the hat to you.
What I've seen, done and seen done. . . don't think I was ever fit to be a parent.
Here's a shot from my shoebox taken of me and a little Vietnamese girl back in 1969. I'm helping bandage the little girl who had been hurt bad when a VC girl threw her non bai tho cone hat in a cafe where some soldiers were eating and the place exploded. This little girl was one of a number of kids who were sitting on the sidewalk and got caught in the blast. Her face is puffy and starting to swell from the facial fractures, her wrist was badly broken, she had burns on her back. . . I'd just spiked her with a lo-do of morphine and was tending to everything. I think I'd been in-country for maybe a month or two.
That was my first real indoctrination of the ugliness I would see until I got the hell out of there in 1973. Those kids never stood a chance. And, I think that's where the first doubts arose about being a parent. It killed me having to leave some of those kids and go back to Bien Hoa or U-Tapao or wherever. 'Course, there were kids out there too, but you couldn't trust them.
A kid with a shoebox/shine kit running at you. . . Jesus, what were you supposed to do? I never had to make that snap decision, but I heard a lot of shoebox bombs go off. And all of them were carried by kids.
Fourteen years later, I met my wife at my "discharge dinner" at the O-club put on for me by the wing commander.
Every opportunity to start a family except that the WTB (wife-to-be) was still with the networks, traveled often and I was going to be a federal lawman--two careers not exactly condusive to being good parents. One career or the other? Manageable. Both of them together and try to raise a family? No way.
So was that selfish? To start a family when I knew good and damn well that I was going to be fighting demons from far away for years to come? I'd heard all the stories at the VAH about vets coming back home and seriously injuring their children (or worse) when the kids jumped on the bed to wake them up. . . or snuck behind them in the yard to shout "BOO!" and stuff like that.
I didn't want to be one of those guys. How selfish, eh?
Being a federal lawman was full-time and then some. Should I have quit and got a job as a grocery clerk or something so I could therefore have kids and quit being so selfish? Being a cop or fireman is having a job no one else wants or wants to do, but that they're sure as hell glad SOMEONE is doing it as long as it's not them. But I guess some of us were just being selfish when we knew better than to start a family we knew we could not devote the time we needed to for.
Yeah, I know a lot of cops that have kids, too. But I don't know that many federal cops whose marriage either didn't take a beating or disolve altogether--and that's never good for the kids.
Then add another 20 years of seeing horrible, unspeakable things happen to kids by evil monsters that prey on the streets of our country. Knowing firsthand what goes on. . . it would be damn hard to be a father and have a child knowing the crap on two legs that lurks about. Most cops I know are quite a bit more paranoid than non-cops about their kids. . . results in too much pressure on the kids, or worse, the fear of putting too much pressure on the kids. You can't win.
Before I had kids, I thought that people who didn't have kids were odd. Who wouldn't want to have kids??
Then after having kids, I applaud those that decided not to for whatever reason.
I would much rather see someone with no kids than a poor parent with kids.
And that is exactly it. It wasn't a totally selfish decision. My wife and I knew because we married late that time was against us. We knew that we were going to be moving around the country a lot, and that's not good for kids. I knew and saw and dealt with enough military brats to know that.
To those who think such a decision falls into the "how selfish" category, best step back a few feet and rethink it. Some of us fall in the "If we can't do it right, we'd rather not do it at all" category and that is especially true in the decision over whether or not to start a family.
There is always another side as to why people choose not to start a family. No law says we have to. Some of us think it's too damned easy to go out and start spitting out babies. Especially when the baby factories can't suppor that which they produce and the rest of society has to pick up the tab.
But that's probably just selfish thinking. . .
Think about when that kid is paying for your social security.
James Dean
Some of us have no plans or no need whatsoever to wait on or rely on Social Security. What's more, more and more of the SS benefit fund gets moved over to SSI (aka: Welfare and Medicaid) to support more and more women/couples who continue to have babies yet cannot support them.
I'll assure you that my wife and I have paid FAR FAR MORE in school taxes over the last forty years than we'll EVER see out of any Social Security chump change that comes our way. And my wife has paid far more in SS than she'll ever see come back to her. In other words, when it comes to Social Security, she's paid more than enough for herself and what pittance she'll get back--plus having paid for several other folks as well.
So that dog don't hunt.
-JD
.Now they are ages 8 and 6. When the rare occasion happens that they travel by airline, (three times from ATL-SLC and back), they have a good, but quiet time. Last year I rode ATL- Frankfurt two seats overfrom a little one who was in obvious ear pain. Ouch. I wanted to scream too. But what good would it do me, the kid, or the parents of the kid to complain. The mother was on her way to see her recently wounded army husband after being sent there from Iraq. Several folks were grumbling and I would have liked to have handed them the kid and told them to do their best. I don't tolerate misbehavior from my kids , and hate to see others put up with it.
but it's smooth sailing for me.
That is awesome!
