I never really wanted to have kids, so I didn't. I used to say that I just wanted to start off the right way and be married first because the thought of being a single mom was more than scary. More importantly though, I didn't feel like my life would be incomplete without children. I don't know if it was because I had a single mom or what, but I do recall being keenly aware of the work, not to mention the cost of raising a child. And quite frankly, I wasn't in the mood for it.

In hindsight, I don't think I ever saw kids in my future, but never really came out and admitted it for fear of judgment from others. As I got older, I could care less what people thought about the choices I made for my life.

Some years ago while on a business trip to New Orleans, I took part in this volunteer team who helped to clean up and paint houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina. I met a nice African guy who was also part of the same volunteer group, and we sort of gravitated towards each other and had fun considering the circumstances of our meeting.

When it came time to take a lunch break, we got back on the bus that they had picked us up in and we happily sat next to each other. We ate our sandwiches and chips, we laughed about silly things, we talked about his life in New York and my life in Chicago. The fact that we lived in two of the largest cities in the country should give you some indication that we both may possibly have strong personalities. We were all good though. Life was great on this bus!

Until this.

He decided to ask me about children, and because we were already having such a great conversation, I saw no reason not to share why I was childless and intended to remain that way. Before I knew what hit me, he shouted something like this in an incredibly nasty tone, "This would not be acceptable in our culture! You American women are so selfish! It is your responsibility to have kids and keep this world populating." Blah, blah, blah. Up until that moment he and I were like BFFs, but he experienced a severe personality switch that caught me by surprise to be honest.

However, I quickly snapped out of it and prepared for my defense attack. He thought I was such a nice person--generally I am--but unfortunately he didn't know that I, too, had a switch and my switch was about to render him speechless because of his weird comfort level with telling me, essentially a stranger to him, what I was supposed to do with my body. (That sentence was exceptionally long but necessary.) For the record, I've learned to keep my switch neatly tucked away most times, however if that switch should happen to turn on, I can verbally assassinate you in a way that's unnerving. There are only certain types of people who can turn this switch on, so I try to keep those people far away from me.

So, after he was finished with his passionate opinions on what I should be doing with my womb, I looked him dead in the eyes and gave him a rather lethal tongue-lashing that he so overwhelmingly deserved. I started with telling him in some of my favorite choice words that he should think twice about telling an American woman what she must do with her body. I discussed the fact that enough people in our country have children that they can't afford. I told him that some people already know they won't make good parents and have kids anyway, but I also told him some don't for that very reason and they should be rewarded accordingly. I told him that some people drive their kids into the lake because they never wanted them anyway or they're experiencing postpartum depression.

After I completed my monologue of sorts, which was intended to prevent him from even thinking about saying another word to me, he got up and found himself another seat on the bus. He learned rather quickly that women in this country have choices and they have voices, which they use to talk back with ... sometimes in curse words.

This was one of the oddest experiences of my life, as he and I were having a great time together and enjoying a wonderful conversation up until that point. Had he shared his thoughts a different way, minus the disrespectful, angry tone and instruction on my obligations as a woman, then maybe our conversation could have ended differently. It seems that my desire to not have children was too much for him to handle. I am certain that he will never forget me and may even revisit the valuable points I made about American women in the country he now calls home.

#prochoice #women #womensrights #children