It Happened To Me: I've Got Kids?

I insisted I would never be a parent--but life had other plans.

My wife and I on a balcony in San Diego at my aunt's apartment. We're not usually this cool.

The other week, I was questioning here why we had not received any “It Happened To Me” submissions from men, even while being pleasantly flooded with entries by females. I got a wise comment that this was likely because women are generally encouraged to present their thoughts as personal stories and men as critical essays.

Inspired by that feedback (thanks, Brooke Berman!), I encouraged writers who identify as female to submit to an upcoming recurring column called “Unpopular Opinion” (keep sending those in, please! I need more!) and males to submit their “It Happened To Me” stories. I asked that you/they send them all to me at jane@anotherjaneprattthing.com and said we would pay joyfully for all we accept.

And now behold, the first man to step up and submit an “It Happened To Me” is being published here below, less than ten days after that original exchange. So thanks for being the forerunner for your gender, Derek!

I love you all, beyond vehemently disagree with that dumb “executive order” that there are only two unchangeable genders anyway, and thank you for every single thing you send, so keep on doing it, please. And enjoy Derek's story below and let us know if you relate.

Love love, Jane

By Derek Kupper

When I was relatively young, I knew I did not want kids. My parents assured me I would change my mind. My mom was certain that she’d have grandkids, and that they would be, in her words, “the head cheerleader and the captain of the football team” because I was the nerdiest, sports-averse kid in the world. And I’d nod and say “I’m sure, mom” and go back to reading, playing video games, or going off to do technical theater (NERDIEST).

I did not miss having kids. As I got older, none of my friends had kids. We were all nerds and all happy with our lives.

We were working at cool start-ups and going to coffee shops after we got off our second shift to hang out, listen to music, and play board games. We had big “parties” at the house where three of our common friends lived, where we watched bad movies (“Comin’ At Ya! 3-D” was a particular one that sticks out), played RPGs, played more board and video games, and basically just did what nerds in the late 90s to early 2000s did.

Eventually, I got annoyed that I didn’t have a girlfriend and decided it was time to find one. So I went to a dating site (again, early 2000s, so this was a radical and crazy thing to do), put in a profile, and paid $15 for a month. This was waaaaaay back in time. The sites had names like “Match.com” and “eHarmony” rather than “Tinder” or “Bumble” or what-not. I was a very practical and logical person, so I listed all my features and the things I was looking for. There weren’t any sophisticated algorithms and questionnaires back then; you basically marked a handful of things like “Smoking?” and “Kids?” and then just kind of jumped into a giant pool of people.

And because I was a very logical and reasonable person, I vetted each profile, picked the ones that seemed likely to result in a match, and messaged each of them. I only got one person who seemed like a match, so I just kind of browsed around. I found one woman who was funny and interesting and pretty and also very straight-forward.