Paid for with my own hard-earned allowance money.

I have to respect the rhetorical jujitsu going on in this letter even while absolutely despising everyone involved in the writing and receiving of it.

Preeeach!

I want to star pretty much every person in this thread but you get a reply because OMG SAMESIES!!! Before I had my son I was all bitter about my maternity leave situation (good for the US, paltry compared to the rest of the world—8 weeks at 60% pay through long-term disability insurance) thinking that I’d be soooo…

Who knows? I don’t really care that much about other people’s harmless motivations.

Sure. I went to some Obama rallies and if you’re not into it, it’s boring. There’s also a lot of standing around and waiting involved. If you’ve decided you’re just not that into it and you’ve got a book handy, knock yourself out.

Two more years to goooooo!!!

There are a lot of regulations. There really have to be. I mean, what in the quoted list would you say is optional for a building in which dozens of children under the age of 5 are spending 10 hours a day every day? The internet, maybe? I’m assuming you want the teachers paid, the children fed and educated, the rent…

My daycare does. My favorite teacher’s son is in the 4-year-olds class right now, he’s adorable. Then again, my daycare is nonprofit and religious and gets money from the United Way, so very much non-fancypants.

In a former life, I worked in a position where I had to transcribe recordings of 5th graders trying to learn and describe a fairly abstract scientific concept.

OMG Thhiiiissss.

They take their slaves with them, silly!

Care to elucidate what side that is?

We live like a mile from the zoo, having a pass is a no-brainer. We have a teeny tiny house, the space for toys is minimal, so for gift-giving occasions we ask the grandparents to instead get our son memberships to local child-friendly attractions. So we can get OUT of the house on the regs. I hate hanging around at…

I think the root of a lot of that is class anxiety. We’ve a very downwardly mobile society now (I’m not doing as well as my parents, it stands to reason my kid won’t do as well as me) and some middle class parents are feeling very very anxious about the possible loss of their current class status for their child. So…

It depends on the city. In my city, the main benefit of Uber is that the city itself has never had a reliable taxi service. We have taxis, but I’ve lived here all my life and literally never used one because you have to call for one hours in advanced and it’s a crap shoot whether it will actually show up. (I still…

Yes, all of this. When people tell me I look great now, I immediately wonder how terrible I must have looked before. I did work hard to lose the weight but let’s be honest, I did not split the atom. I did not solve hunger or bring peace to the Middle East. I counted calories and started running a few miles a week and…

I recently lost a fair amount of weight (not triple digits, but I went down a couple dress sizes over the course of a few months) and the way people talk about my weight loss really weirds me out. I honestly wish people wouldn’t bring it up at all. It rarely goes anywhere good. I know I lost weight, I know you know I…

We were those annoying hippies who didn’t have a TV at all for a few years in the late 90s. Then we moved to a very rural area where the only option was exorbitantly expensive (to us at the time) Satellite, so we took a pass on that as well. We were a very early adopters of Netflix and getting those DVDs in the…

Yes, that’s correct. And it’s how they justify the horrific warehousing, neglecting and abusing of the children of SeaOrg members.