2015: A Year

Today I reflect back on the last 365 days and wonder "How did I end up in this tiny, cold, mold-infested apartment?" Then I remember, "Oh yeah I moved here."

For your reading pleasure, I give you my 2015 in review. Because you really care.

The year kicked off with a work party designed exclusively to dog on Wal-Mart. It was a mandatory meeting that started at 6:00 in the morning in which big company executives (i.e. the Vice President pictured speaking here) flew into town to speak to us for the sole purpose of rallying us against Wal-Mart. Basically we got paid to hear crap we already knew. And there was free donuts and coffee!

Check out this lady playing on her phone not paying attention. Who are you sexting at 6:00 in the morning? Wal-Mart?? Go work there then!

Not pictured: my exhausted ass who got 1.3 minutes of sleep the night before. Who do you think cleared out all those fixtures and set up the chairs??

Segue into the next most thrilling piece of my year: watching the Super Bowl. Who was I to root for? The overrated cheating Patriots who win every damn year? Or the shining Seahawks who are the closest thing to an NFL team Idaho will ever have?

I picked the Patriots because fuck the Seahawks.

Also if I hadn't picked the Patriots I would've joined the masses of disappointed, enraged, suicidal fans who were subjected to the heart-wrenching final minute of the game.

But instead, I was the one laughing. Good game, Hawks! I guess the bright side is your bandwagon is a little lighter now.

Then I created an Instagram account. Don't look for it.

Then in March, the day came where I officially completed my coursework for an online certificate from a community college. I received the degree through text message and graduated while sitting on the couch watching The People's Court. Just like in the commercials. Except I didn't have three kids hanging off me asking when dinner was while projectile pooping. 

Later in March, my company thanked me for seriously pursuing higher education to better understand and benefit the corporation by not promoting me and instead shipping me off to the shit hole Nampa store, telling me it was "temporary" and then leaving me there for my soul to die.

There I met many charming characters including crack heads, meth heads, heroine heads, gang bangers, gang banger heads, McDonalds employees (aka recovering crack heads) ass heads, shit heads, illegal immigrant heads, and that one guy. There we launched into a remodel that tested the patience and mental stability of all the heads.

Here's a brief photo album of my Nampa excursion.

Here is a tampon I found in the shoe department.

Nampa: Where the Nikes are free and the EAS tags don't matter

Coping with incompetency through snarky notes

A few regulars

I Saw the Light So You Don't Have To

Tom Hiddleston.

Otherwise known as the guy who plays that gender-fluid villain who wears antlers in The Avengers.

...You know, this guy.

Most recently this British actor has starred in the film I Saw the Light about that yodeling country singer from the 50's who drank too much and croaked in the back of his car.

...You know, this guy.

Better known as Hank Williams. Not Hank Williams Jr. Although I think they may be distantly related.

I Saw the Light traces Hank's career from the moment he married his freshly-divorced, manipulative attention whore of a wife (played by the lesser-known, lesser-of-a-train wreck Olsen triplet, Elizabeth Olsen) in an Alabama gas station to his rise to fame by yodeling sad songs on the radio, then at the Grand Ole Opry and then ruining it all by boozing it up and swallowing a few dozen pharmacies' supply worth of pain pills and dying on his way to a concert. Indeed, his tale is a tragic one, and incidentally so is the film.

It's a shameful trope these famous musicians create for these biopics. A humble aspiring young fella/gal who just wants to sing innocent songs is discovered, rises to fame, is exposed to the horrible corrupting world of sex and drugs and rock and roll, spirals out of control, hits rock bottom, then with some help from loved ones and ~*~true fans~*~ rehabilitates, gets back on the wagon and becomes and older, wiser, more haggard, less attractive role model for fans who have mostly already moved on to worship the next up-and-coming act. ...Or just dies. Like in this movie. Yeah, spoiler alert. Hank dies. If you didn't already know that, then you clearly didn't read anything I wrote above, and you also need to brush up on your dead celebrity trivia.

Being a Brit, Tom actually did a pretty spot-on impression of Hank. And Elizabeth Olsen did a great job not mimicking her sisters' career by landing a role in a movie that wasn't a straight-to-video release. And also she must have paid attention in her acting classes because she did a good job with that aspect too. That being said, the acting was just about the only saving grace of this film. The rest of it felt like someone got lazy in the editing room and shortened all the important parts but kept intact the fifteen minute scenes of boring nonsense.

Also the film did the thing that Frost/Nixon did where it will randomly cut to an "interview" of another character talking about the scene you just saw. Like the audience is supposed to think that these are real interviews instead of actors they just saw a minute ago.

Even though the film is based on people's real lives and actual events, it didn't seem very believable. The most unbelievable part in the whole movie was the final scene. And if you don't like spoilers and you really have any iota of interest in seeing this film in its entirety...don't skip this paragraph, because you deserve to hear the truth. READ IT! DON'T LOOK AWAY!! In the final scene there's an audience anxiously waiting at a Hank concert. Someone in charge approaches the microphone and announces that Hank had died on the way to the concert. (The death scene isn't even shown. This is how we hear about it.) After the announcement, the audience remains unsettlingly calm, then after a moment breaks out into the eponymous song in what's supposed to be a very moving moment. It took me completely out of the movie! I'm sorry, but if I paid money to see a concert and someone just announced that the guy I paid to see died on the way here, I'd be screaming for a refund. But there was none of that! Plus there was no dramatic death scene, no funeral scene, no slow mo shots of people weeping, no freeze frame of Hank's smiling face...just credits. Such a disappointing and abrupt end. But maybe that's the point. Maybe the film maker wanted to disappoint the audience as much as the fans were disappointed in Hank's sudden and untimely, yet highly predictable death. Maybe the filmmaker wanted movie-goers to be outraged and feel robbed and angry at the world and at God who took away such a talented man from the earth and instead gave us his offspring who asks us if we're ready for some football.

Well, filmmaker, you succeeded. Pat yourself on the back. I was only -35 years old at the time of Hank's death, but I felt like you really underscored the agony and torment the world experienced by agonizing and torturing me. Well done, sir. Well done.

But I won't end this little blurb on a sour note. Instead I'll provide you a picture of Hank Williams' house that I took from a tour bus in Nashville. If you look closely at the middle window, you can see Hank's ex-wife giving the finger.

Hahahaha you totally looked, don't lie.

And here's a picture of me and some hot guy at the Grand Ole Opry. Also in Nashville and also Willie Nelson is giving the finger.

Why My New Store is Awful

Okay I know I kept promising y'all an update, but the new job has been slowly destroying my soul and my will to live and frankly I haven't been able to muster up any energy to think about it let alone write a blog about it.

Until today!

I know a lot of you have been wondering "How's Forkie doing? Has she become a latte-sipping hipster fulfilling her endless aspirations?" for like the first week and then you immediately forgot about me as soon as you decided to resume your lives. I know it. I'm not offended. Just disappointed that you don't spend every waking second thinking about me. But fear not, I'm here to tell you all about it. Or at least my job. Which sucks.

So here I am at a place I'm going to refer to as "OOG." Here at OOG we have nothing short of interesting things going on: crack heads, blood in the parking lot, tiny stockrooms, crack heads, bad checks, 1,000 boards of freight every week, crack heads, meth heads, heroine heads, dick heads, douchebags, angry old women, crack heads, angry old men who call employees communists, crack heads, religious solicitors, crack solicitors, and finally, the worst thing of all: Ducks fans. *shudder*

OOG is located in probably the seediest part of the United States. On the train ride from my apartment, I look out the window to see the beautiful landscape of grand buildings and gorgeous trees slowly start to decay into graffiti-covered rail cars and derelict strip malls. Finally arriving at my work, you're surrounded by the city's finest establishments of adult video shops, liquor stores, Planned Parenthood (complete with protesters), dive bars and Popeye's Chicken.

Claustrophobes beware! This store is tiny and full of STUFF! You'll constantly feel like you're getting crushed by the massive amounts of STUFF and when you try to escape from feeling trapped by all the STUFF you'll just run into more STUFF and start hyperventilating until you finally succumb to the ridiculous amount of STUFF that does actually fall on you and crush you because there's also no safety culture here. (3 accident-free days and counting!)

As you walk through the apparel department, you'll notice nothing out of the ordinary at first...until you hear a strange beeping not unlike a chime you hear upon entering a small department store. (We can all hear it: beee-boooom!) You look around and think "wtf is that?" and then you see YOURSELF on TV! This store has so much theft it has little monitors that record your thieving ass as you "just look" at the cosmetics or "just try one shirt on" in the fitting room. So watch out. Or next time one of our three LPs will be here and they'll...probably do nothing because they'll be busy arresting a crack head.

Now that you've gotten thoroughly intimidated with the sales floor, come back to the apparel stockroom. Where are you going? Oh, you think our stockroom is in the apparel department. Silly. Follow me and I'll take you there. Yes, I know we're going into the home department. Yes, this is the employee hallway (Hi, everybody!) and right here is the stockroom! Let me just get my key out and...unlock this door and...OH MY GOD A WALL OF FREIGHT! Suck it in, we're going inside!

...No we're not. I'm not sure what I was thinking. I don't even think light can penetrate this stockroom.

For your visual pleasure, I'll provide a map of the store.

Now that you have this image, here's where our stockroom is!

That's right. Right down the employee hallway...in the middle of the home department...smaller than the break room. Oh and no upstairs either.

No. Upstairs.

So how do we get all that freight in there?

How does one pack a suitcase? How does a squirrel pack nuts in his mouth? How does a woman give birth to a baby...but in reverse?

We find a way to fit all that shit in there. And if that means blocking every walkway and stacking in front of all the things you need to do daily tasks...then so be it! Ad boxes? You don't need to get to those. I need these blue toes of Under Armour that will get worked two months later and then immediately stolen to go right there. Hangers? You can manage without those because these men's coats need this space more than you do. Fire extinguisher? Nah. Ever heard of stop-drop-and-roll?

Yeah I'm not kidding.

So now you're thinking...if there's no room for normal freight, what happens when new freight shows up?

The fine folks in Home have no choice but to do this.

Yes, it usually is about 12 boards. And YES, they do this during store hours! Fantastic.

And that's as close as those boards get to entering the stockroom. We have to break down the freight on the sales floor and carry each piece into the stockroom where it is then shoved, stacked, thrown, pretty much anything to get it in there.

There you have it! The nightmare that is my life every day. Next time you complain that your store is awful and there's no room in your stockroom and you can't get anything done...just pause for a moment and think of the starving children in Africa who would love to have your job.

And also think of me. And STOP BEING SO DRAMATIC!!

Working Retail Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

Have you ever been in a hospital watching someone wearing medical scrubs perform open-heart surgery on a patient and asked yourself, "I wonder if that guy is a doctor. I'll ask him."

Neither have I!

You know why? Because that's a stupid-ass question that you shouldn't even ask! Especially during an open-heart surgery. Like...what are you even DOING in that operating room? Who let you in?

This is an example of how dumb people are the moment they cross the threshold from the outside world into my place of work. It's like there's an invisible force field that doesn't permit brains to enter the premises and customers bodies pass through with all internal organs intact (except sometimes their bladders) while their brains fall plap on the concrete outside.

Don't believe me? Hear these tales of woe that I'm sure any human who has worked more than 72 hours in retail can attest to:

1. When a customer looks at you as you're dressed in full uniform, company gadgets attached to your person as you're doing something that only employees have any business doing (stocking shelves, running a cash register, etc.) and the customer asks, "Do you work here?" Probably the most dumbfounding, yet the most common of all derpy-headed idiotic utterances. Because of its commonality, however, I am convinced that there must be little imposter employees that lurk around the store dressed like they work there, tricking customers by leading them to the wrong product and scrambling signs. This must be the case, because nobody is that dumb.

2. When a customer approaches you with an item off of a rack and says, "This is just so confusing and it's really hurting my brain to try to figure this out so I was hoping you could help me with this before I just kill myself out of frustration and lack of understanding...how much is this item?" At this point, you must use your finger to point to the sign on the rack where the item was pulled off from. Often times you have to read the numbers and words really slow so you don't overwhelm them with too much information. Sometimes if they can repeat it back to me without making any mistakes, I reward them with a graham cracker.

3. When it's time for a customer to pay for their purchases and they approach the cashier who is standing at their register with the light on and a red carpet rolled out for the customer to approach, and they ask, "Are you open?" Bonus points awarded if the customer follows up with, "Do you work here?"

4. When a customer does this shit

Really now, do these people insert food into their asses and try to shit out their mouths? If you know anyone who does this, please murder them and any offspring they may have immediately.

5. When a customer who is in fact NOT legally blind or even illegally blind asks you where something is when they're standing right. In front. Of it.

The list could literally, not figuratively, go on and on. Moral of the story? Be a fireman.

Here's something to end on a positive note and to restore your faith in the human race:

The Perfect Road Trip?

In honor of this great country's birthday (happy 2,015th, America!) I thought it would be appropriate to share with you a fantastic way to visit it all in one asphalt-covered trip! According to scientists and people with way more time on their hands than myself, there is such thing as the "perfect" road trip. One that takes you across each contiguous state without leaving the country or making you drive through Idaho for more than 500 miles. It looks a little something like this:

Although if I had my way, I would include poor Hawaii and Alaska. We didn't fight the British Crown just to have 48 states!

Hope you don't have anything planned for the next 2-3 months!

You're probably wondering what all those little destination pins represent. Well, wonder no longer! I have for you the list!

1. Grand Canyon, AZ
2. Bryce Canyon National Park, UT
3. Craters of the Moon National Monument, ID (Bring sunscreen and something else to do.)
4. Yellowstone National Park, WY  (Warning: Do not goad the bison.)
5. Pikes Peak, CO
6. Carlsbad Caverns National Park, NM
7. The Alamo, TX
8. The Platt Historic District, OK
9. Toltec Mounds, AR
10. Elvis Presley’s Graceland, TN 
11. Vicksburg National Military Park, MS
12. French Quarter, New Orleans, LA
13. USS Alabama, AL  (Weird name.)
14. Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL
15. Okefenokee Swamp Park, GA  (Completely normal name. "Ned Flanders, let's go to Georgia!" "Okefenokee, neighboreeno!")
16. Fort Sumter National Monument, SC
17. Lost World Caverns, WV
18. Wright Brothers National Memorial Visitor Center, NC
19. Mount Vernon, VA
20. White House, Washington, DC  (Shut up, Washington, DC. You're not a state!)
21. Colonial Annapolis Historic District, MD
22. New Castle Historic District, Delaware
23. Cape May Historic District, NJ
24. Liberty Bell, PA
25. Statue of Liberty, NY
26. The Mark Twain House & Museum, CT
27. The Breakers, RI
28. USS Constitution, MA
29. Acadia National Park, ME
30. Mount Washington Hotel, NH
31. Shelburne Farms, VT
32. Fox Theater, Detroit, MI
33. Spring Grove Cemetery, OH
34. Mammoth Cave National Park, KY
35. West Baden Springs Hotel, IN (But just the hotel.)
36. Abraham Lincoln’s Home, IL
37. Gateway Arch, MO
38. C. W. Parker Carousel Museum, KS
39. Terrace Hill Governor’s Mansion, IA
40. Taliesin, WI
41. Fort Snelling, MN
42. Ashfall Fossil Bed, NE
43. Mount Rushmore, SD  (Take lots of pictures and don't expose the film while driving through the Badlands! Hah...you're welcome for that glimpse into my idiotic, blunder-filled childhood.)
44. Fort Union Trading Post, ND
45. Glacier National Park, MT (See warning for YNP)
46. Hanford Site, WA
47. Columbia River Highway, OR (If it's not raining.)
48. San Francisco Cable Cars, CA (Really? Cable Cars? These scientists ARE aware that there's also a Golden Gate Bridge in this city, right? Well, I guess they are smarter than me...)
49. San Andreas Fault, CA  (That earthquake was all San Andrea's fault!)
50. Hoover Dam, NV

How many of these national treasures have YOU seen? If your number is between 0 and 9, hop in that car of yours and go see that beautiful country of ours! If your number is between 10 and 29, not bad, not bad, but I think you can do better. If your number is between 30 and 49, you're almost there! Call in to work tomorrow and explore this fantastic land of the free and home of the brave! If your number is 50...well la-dee-frickin-da! You want a medal or something?!

 

In Which I Talk About The Cobbler...and Not the Peach Kind!

Oh man, it's been a while, hasn't it? I'd like to apologize...but I'm not going to.

I suppose I haven't really pinpointed the purpose of this blog. Is it to ramble? Is it an outlet for my frustrating observations of this crazy thing we call life? Is it a cry for attention? Is it a place where I can safely criticize the crap out of everything I deem unworthy of this world? How about...all the above?

...Or how about it's a thing I do because I want to and I don't need to explain myself to ANYBODY!


Today I'll be criticizing -- I mean, reviewing...okay fine, criticizing the movie The Cobbler. Why did I italicize the title? Because I am one grammar savvy beeyotch.

Not unlike most Americans, I saw the cover of this film and immediately assumed, "Yes, another Adam Sandler piece of horse shit that is ridden with awkward crassness and painfully unfunny poop humor. ...I LOVE IT ALREADY!!!" When I started watching the film, however, I was met with an unfamiliar tone of sincerity and heartbreaking truth of humanity. I was very disappointed.

Honestly, though, I was excited to see a film with Adam Sandler that actually drew me in emotionally rather than with the promise of 1,000 fart jokes. Sandler plays a Jewish cobbler, which apparently still exist in Manhattan...cobblers, not Jews...who is begrudgingly upholding his family shop and taking care of his senile mother. His shop neighbor, Steve Buscemi, is a barber who acts suspiciously fatherly to him throughout the film. Sandler is approached one day by a perky activist chick, who is conveniently single but would be waaaay too young for him in the real world, and encourages him to sign some petitions to keep his shop from being gentrified. He goes against his wishes of taking this out from his pathetic life to sign the petition because he hopes this will get him laid.

Days later, Method Man enters Adam Sandler's shop to get his alligator shoes resoled. We don't know much about Method Man yet, but the film strongly hints that he's a bad motherfucker and he wants his shoes fixed TONIGHT! Adam Sandler works after hours to fix Method Man's shoes for fear of getting murdered when his machine explodes. When he can't get anyone to come fix it in time, he resorts to the ancient relic he keeps in the cellar from his great, great, great grandfather. But this machine is MaGiCaL!!! When he stitches the shoes and tries them on for shiggles, he immediately BECOMES Method Man!

After much confusion and heavy breathing and cheap camera tricks, Adam Sandler discovers that any pair of shoes he stitches with his ancestor's machine will allow him access to their bodies. (!!!) For a solid eight minutes of film, he tries on dozens of shoes and becomes dozens of people including a transgender and a corpse. Amazingly all these shoes are his exact size. At no point through this whole experiment does he stop and question why he has so many pairs of unclaimed shoes.

Armed with this special ability, Adam Sandler decides he can be "anybody I want!" Which of course isn't entirely true. He can be anybody he wants from the small selection he has...which it turns out aren't very interesting. If I had the ability to become the likeness of any of my customers, I'd look in the mirror for a long time and think "This is creepy." and immediately go back to my life. Adam Sandler, however, takes utmost joy in wandering around Manhattan in someone else's body. He doesn't do anything he wouldn't normally do otherwise. He does, however, use the ability to stalk Perky Activist Girl by staring at her through a window as he occupies a 13 year old's body.

At home, he talks with his mom who laments that she only wants to have dinner with his father one last time before she kicks off. Adam Sandler gets the crazy idea of putting on his father's shoes and becoming Dad (Dustin Hoffman) for one mind-bending night with his mom. I was totally betting on the evening ending, or at least going in the direction, with Mom trying to get frisky with her long-lost husband and Sandler being unable to deny his mom's wish, thus resulting in an awfully grotesque, yet classic Sandleresque attempt at humor. However, I was one again deeply disappointed.

The next morning, Mom is dead, but most likely died happy after having gotten to see her fake husband one last time. Adam Sandler is devastated. He can't afford a decent casket for Mom because he spent the last week of work dicking around in other people's bodies, dining and dashing and fapping off to Perky Activist Girl. When he finally returns to work, Method Man is waiting for him demanding his gators. Sandler dickishly asks for Method Man's ticket and upon not having it refuses to return his shoes. Method Man threatens Adam Sandler and leaves without putting up much of a fight. This launches the second leg of an already drawn-out story!

Sandler packs about ten pairs of shoes with him and follows MM around Manhattan. Upon observing him through several different bodies, and apparently finding time change into them without being seen transforming, he discovers MM is quite the douchebag. He gets in random fights with convenient store workers, he beats his girlfriend, he orchestrates the gentrification project that's threatening the city block that Perky Activist Girl is fighting to protect...Wait WHAT!! This guy is very busy! And what a coincidence that he gets his shoes fixed at Adam Sandler's shop and wears the exact same shoe size as him!

Sandler, in Method Man's body, manages to enter MM's apartment in search of his expensive watches to hock for his Mom's well-deserved, diamond-encrusted casket. But when Method Man unexpectedly walks in to the apartment and sees..Method Man! things get dicey!

Eventually Real Method Man is defeated by Adam Sandler Method Man and is left tied to a chair and gagged. Out of his vast selection of shoes to wear for the intimidating captor role, Sandler chooses the transvestite's stilettos and transforms into probably the least intimidating person to demand where the watches are hidden. Personally I would've picked the corpse. If I didn't look scary enough, I would've at least stood quietly and waited for the stench of rotting flesh to break Method Man's will. But whatever.

As his interrogation goes fruitless, Method Man's homies show up. Oh no! Now Adam Sandler Method Man emerges and travels all over on a mission to "get his money." After stopping by a few sketchy warehouses, they make their final stop at a nice upstate mansion where Evil Gentrification Mastermind Lady is cooking crab ragu and hands Adam Sandler Method Man a giant brick of money. At this point in the film, I disabled my suspension of disbelief and tuned out the nonsense of the logistics of why this lady would want to bulldoze a city block in Manhattan and why she would have any business paying off a thug like Method Man to do anything that the government should be doing in the first place. It was all supposed to make sense, but it wasn't!

Like I'm supposed to make sense out of a film in which the protagonist can transform into someone else's body just by wearing their shoes.

Back at the apartment, Adam Sandler, still in Method Man's body, opens the door...to Method Man in Method Man's body! Instead of just shooting him dead like a true thug would've done, Method Man in Method Man's body launches into the long-winded speech about how "you're dead, you're SO dead!" that only truly good writers would engage in. A struggle ensues, transvestite body takes over, a kick in the jugular with the stiletto ends MM's life. Because stiletto heels are sharp objects.

Adam Sandler panics and turns himself into he police but when they go to retrieve the body, it's GONE! What a craaaazy movie!

Perky Activist Girl and Adam Sandler then team up to fight the new enemy, Evil Gentrification Mastermind Lady, and together they take her down in a very confusing, probably unnecessarily complicated way that I refuse to recall. But it involves putting on the shoes of every henchman involved and transforming into several different bodies. In the end, EGML is defeated and everybody wins.

One final kidnapping attempt later, Adam Sandler wakes up to find himself in Steve Buscemi's barber shop. At this point I jokingly exclaim: Steve Buscemi is Adam Sandler's father! Because at the rate this movie was spiraling and twisting, it was very possible.

Lo and behold, Steve Buscemi takes off his shoes and becomes Dustin Hoffman. "I'm your father the whole time!" Adam Sandler is pissed. I would be too if my father chose to hide from me for decades in Steve Buscemi's body. Turns out Dustin Hoffman had to hide from the world because of all the horrible situations he found himself in and chose that particular moment to reveal himself because...by God it was TIME.

The film ends with father and son driving off in Dustin Hoffman's fancy shiny car that was hidden underground, driven by personal driver named Webb...I can't even finish this thought because I am so done talking about this movie!!


EDIT: For being "one grammar savvy beeyotch" I sure had to fix a lot of typos.

Childfree is For Me or: How About You Stop Telling Me How to Live My Life!

As I've tried not to use this blog as an outlet for my frustrations and dirty laundry that I can't air out on Facebook or in my therapy sessions without getting harshly judged and shunned and banned from the Morrison Center, I just need to throw this particular rant out into the world to relieve some pent-up annoyances.

I don't want kids.

Shut up. Let me finish.

I don't want kids. I don't care for kids. I can't see myself having kids. I am pretty sure if I become pregnant I'll promptly and swiftly end my life. I have a very strong opinion about kids and why I don't want them. As such, I get very passionate when other people try to tell me that I'm wrong and I actually don't know what I want out of my life and that I have no idea what I'm talking about. So maybe instead of reading this as a rant, maybe take it as a list of very detailed, passionate instructions for those of you who don't already know about my decision.

I'll make this simple and structured. Here's a list of things you shouldn't say to me.

1. "Well, that's very selfish of you."

Why? Since when is making a life decision being selfish? That's like telling someone who is applying for a higher paying job that they're being selfish.Also I think not having a desire to make a mini clone of yourself so you can prime it to be the best thing this world ever saw is the opposite of selfish.

2. "I didn't think I wanted kids when I was your age either."

 Yeah, I'm not you. And don't say "either" like you know me. In fact, don't even say any of this. We are all different. Whatever worked for you won't necessarily work for me. Maybe you were scared of having kids and you didn't think you could live up to society's expectations of being a good parent. Then you overcame your fear. Me? I just don't want them. The end.

3. "You'll change your mind."

Oh, I wasn't aware I was talking to a being from the future! Tell me what else I'm going to do five years from now! Also fuck you.

...Okay, that was a little harsh. Please go fuck yourself. Better?

And perhaps a nicer way to say this is instead saying "Maybe you'll change your mind" rather than being so definite about it. Yes, I will concede that. Maybe I will change my mind about reproducing. Just like I may change my mind about liking Bruce Springsteen music or what gender I want to be for the rest of my life. It's a possibility, albeit highly unlikely. Thanks.

4. "Don't your parents want grandchildren?"

I'm pretty sure my parents had a hard enough time raising three hellions of their own, so why would they possibly want to put themselves through it for another 18 years?  I guess I can see the appeal in watching me try (and probably fail) to raise a child. Witnessing the struggle, the frustration, the agony. The regret. The poop. "Mom, Dad, help me!" I'd scream from the abyss of vomit and toys, reaching desperately for their hand as they laugh, eating popcorn...laughing...

No.

5.  "Who will take care of you when you're old and senile?"

The same people who would probably take care of me if I chose to have kids: the good ol' government!

6. "You'll regret it when you're 40."

Yes, I'll definitely regret my early retirement and tight vagina. What have I done??!

7. "Well, that's not fair to your husband."

Wow, okay if you think he married me knowing full well what I didn't want and he's just waiting for me to change my mind for him, then he deserves to be disappointed. In other words, NEITHER OF US WANT KIDS!

8. "But Disneyland..."

Is open to adults too.

9. "Just watch. You'll get pregnant someday and you'll fall in love with your baby and you'll want more and then I'll say I told you so!"

Yeah, funny. Watch out for that bear next to you.