Married without Children.

     As someone who lives in Utah, I would say that I am not your typical, normal Utahn.  As of November 2010, the average age of males, who married for the first time, was twenty-three.  The large majority of these members of the male Utah population have propagated the species and have created substantial families of their own, in those eleven years. When the newly married men from 1999 reached their eleventh anniversary, they then had an average of 3.1 children.  You know what?  Let's just round up to four, because unless individuals are giving birth to baby heads with no bodies that are still alive, no one is having 10% of a child.
      That is the average newly married man in Utah.  Then there is me.  I married at age thirty-two.  My beautiful wife is 11 years younger than me and is somehow more mature than I am (For those of you keeping score, when I graduated high school, my wife finished the 1st grade.  A special thanks goes out to my friend Brent for making me feel creepy about my marriage).  While the rest of my brethren of the species are at home have their established families and their careers, I'm eking out a meager existence and am approaching my second wedding anniversary.
     While it may seem that I may be jealous of these men of modern days, this is not the case.  I just have difficulty speaking to them since their children and spouse are their very existence and I have no common ground to compare with them.  The discussions of poop size and consistency are not necessarily topics I want to discuss while I'm eating a peanut butter shake.  The little child wandering around carrying out random cup checks is also something I could go without.
     My wife and I went to a couple's home tonight for a 'game-night' with 3 other couples and their 3+ kids each.  That's a lot of kids for any gathering I'm included in.  One of the boys wandered around the house for a good 15 minutes coughing with his mouth open.  He would walk up to each person and then move on to the next in line.  I imagine that this is actually what caused the black plague to be spread instead of the 'rats' that we are told in history. Some little boy wandering around coughing on people, smiling, and then moving on.
     The one thing that these married couples were truly envious of, was my ability to look at their crying children and have them immediately stop crying.  My friends jokingly call me the Baby Whisperer after Caesar Milan's TV show.  They are of the belief that I should start my own TV show and that millions of babies nation wide would be captivated by me doing the most mundane daily tasks.  I would imagine it would be similar to watching Mr. Bean, without any thought to content or educational value (think Blue's Clues dumbed down).
    When the time comes (if it ever does), I'll accept my role as a father and do the best job I can with the tools I've been given, as long as I don't have to be the disciplinarian.   I'll let my wife be the 'mean mom'.