You Will Change Your Mind

About unconventional lifestyle choices that inexplicably bother people who don’t have to live them? Probably not.

In my previous career, I edited a memoir by comedian Jen Kirkman called I Can Barely Take Care of Myself—Tales from A Happy Life Without Kids. When we were trying to put a title on it, we got a whole lotta feedback from a whole lotta people.

Originally, Jen wanted to call her book You Will Change Your Mind, which is the first thing most people say to a woman when she tells them she’s “child-free by choice.” At this point I don’t remember why that was shot down, but I also don’t care. I’m stealing it for this chapter title because it applies not only to the question of whether to stick a bun in the oven, but to all kinds of lifestyle choices that you might make—and that might make other people uncomfortable enough to lecture you about them.

You know, people like a Dominican tour guide.

The elefante in my uterus

A few months ago my husband and I were with friends, another married couple, on a tour of Los Haitises National Park in the Dominican Republic. You get on a boat with a dozen other tourists and zoom across Samaná Bay, watch some birds, poke around in a couple of caves, float through the mangroves, and drink rum. The usual. Our guide, Rigoberto, was impressively trilingual. He used his English skills to inquire if my girlfriend and I had kids.

“No,” my friend replied. “Just cats.”

“No,” I said, unqualified.

Rigoberto laughed and said to the boat captain in Spanish, “Hay un problema con sus cosas?” He was asking if there was something wrong with our husbands’ “stuff”—because of course that’s the only reason two women of fertile age wouldn’t have children waiting back at the dock.

“No,” I said, this time in clear Spanish. “No me gustan los niños.”

You might think that my responding unambiguously in Rigoberto’s native language that I don’t like children would have been enough to put the issue to bed, but he tsk tsked me (in the universal language) and advised “Si a tu madre no le gustaban los niños, no estarías aquí.”

Well, okay, perhaps that’s true. If my mother didn’t like children I might not be here. And my mother likes children a lot—she not only had two of her own, she taught first and second grade for more than forty years, surrounded by the little fuckers. She always says that if she’d had the financial means she would have had a whole brood.

Whereas her mother—my grandmother—did have a brood, but I wouldn’t be so sure that was because she liked kids. Maybe she did, but she was also a practicing Catholic married at age twenty in 1946, so you can draw your own conclusions. Either way, by the time she was as old as I am now, my mother’s mother had seven children, the oldest fifteen and the youngest two.

And although I can’t imagine what it would be like to have even one toddler or one teenager on my watch all day—let alone SEVEN—I know for sure I don’t want to try it. I’d rather take my chances with the alligators in the mangroves.

What I didn’t bother attempting to explain to Rigoberto was that my mother was the only one of her six siblings to have kids of her own. With a six-year age difference, my brother and I weren’t exactly besties, so at family gatherings I socialized among my adult aunts and uncles and spent the occasional holiday or summer weekend with my lone cousin on my father’s side. It was totally fine. I never pined for a bigger family or an infant sister to play dress-up on. (I’m afraid I was pretty vocal about not wanting an infant brother, either, once I found out that was what I was getting. Sorry, Tom.)

In any case, I am an almost-forty-year-old woman who has never, ever, not once, wanted to have children. I just don’t have the urge to punch that biological clock and my reasons are blissfully uncomplicated, for which I’m grateful. I actually don’t think I’ve ever been so certain of anything in my entire life.

So how come lots of people are convinced that I’ll change my mind? And what in God’s name possesses them to say it to my face?

How to convert the conventional conversation

It’s not as though I haven’t taken a number of conventional steps in my life: graduated from high school, went to college, worked a few “career-track” jobs, and got married. The difference between me and a lot of condescending bozos out there is that I don’t give a Fig Newton whether anyone else chooses to do it the same, differently, or wearing a gold lamé unitard. You do you.

I also appreciate the freedom to have made—and continue to make—many unconventional choices, such as not having children, abandoning my career-track job to move to a third world country, and using Cointreau in my Aperol spritzes instead of a fresh orange slice. Sometimes these choices unnecessarily complicate my life, and sometimes they’re a vast improvement over the way anybody else has ever done something.

What difference does it make to anyone who’s not me?

If a boss doesn’t like the way I operate, she can fire me. If a client thinks my unconventional ways aren’t for him, he doesn’t have to hire me. And anyone else who doesn’t like the cut of my jib doesn’t have to hang out with me, marry me, or read my books.

However, since you are reading my book (Excellent life choices, BTW. Really strong.), it’s possible that “unconventional” describes you, too—or at least some of your thoughts, actions, choices, and sweater vests.

Or maybe it’s a word that Judgy McJudgerson uses to describe you, even if you wouldn’t necessarily use it on yourself. Different cow, same block of cheese. Let’s slice it up and serve it to him on a decorative platter, shall we?

There are many lifestyle choices that stymie a good chunk of the conventional population. When you declare your intentions toward one of them, you might get some blowback. Such choices include but are not limited to:

You want to be a sculptor?

You’ll change your mind [as soon as you have another silly whim].

You want to go vegan?

You’ll change your mind [as soon as you remember that means you can’t eat real ice cream].

You want to be single forever?

You’ll change your mind [as soon as you meet the right guy/girl].

Hey, I don’t want to sculpt for a living, give up dairy, or have to take out the trash all by myself, but you do you. And I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but I truly don’t care how you get from Point A to Point B—as long as it’s not hurting anyone or making a lot of noise when I’m trying to sleep.

Unfortunately, some people just can’t take “No I won’t” for an answer. Here are some easy ways to shut down the conversation when you have to deal with those people:

LIFESTYLE CHOICE	RESPONSE TO “YOU’LL CHANGE YOUR MIND”
Being an artist	“Oh, is that what happened to you, or did you actually want to be a tactless busybody when you grew up?”
Celibacy until marriage	“Are you coming on to me?”
Not having kids (at 25)	“Right now I’m mostly concerned with keeping the twins perky.”
Getting a PhD	“Um, that’s, ‘You’ll change your mind, Doctor.’”
Working for yourself	“I’ll be minding my own business and so should you.”
Not having kids (at 35)	“Nope. Fingers crossed for another thirty years before I pee when I laugh.”
Going vegetarian/vegan	“Cows don’t even get a chance to change their minds.”
Dropping out of school	“Steve Jobs.”
Not having kids (over 45)	“Tell it to my ovaries.”
Marrying young	“Yeah, but the sooner we get hitched, the sooner I can take him for half his assets!”
Staying single	“Either way, you’re not invited to the wedding.”

Of course, sometimes these Judgy McJudgersons are right. You could very well change your mind about a previously firmly held belief or decision. That’s usually how divorce works, or how people end up becoming mortgage brokers instead of stand-up comedians. (Though if I may humblebrag here, I got me a mortgage broker who does both.)

But Judgy won’t always be right, and he certainly shouldn’t influence your Major Life Decision-Making with his narrow world view and rude proclamations. A good all-purpose reply is “Oh dear, it seems I have just changed my mind about having this conversation with you.”

What if it’s not a choice?

Beep, beep! That’s my privilege alert going off. (I set it to Hetero, Cis, White Person Tells You What to Do.)^*

My extra X chromosome may be my genetic cross to bear, and I may endure discrimination for it (as well as asinine, mildly offensive conversations about my closed-for-business womb), but I have no firsthand knowledge about being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, disabled, African-American, Hispanic, Native American, Muslim, Jewish, or having been born into any other race or ethnicity or creed.

And although NONE OF THOSE THINGS ARE CHOICES, we all know that some assholes think they are, and think you shouldn’t be making them. Or that you should be hiding them. Or settling down with a nice girl you met at conversion camp.

Which is to say: I would be remiss in dispensing advice like “You have nothing to lose by being true to yourself!” or “Just ignore the haters!” if I didn’t also acknowledge the threats to their personal safety when nonhetero, noncis, nonwhite people decide to “do them” on any given day.

I don’t know how that feels, and if it applies to you, I am very sorry you have to deal with this shit. You Do You may be a silly self-help book, but I hope it gives you something you’re looking for—be it self-acceptance, confidence, solidarity, or a few good laughs.

Whoever you are, I want you to know that I respect your incontrovertible essence, I respect your life choices, and I won’t try to change your mind about any of them.

Unless they fuck with my sleep, in which case I will cut you.