[Eric_WVGG]

When I was 17 I had a job at Software Etc (a forerunner of Gamestop), and person checking out asked if I had any kids. I was kind of bewildered and said "I think I'm a little young for that" and she sort of shakes her finger in front of me, "oh no you're not honey"

I've been thinking about that ever since, marking various dates in my life where I could take this theoretical kid out for a beer, etc. If my child's child had made a similar… um… life decision… I could be a great-grandfather in two years.

[thombat]

I'm similarly haunted by the question of an avuncular Anglo-Indian office manager some thirty years ago who upon learning that I had no kids exclaimed "How do you know that you're not just shooting blanks?!" I've wondered ever since how is have explained to that putative first-born that really they were just the pipe-cleaning debugging trial run, just making sure that the baby-batter cannon didn't need a rebore before settling down to a proper production run. (I'm sure that he'd have regarded my eventual brood of two as being confirmation of my lack of earnestness...a dilettante of the dong department)