Kids Are Cheap
While I was in the Military, Kathy gave birth to two of our children. The heath care benefit in the Military was truly unbelievable. It may still be but even in today’s world I doubt that you could have children for less than Kathy and I did at Dyess AFB, TX. First of all, Kathy received all of the Prenatal care for our first child. Regular appointments, and medications, etc. Cost… $0. Then she went to the hospital to have Bobby. In the Military they required that your wife had to spend four days in the hospital when delivering a baby. I don’t know why or how they came up with that but that was the rule. The total cost for bringing our son into the world was $7.00. The way our bill reached that amount was Kathy’s food. She received 3 meals a day at $1.75 a day. Multiply that by 4 and you get $7.00. I made arrangements to satisfy the bill and that was that. The only negative was that I couldn’t watch the birth. Fast forward approximately 2 years for the birth of our daughter Marti. Again, all of the Prenatal care was $0. Kathy again had to spend 4 days in the hospital and we had to pay for her food. It was still $1.75 per day for 4 days and the bill reached a grand total of $7.00 for Marti. I made arrangements for paying that bill as well. I remember all of this but honestly it is still hard for me to believe that we had two children while in the military for a total cost of $14.00. I guess you have to thank the taxpayers for such an amazing set of circumstances. I still wasn’t able to view the delivery because of military rules at the time. It was truly amazing how little the cost was to bring them into the world, but I was only beginning to realize that there would be many other costs to care for these little bundles of joy.
Kids Don’t Eat Much
The following story is almost as amazing as the one previous story regarding the cost of having children in the military. While I was in Procurement one of my bosses was a guy named Pete Yankowski. He and his wife Mary Ann became good friends of ours. In the military your date of rank meant everything in terms of who was in charge. Pete, by virtue of having an earlier date of rank than me, was my boss in the Procurement Office. He was a great boss and a good friend and an amazing racquetball player. I don’t think I ever beat him at racquetball. The games were always hotly contested but at the end of the game Pete came out on top. Pete had no children at the time and I had two. We were both Captains at the time and life was good. One day Pete asks me if Kathy and I would like to go to San Antonio with he and his wife Mary Ann for the weekend. I said that I would need to check with Kathy and get back to him. I told him that it wasn’t that easy to just go somewhere at the “drop of a hat”, (Another one of those cliché’s). I said that money was kind of tight with the children. I always thought that Pete was a very sharp guy. Maybe one of the “sharpest tools in the shed.” He was from Boston and seemed to always be on top of everything. He then says to me in response to “money was kind of tight with the children”, “well they don’t eat much”. I couldn’t believe my ears. I was dumbfounded. How could he actually believe that the only cost for children was the food they ate and that wasn’t too much. I really didn’t know what to say to him. My knee jerk reaction was that he was a dimwit. The fact that his opinion was so out of touch. I told Pete that I wish food was the only added cost for us. I mean do I really need to explain all of the extra costs associated with children and raising them. I only hoped that someday Pete would have children of his own and begin to understand the realities of raising children. I also hoped that he would appreciate how uninformed his comment was. Maybe he was that clueless. We did end up going to San Antonio with them. We found someone to take care of Bobby and Marti. We had to deliver, in addition to their FOOD, a porta crib, thermometer, bassinet, blankets, clothes, diaper bag, baby monitor, diapers, powder, skin cream, toys, pacifiers, bottles, formula, car seats… did I leave anything out, after all kids don’t eat much. I love you Pete but I sure hope you had children.
