Dear baby boomers...

Now that record numbers of you are heading off into your retirement, it seems like a good time to note that record numbers of you also failed to prepare for the future. This means that each of us will have to shoulder a much larger share of supporting your aging heinies.

Pregnancy, childbirth, babies, toddlers, teenagers -- they introduce uncontrollable variables into life. Having children is messy and risky, opening the door to kinds of suffering to which non-parents will be forever immune. The choice of sterility is infinitely neater and safer. Like a clean layer of asphalt instead of a garden, it makes no demands; but it doesn't give much back, either.

See, your generation wanted to have fun and stay young, and those pesky, messy, resource-consuming children didn't fit your lifestyle. We were responsibility, and you just had to have your freedom. So you contracepted like crazy, and aborted the few of us that sprouted in spite of you, to save space in your lives for your Beemers and your cocaine and your ski trips to Colorado.

You tried to pass those values on to my generation as well, but fortunately, some of us didn't listen to your "things are better than people" gospel. So now our children who are just entering the job market already have to support their grandparents before they can even think of supporting families of their own.

You're welcome.