Slow down pal, where's the fire?

Our friend Neera is heavily involved in electoral politics, and she has a theory that having a kid makes most people more conservative, at least in a political sense. I am not sure I am willing to totally sign on to that theory -- in some ways having a kid has made us more radical -- but it does have a certain intuitive sense to it.

Last night I went out to get a pizza and a movie. As with most things up here, that involved a little bit of driving, and mostly on back country roads. As I was whizzing along, a thought popped into my head. "Boy, it is about 25 degrees below zero right now, and if I went off the road into a ditch, or even just into a snowbank, I wouldn't last long out here waiting for someone to come along." So I slowed down a bit and put on my seatbelt (I know, I know, which I should have been wearing anyway).

Now, maybe I would have had that same thought even if I wasn't a father -- after all 25 below is pretty darn cold, and a pizza and a movie do seem like fairly paltry things to freeze to death for (even though the pizza from Positive Pie is really, really, really good).

(Side note: for all of you non-extreme northern readers -- to give you a sense of how cold it is, Maryellen pointed out that 25 below is to 25 above, as 25 above is to 75 above. So imagine 25 above, and then think 50 degrees colder. But I digress.)

The fact of the matter is that at least for a few years here, there is now a little one counting on me, and counting on us. So maybe Neera is right. Maybe it is time for us to stop goofing around and to get jobs over at the Free Republic.