Y'all don't need to wish me a happy Father's Day.

Not that anyone who needs to read this will, but I am not a father

Not that anyone who needs to hear this will read this, but y’all don’t need to wish me a happy Father’s Day.

I am not a father. That was a decision I made a long time ago, when Ronald Reagan was president.

Reagan, a former (and some said, still) actor, was—at least—acting insane about the environment and the possibility of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. He was threatening nuclear war, which would eventually lead to a nuclear arms limitation treaty, but we’ll never know how much of this was an act and how much of it was just Reagan being insane.

He came to office on a sentiment that was much, much bigger than the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, which itself was mostly about ranchers wanting to overgraze federal land (I was working as a contractor for the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada at the time). But that sentiment was anti-regulation and anti-government.

I thought and still think all this was insane and feared the world I would be bringing a child into. Between that and my own father’s abuse, which I absolutely did not and still do not want to replicate, there was only one decision to be made.

I had left the BLM when a fear arose that I had gotten a woman pregnant (she was late for, but did not miss her period). And that took the sizzle out of our relationship, ending it. It was a mistake I did not wish to repeat.

So I had a vasectomy, the cost of which was borne by my employer’s health plan. I was 24 years old at the time but this is a decision I have never regretted and my doctor gave me very little trouble about it.

It’s worth noting that even years later, I continue to occasionally hear about women who have trouble getting tubal ligations because too many doctors believe their ‘biological clock’ will lead them to regret the decision. My choice was respected. Women’s choices are too often not.

And I have never regretted that choice. I remain child-free. I am not a father.