A child's giggle: Priceless

This is a column of mixed comments by others for your enlightenment, amusement and distraction.

The price of children: This is just too good not to pass on to all. It's something absolutely positive for a change. I have repeatedly seen the breakdown of the cost of raising a child, but this is the first time I have seen the rewards listed this way.

The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 and came up with $160,140 for a middle-income family. Talk about sticker shock! That doesn't even touch college tuition.

But $160,140 isn't so bad if you break it down. It translates to $8,896.66 a year, $741.38 a month or $171.08 a week. That's a mere $24.24 a day -- just over a dollar an hour.

Still, you might think the best financial advice is don't have children if you want to be "rich." Actually, it is just the opposite. What do you get for your $160,140?

• Naming rights. First, middle and last.
• Glimpses of God every day.
• Giggles under the covers every night.
• More love than your heart can hold.
• Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs.
• Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds and warm cookies.
• A hand to hold, usually covered with jelly or chocolate.
• A partner for blowing bubbles, flying kites.
• Someone to laugh yourself silly with, no matter what the boss said or how your stocks performed that day.

For $160,140 you never have to grow up. You get to:

• Finger paint.
• Carve pumpkins.
• Play hide-and-seek.
• Catch lightning bugs.
• Never stop believing in Santa Claus.

You have an excuse to keep:

• Reading the adventures of Piglet and Pooh.
• Watching Saturday morning cartoons.
• Going to Disney movies.
• Wishing on stars.

You get to frame rainbows, hearts and flowers under refrigerator magnets and collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas, handprints set in clay for Mother's Day and cards with backward letters for Father's Day.

For $160,140, there is no greater bang for your buck. You get to be a hero just for:

• Retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof.
• Taking the training wheels off a bike.
• Removing a splinter.
• Filling a wading pool.
• Coaxing a wad of gum out of bangs, and coaching a baseball team that never wins but always gets treated to ice cream regardless.

You get a front-row seat to history to witness the:

• First step.
• First word.
• First bra.
• First date.
• First time behind the wheel.

You get to be immortal. You get another branch added to your family tree, and, if you're lucky, a long list of limbs in your obituary called grandchildren and great-grandchildren. You get an education in psychology, nursing, criminal justice, communications and human sexuality that no college can match.

In the eyes of a child, you rank right up there under God. You have all the power to heal a boo-boo, scare away the monsters under the bed, patch a broken heart, police a slumber party, ground them forever and love them without limits. So one day they will, like you, love without counting the cost. That is quite a deal for the price.

Love and enjoy your children and grandchildren.

-- Web message

n

Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something.

-- Aldous Huxley

n

I have no regrets. I wouldn't have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say.

-- Ingrid Bergman

He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.

-- Joseph Heller

n

This legend, the truth of which is not necessarily related to its value, concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen: Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer.

One student replied: "Tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building."

This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately.

He appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics.

To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer which showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics.

For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought.

The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use.

On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows:

"Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5 x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer.

"Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper.

"But if you want to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T = 2 pi sq root (1/g).

"Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up.

"If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building.

"But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say to him, 'If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this building.'"

The student was Niels Bohr, the only Dane to win the Nobel Prize for physics.

-- Web Page: Truth or Fiction?

Gary Rust is chairman of Rust Communications.