So my husband and I were doing our taxes the other day when we had an experience that probably doesn’t happen to most people filling out the long form: we laughed. And not just a chuckle or a snort, either—I’m talking about a full-on run-to-the-sink-and-spit-out-your-coffee-before-you-spray-it-everywhere type laugh. We laughed.
And before you ask: no, we weren’t giggling over the farm investment earnings form (we’re not that big of nerds). Or the foreign employment form. Or even the gambling wins and losses form. On the contrary, the form that caused us such amusement was the worksheet for taking the child tax credit, specifically, question number two: “Does this person provide at least half of their own support?”
It was really my fault that we laughed: I read the question out loud to my husband. After we had both recovered sufficiently enough to speak he had asked me, “Is there a box underneath it marked ‘Hell no’?”
“No,” I replied, “there’s just a plain ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”
“Hmm,” he said, “Well, if that’s the only option, then I guess we’d better go ahead and check it.” And then we went back to filling out the forms.
Suffice it to say, that was the last time that evening we laughed.
But the absurdity of the question—does this person provide half of their own support—stayed with me, as did the absurdity of only receiving a $1000 tax credit per child. What, exactly, is a thousand bucks supposed to cover? Shoelaces? (We go through those by the gross: when keeping your shoelaces tied is still one of the great mysteries of your life, it doesn’t take long to walk a pair of shoelaces to death.)
I know, I know: after thirteen years I should be better versed in how expensive kids are—but, in my defense, I have to say that when my kids were younger things really were different. In fact, until my kids were in school I never understood what people were talking about when they complained about how expensive children were—what, I thought, was supposed to be so expensive about having children? They eat hardly anything, wear hand-me-downs, and don’t even need their own seat on an airplane. A dog costs more than kids do. Then my kids got older, and everything changed.
While they still eat practically nothing (well, one of them, at least: Clyde, AKA “The Merciless Eating Machine,” is a subject for another column), that doesn’t mean that they don’t still cost a fortune to feed. That’s what happens when you live with someone who takes the entire bag of tortillas into her room, eats one, and then leaves the rest sitting out to get dry and hard. Or pours a bowl of cereal (making sure to give the floor gods their tithe) and then leaves the milk on the counter for the next six hours. Or opens a can of refried beans, heats up two tablespoons, and then tosses the rest of the can into the trash.
And while they still wear hand-me-downs (when I can get them), there aren’t enough children in the entire world to hand down the jackets and gloves that would be needed to replace the ones they’ve lost this winter. (I have a feeling that not all of the color that appears in my yard this spring will be from the crocuses and daffodils.)
The days of flying in our laps are over, too. Which means the price of every trip must be multiplied by four. For what I pay for airfare these days, I could fly first class solo—and don’t think I haven’t done the math to check that one out.
Still, I suppose I should be grateful that they are even worth a thousand bucks once a year. Yeah, right: now that’s a laugh.