my son was born seven days before my twenty-first birthday. Daughter came along a little over a year later.

Choosing to have children at such a relatively young age was a gamble as I was pretty much a knuckle-head at the time. Not stupid or reckless, just a bit lacking in what some might call "common sense".

Darn. I was going to argue that I'm much wiser now, and probably would be a better parent, but it just won't wash. At 35, my knuckle-head quotient is still embarrassingly high.