A long time ago, I pretty much swore I’d never get married. Too much work, too much pain, too much everything. Women just weren’t worth the trouble. I’d go out and get laid when the psychological back-pressure got too great, but otherwise stayed away from anything that even smacked of a “relationship.”
Then I met this young lady on the Internet…
Have I mentioned that I am disgustingly happy? Have I mentioned that my wife is the most beautiful woman in the world? Never say never.
Have children.
But taxi78cab, I was figuring if the stork accidentally made a visit here, I’d leave them with you! You wouldn’t take them? 
Oh no! And I gave you my address too, didn’t I? I… um… I moved! Yeah, that’s it. You’ll never find me!!
Serious question: What’s wrong with a pacifier? I don’t think I’ve ever seen an infant who didn’t have or use a bukie, or fooble, or whatever you breeder-types call it.
Anything that keeps kids quiet, short of cough syrup, is quite alright by me.
And now, as a special treat from the meat council, we have tripe!
Tripe! My favorite! ::shudder::
I more or less made this vow and kept to it, save for some child support communication that was fruitless and a bizzare attempt at reconciliation/blame after her mother’s death. It’s not so much a swear as just that I have no interest in exposing myself to that tarbaby of a relationship, having extracted myself from it with much effort at so tender an age.
Stranger
I swore I’d never get involved with another small start-up company after my last company’s cataclysmic failure, but it looks like that one’s about to change.
In high school, I swore that I’d never get drunk, and I’d never smoke cigarettes. I’ve more than made up for that.
Getting married to a woman after a short courtship.
(Tripe? Yippee!)
When I was around 18, I for the first time saw someone wearing Birkenstocks. I thought they were the ugliest things I’d ever seen, and swore up and down that I would never wear them.
Then when I was around 35, a friend gave me (FREE) a pair of rose-colored nubuck Arizonas and I was hooked. I just visited our local shop and added two pairs for $67 (clearance sale!!) to my burgeoning collection.
Getting older = getting more comfortable = not caring so much about looks.
In my world, when you say you hate something, it makes its way to you. For example, I hate Toronto (doesn’t everyone?) and now it’s looking more and more like my job will take me there by next year. Oh well, at least there are some Dopers there.
So now, for the record, I hate smart sexy men who adore me, I hate success, and I hate nice houses with expensive cars in the driveway. Yup, I hate those things.
As for things I swore I’d never do, I told myself I’d never shop at Future Shop again because they’re evil. But then they had all these DVDs on sale… dammit. I’m weak!
I’ll never move back to my hometown after college…
I’ll never do hard drugs…
I’ll never get married…
I’ll never have kids…
I’ll never get divorced…
I’m pretty bad at sticking to my “I’ll nevers” now that I think about it, I really can’t think of any that I *have * kept. Wow, I’m weak.
And on that note, I’m new here! Are people friendly? I see you have to pay to stay, is it worth it? Do most people stay? Is it okay that I’m so nosy?
Really? Absolutely nothing. ducks and runs from the anti-waffle crowd
There’s an asthetic ick to a 5 year old with a pacifier, of course. But infants actually have a great need to suck. It’s an instinctual thing for not only comfort, but proper oral muscle development, and eventually chewing properly and even talking. If you’re a breastfeeder into attachment parenting (which essentially means holding your kid all the time, for you non-breeders), then you have a nipple to offer them whenever they need to suck - which is more often than they need to eat. They’ll suck even when no milk is coming out. But when you have to go back to work after 6 weeks, like I did with my first, or when you’re little un’s in intensive care, like my second is now, you can’t offer him/her the boob all the time. Offering a milk or formula fed kid a bottle to satisfy the suck-but-not-hungry need leads to an obese kid. An empty bottle leads to air in the tummy and spectacular projectile spit-up. Hence the pacifier need - it’s essentially a bottle nipple with no air hole in it, meeting the same need as a breast nipple with no milk.
And, as my grandmother is fond of saying, they’ll suck on a pacifier or a thumb. And a thumb is impossible to throw out when they get bigger!
The “rule” against a pacifier was made when I was young and stupid (not to mention childless). I had this silly notion that babies with pacifiers were being ignored by their parents or had emotional problems. There were actually a lot of doctors and baby books that supported these ideas back in the early '90s. Not so much today, although they still acknowledge it as a “controversial issue.”
Well, there’s the whole nipple confusion thing (for breastfeeders), I heard once that it could cause problems with the development of the mouth ie an overbite but I think that might not be as big a problem as people make it out to be. A thumb is much worse IMO. The worst thing though is if the kid drops it, you’re not supposed to pop it in your mouth to clean it then give it back to them. Has to do with the bacteria difference between adult and baby mouths. (I was warned about that, along with the problems of giving a bottle of milk to go to sleep… oops)
I never said never about the pacifier, it was a godsend when the 'raptor was in the hospital and afterwards. When you gave him medicine and popped it in his mouth right after, it meant he drank the medicine and didn’t spit any back up. He decided he didn’t want one ages ago though.
As to the OP, I said I would never do anything chemical (drugs) and I did E, twice. Haven’t touched anything since though, and I had easy access to much more stuff than just E and pot.
In reply to the OP: Swore I’d never watch 2001: A Space Odyssey under the influence of any psychoactives. (The idea being, why try to gild the lily?) (God that sounds pretentious) (sorry)
Glad I did it eventually, but also glad I waited as long as I did.
Now I’m sounding like a pledge-taker. :eek:
Actually I find it interesting how many of these posts list the use of psychoactive substances, usually illicit, in reference to the OP. There’s gotta be a lesson about human nature there, somewhere.
Bedtime. Sleeepy. :o
Never ever fall for a really good friend of the opposite sex.
Too late for that.
Throw me in there with the illegal drugs. I still break that promise…a lot.
But one thing I swore 5 years ago and I still haven’t done is that, no matter how poor I am, I will not eat at McDonalds (unless it’s one of those tasty biscuits in the morning).
On the positive side I have managed to keep my promise never to shop or buy anything from Gap (although a reject clothing store sold Gap products with the labels almost totally removed) and I’ve still not bought combat trousers since my Mum bought me a pair many years ago 
On the negative side I promised myself I would never watch The Thing all the way through (there, now I’ve mentioned it I won’t sleep right at all) but then my g/f suggested it and I did so. I could barely stand her touching me later in bed thinking of the tentacles and stuff (damn, I’m not going to sleep well tonight!)
Get involved with a married man.
Sigh.
Er, so you just cut a small hole in the tip and it no longer works. Bye-bye pacifier. But, as you mention, it provides a necessary substitute to the (in nature) readily available nipple. It seems a lot more traumatizing to me to deprive an infant of an instintual comfort than to deal with easily correctable socialization issues. But IANAP, so maybe I have no idea what I’m talking about, here.
“Why don’t we just wait here for a while… see what happens.”
I love the ending to that film. It still gives me the chills.
Stranger
At some point in elementary school I decided that I would never start smoking because of my allergies. A few years ago I completely ignored my own good advice and now I smoke fairly regularly.