One-Sixteenth

You find dead animals and actually consider saving them to dissect
later.

Yep. Or consider saving the skeletons.

Your children never, ever leave the "why?" stage.

No kidding.

You look at every room in your home to try and imagine how to squeeze
in another bookshelf.

Guilty.

You turn your china cabinet into book shelves.

China cabinet?

You ask for, and get, a copier instead of a diamond tennis bracelet
for your wedding anniversary.

I hope so. I'd much rather have the copier.

Your kids think reading history is best accomplished while lying on
the floor with their head resting on the side of their patient dog.

We don't have a dog, so I had the kids test this out with our cats. I don't know how comfortable the kids were, but the cats were definitely not enthused. I think my kids think learning history is best accomplished via "Age of Empires" or "Civilization."

Your husband can walk in at the end of a long day and tell how the
science experiment went just by looking at the house.

A bad science experiment wouldn't look much different from a normal day.

You never have to drive your child's forgotten lunch to school.

This is a nice perk, admittedly.

Your child will never suffer the embarrassment of group showers after
PE.

Err ... there were no group showers when I had PE. Where did you people go to school?

You never have to face the dilemma of whether to take your child's
side or the teacher's side in a dispute at school.

No, but you have to be both the parent and the teacher in any student dispute.

If your child gets drugs at school, it's probably Tylenol.

That's right, only the teacher gets the bourbon.

Your kids learn new vocabulary from their extensive collection of
"Calvin & Hobbes" books.

Kids? I learn new vocabulary from Calvin and Hobbes.

Your formal dining room now has a computer, copy machine, and many
book shelves and there are educational posters and maps all over the
walls.

We don't have a formal dining room, but that does describe our decor.

You have meal worms growing in a container....on purpose.

Eww! No! Gross!

If you get caught talking to yourself, you can claim you're having a
PTA meeting.

Yeah. Okay. Sure.

You take off for a teacher in-service day because the principal needs
clean underwear.

No, actually I can do laundry and teach the kids.

You can't make it through a movie without pointing out the historical
inaccuracies.

True, but we did that before we had kids.

You step on math manipulatives on your pre-dawn stumble to the
bathroom.

Sigh. True.

The teacher gets to kiss the principal in the faculty lounge and no
one gossips.

Sure, no one but the kids, who will tell the neighbors, your parents, and anyone else it would be sure to embarrass.

If your child claims that the dog ate his homework, you can ask the
dog.

Again, the cat is not so much into eating paper. Nor are they particularly helpful in subversive plots.

Someday your children will consider you to be a miracle-working
expert and will turn to you for advice.

This is where the author veers off into fantasy land ...

Your kids refer to the neighbor kids as "government school inmates."

Actually, they usually refer to them as "kids."

You can't make it through the grocery produce department without
asking your preschooler the name and color of every vegetable.

This was true, with the first kid. The fourth kid is lucky to know what a vegetable is.

You can't put your produce in your cart without asking your older
student to estimate its weight and verify its accuracy.

No, I can't put produce in my cart without at least two children begging to weigh it, while I make a run away from the scales, so that I don't end up in the supermarket for three hours.