It's just that we don't really like children

Sorry to all grandmother-submitters, and new-mother-submitters, mothers who find it oh-so-interesting that your eleven-year-old does not like Brussels sprouts, and elementary school teachers, but none of you ever seem to submit anything that a child would like to read. You are, it seems, too in love.

So it's not that we don't like ANY children. Some of us (not me, not me) even HAVE one or two of them. But the general concept of "child" makes us far from warm and fuzzy. We despise the sentimental. And you should be glad, because otherwise our magazines would have to come with their own vomitoriums and we don't have that kind of money.

For example, when our slightly coddly copy editor emailed in that a Halloween illustration might be too scary, I heard the response "If the kids find this too scary, they can MAN UP."

For example, when our slightly coddly copy editor complained that the last line of a story about soccer should not mention winning because that would give the kids the WRONG MORALS, we jokingly changed it to say "And if Katie could score that winning goal, she might finally be worth something."

Of course, best of all is the time when I called the kids on the forums "dorks" because they go at each other for mistakes in grammar and spelling, and an AE said "if by 'dorks' you mean that they are mean little snots, then yes." Then she explained that once a kid offended her with his post, and in revenge she did not edit his glaring grammatical errors. She just "let them go at it."

I'm kind of in love with everyone here.

So don't you for a moment think that a children's magazine office has teddy bears and flowered stationary (ew). Luckily the best authors (see my apology above, I refuse to repeat it) are like-minded. Usually.