Tag Archives: humor

Lady parts and miracles

My son wants to know how the new baby is going to get out of Mommy’s belly. I don’t know what to tell him. It’s not that it is a sensitive question, with an answer I’m not sure how to explain to a three-year-old. It’s that I really don’t know how it happens. The physics of process don’t add up. I know the route the baby is supposed to take, but how he shimmies through the narrows is a complete mystery to me.

The best answer I can give my son is that getting babies out of bellies is a scheme worked up between mommies and doctors, that nobody else could ever truly understand. If he really wants to know how it happens, he could ask Mommy, or a doctor, but it’s probably best to let it go. Like the rest of us non-medical men, he should just refer to the process as a miracle and not think about it too much from now on. Lady parts and miracles are great boons to mankind, but a man can seriously dislocate his brain trying to figure out how they work.

Four wisemen consult over what to do about that baby in her belly. They sure don't look like the Marx brothers.

True, I do know a thing or two about how the baby got in there. To accomplish that, Daddy didn’t need to understand miracles; a hearty “can do” attitude saw him through those duties. Forturnately, my son hasn’t asked about that end of the situation yet. I think he considers it to be water under the bridge at this point. What’s done is done; what matters now is figuring out how we’re going to get that baby out.

Duh! We didn't have to go the pregnancy route at all. We could have just waited for the candy stripers and picked a child from the baby cart.

Now that I think about it, having had a hand in beginning this process, it seems a shame that I can’t have a larger part in seeing it through. Yet, I have to understand that I am just one member of this team. We each have our role to play. My primary role was to help get things off to a good start, and after an appropriate amount of rehersal, I finally pitched in to get things rolling.

At the end of the process I am completely out of my depth. My role has diminished to that of a supporting castmember. When I really think it through, I guess I’m okay with that. Not being in a leadership role gives me more freedom to avert my eyes from any especially miraculous scenes, or to pass out altogether.

You have one job, and one job only

With the delivery date for the new baby sneaking up, I was trying to remember all the things necessary to prepare for the hospital stay. There are certain things that the father is expected to do during and after delivery, and I was trying to bring one or two of them to mind so that I could present myself to the hospital staff as a useful addition to the family.

When my wife discovered that I was struggling with these recollections, she reminded me why I couldn’t recall any of the tasks on the modern father’s list of delivery room activities. “Remember what I told you last time,” she said. “I don’t care what they think you should be doing; you have one job and one job only. Do you remember what that is?”

The wavy lines that momentarily affected my vision indicated that I was flashing back to summer, 2008. My pregnant wife had just finished watching her 100th Lifetime movie about children switched at birth. We had gone to birthing classes for a number of weeks, but that training paled in comparison to what can be learned from Lifetime’s You Have the Wrong Baby Weekend Movie Marathon.

This was the moment of the defenestration of all of my weeks of training on how to be a supportive birthing partner.  “You can do whatever the hell you want until the baby’s born,” my wife explained. “Once the baby is born, you have one job. I don’t care what they tell you to do, you do not take your eyes off my baby. I will not have some stranger knocking on my door in five years, telling me I got their baby by mistake. I am not spending my time raising somebody else’s kid for them.”

She let this sink in for a minute, while she looked like she was moving on to something else. Then she came back at me all of a sudden, pop-quiz style. “What’s your job?”

“Watch the baby,” I replied confidently, like I was proving that husbands can pay attention when they want to.

“Watch? Did you hear me use a word as weak as watch? No, you did not. I said you are to keep your eyes glued to that baby from the moment he comes out of me until we get home. You are chained to that baby, do you understand?”

“What if you need me?” That seemed like it was the type of concern a woman would appreciate coming from her man.

“I won’t need you.” It sounds harsher than I’m sure she meant it. “I’m a grown woman. Nobody’s gonna stick me in the wrong family until it’s too late to do anything about it. I don’t care if I’m half dead, you are going wherever that baby goes.”

And that is just what I did. From the moment our son was born, I followed him around like a Secret Service agent, except that Secret Service agents probably don’t let their charges suck on their little fingers for three hours straight. If they do, I respect them all the more because that can really wear on a little finger.

At least somebody got to close his eyes for a minute during our hospital stay.

That little boy did not go anywhere in that hospital without me. When a nurse offered to take him to the nursery so Mommy and Daddy could get some rest, my wife just about called 911 on her. We didn’t want rest; we wanted our biological child, not whichever baby happened to match the number on our claim ticket at checkout.

So don’t come knocking at our door telling us we went home from the hospital with your son.  The boy we brought home was under strict guard the whole time. And just in case I did doze off for minute while I was watching him, we’re raising him in a barn, so you wouldn’t want him back anyway.

 

Before you try to claim your “switched at birth” boy back, you should know that this is the lady we employed to teach him table manners. (Credit: Steve Hillebrand/USFWS)

 

Conversations with my wife: Prison

SETTING: We were watching a reality show about how people cope with their first week in prison. One of the subjects commented that he had been wearing the same clothes for a week.

WIFE: Oh my God! I can’t go to prison if they make you wear the same clothes for a week.

ME: Were you planning on going to prison?

WIFE: Only if you forget how to treat me right.

ME: Look at the bright side: you could learn how to make shivs and shanks.

WIFE: (scoffing) I already know how to make them. You file down your toothbrush. Anyway, if you were in prison, could you wear the same clothes for a week?

Prison Tip #1: When not being used to stab rivals, shivs and shanks are handy for darning socks. (Image via Wikipedia.)

ME: If I’m in prison, I think changing my clothes is the least of my concerns.

WIFE: You think that means they won’t let you take two showers a day?

ME: Probably not. And I wouldn’t want to take two showers a day in prison.

WIFE: Oh no! I would need my two showers a day.

ME: Maybe dirt is part of the punishment.

WIFE: I am not a good candidate for prison.

ME: Don’t let ‘em take you alive.

WIFE: I’m gonna have to do a really, really good job of hiding your body.

Incarceration: A fashionable alternative to the burdens of personal hygiene.

I’m waiting for you to become a reasonable human

My well-behaved, three-year-old punched me in the chest the other day. We were sitting in our recliner together when I gave him that look a father gives his son that tells the boy he should punch the old man as hard as he can. I’m not sure what that look looks like. I’m not in any position to see it, and then I have no idea when I’m giving it, until I get punched.

For the record, I must point out that the boy never hits his mother. Apparently, she doesn’t know how to give the “hit me” look. He’s pretty good around other kids too. He seems to save up all of his best testosterone surges for me.

Huge, anthropomorphic pigs are very scary, yet he'd never dream of lashing out at one.

I figure I must have given the boy some non-verbal cue that I wanted a good, hard punch. What other reason would he have to haul off and slug me in the midst of what should have been a tender moment of father-son togetherness? To punch me without any provocation would be almost irrational, and this would be completely out of character for a three-year-old boy.

Not realizing that I had commanded him to punch me with my hypnotic eyes, I demanded to know why he would do such a thing. My tone was not at all repentant, as the tone of the one responsible for all the trouble should be. In response to my unfair question, the boy donned his victim costume, puffed out his pouty lips, and declared, “You hurt my feelings.”

I end up hurting my son’s feelings whenever that urge to lash out strikes him. This is mostly because I am petulant and unreasonable. Little boys have a need to punch, kick, throw elbows, and head butt every once in a while. There are secret cues throughout the universe that control this need and compel little boys to act upon it without warning. The little boys have no say in the matter. A more reasonable dad would probably take this into consideration.

Some of these cues come from the strange, electromagnetic fields surrounding other little boys in close proximity, but most of them come from the universe seeing an opportunity to get a clear shot at one of Daddy’s soft spots. In the ultimate addition of insult to injury, the universe makes Daddy the transmitter of its cue to strike.

It can be a fleeting moment of eye contact that tells the boy, “Kick me in the kidney.” Sometimes it is just the hint of a squint that communicates my desire to have his forehead slammed into my nose. And nothing says, “Ram your boney little elbow into my gut,” like Daddy letting his eyes fall closed in sweet repose.

The first time I gave him that "hit me" look. You can see him wondering why I would want him to do such a thing.

By now, I should understand that my boy is not responsible for the cosmic forces that I am channeling at him. It is very unreasonable of me to scold him for things beyond his control. This causes his feelings to be hurt, which in turn causes him to stand, head bowed, with his back to me while he waits patiently for me to grow into a reasonable human with which one might expect fair dealing.

He is an extraordinarily forgiving soul though. It may take a while, but he always comes around to giving me another opportunity to show my growth as a human being with his fist, foot, or elbow. I only hope that I can evolve into such an even-keeled creature as he is some day.