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The day I had my son I looked down at him and said, “Who the hell are you? You look nothing like me.”
Sometimes it isn’t love at first sight. “What to Expect When You Weren’t Expecting to Get Knocked Up That One Time at a Frat Party” and the rest of the all-knowing baby books like to leave that part out. Sometimes you have to learn to love the little monsters for something other than the tax deductions they provide you. Not all babies are cute when they’re born no matter how many new parents try to convince you otherwise. This is yet another lie the half-baked “theys” lead you to believe. Some babies are born looking like old men with wrinkled faces, age spots, and a receding hairline.
When I was born my father George took my hospital picture over to his friend Tim’s house while my mom was still recuperating in the hospital. Tim took one look at my picture and said, “Oh sweet Jesus, George. You better hope she’s smart.” It was no different with my son, Gavin. He was funny looking. I was his mother, so I could say that. He had a huge head, no hair, and his ears stuck out so far I often wondered if they worked like the “Whisper 2000”, and he was able to pick up conversations from people a block away. During my four day hospital stay, all I kept doing whenever I looked at his huge head was speak in a Scottish accent and quote Mike Meyers from "So I Married an Ax Murderer".
"He cries himself to sleep at night on his huge pilluh."
"That thing’s like Spootnik. It's got its own weather system."
"It's like an orange on a toothpick."
I think he heard me talking about him to the nurses and formulated a plan to get back at me. I firmly believe at night in the nursery he and all the other newborns struck up a conversation and decided it was time for a revolution. Viva la newborns!
I knew I should have kept him in my room the whole time I was there. But come on people, I needed some rest. Those were the last days I would ever get to sleep again, and I took full advantage of it. I should have kept a better eye on which kid they put his bassinet next to at night though. I knew that little brat Zeno would be a bad influence on my kid. He had “anarchy” written all over his face. And who named their kid Zeno anyway? That was just asking for an ass-kicking on the playground.
Gavin was quiet, never fussed, and he slept all the time in the hospital. I laughed in the face of my friends who came to visit and told me he wouldn’t be like this once we left. In reality, Gavin did the laughing, waving his tiny little fist of fury in the air for his brothers in the Newborn Nation. I swore I heard, “Infant Pride! Baby Power!” every time he made noises in his sleep.
The moment I got him in the car to go home, the jig was up. He screamed his head off like a wild banshee and didn’t stop for four days. I have no idea what a wild banshee was or if they even existed, but if they did, I was sure they were loud as f**k. The only good thing about this whole ordeal was the fact that my kid refused to leave my body via my lady bits. No roast beefy beaver for this woman. All the baby books written by women who had the most perfect birth experience in the world said you should talk to your child in the womb. That was about the only piece of advice I took from those things. Every day I told him if he ruined my vagina I would video tape his birth and show all his future girlfriends what happened to your who-ha when you had sex, ensuring that he will never, ever get laid. Fuck playing Mozart and reading Shakespeare. I went with the scared straight method.
All my threats to him in the womb paid off. He sat there with his arms crossed for twelve hours and refused to move down the shoot. This was perfectly fine by me. C-section, here I come. I would go through having my gut sliced open again in a minute if I could skip the whole baby part and just get the four days at an all-inclusive location that served you breakfast, lunch, and dinner in bed, gave you a twenty-four hour morphine drip, and sent you packing with a thirty-day supply of Vicodin.
Before I get too excited thinking about legal narcotics without the ear-bleeding scream of a newborn, maybe I should go back to the night that got me into this mess. My horoscope that day should have been a warning of things to come: “You'll score a bunch of great computer gadgets and jewelry from your neighbors, who happen to die when you go into their house, shoot them, and take all their things.”
I don’t know what it should have been a warning of, but come on! Does that not have “bad omen” written all over it? The one and only time in my life I decide to have a one-night stand so I can finally give up the V-card, I get pregnant. I'm telling you, the universe hates me.
I was twenty years old and in my second year of college, well on my way to a degree in Business Administration. Aside from the constant ribbing from my best friend Liz, on the state of my virginity, life was good. Well, college student good. I didn't have VD, none of my friends had been roofied, and at the end of the semester, I had avoided needing to sell my organs to science to pay for food and pot.
Let me just say I do not condone illegal drug use in any way. Unless it's an all natural herb that doesn't make me feel guilty for eating an entire box of Peanut Butter Captain Crunch while watching hours of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross. “Oh green water, oh that’s pretty, and a happy little tree right over there.” It also chills Liz out during finals so she isn't screaming and climbing the walls like a rabid howler monkey. Remember that whole “Hugs not Drugs” shit they tried to cram down our throats in high school? We fooled them. You don’t have to choose. You can totally have both and not die. But seriously, kids, don’t do drugs.