I haven’t been writing, and conversely I’m sure no one had been reading.
But I’m trying and I thought I should write today, tomorrow is a milestone, or so they say. No it’s not marking the day I got out of the loony bin, or swam/swum (I hate that) the English Channel it will be my birthday, the anniversary of the day I was born. I know… big deal, it’s not like we all don’t have them, we are all here so we all have birthdays, celebrated or not we have them.
But tomorrow it is my day, along with roughly 16,427104.72279 people [6 billion/365.25 (the .25 is accounting for those born on Feb 29th )]
This of course also assumes that the same amount of people are born on each day and why wouldn’t they be? And don’t bust my chops it’s a ballpark number, and the park seems to be very large, as is the number of candles on my cake. But as dad is always fond of saying, ”Beats the alternative”, and he’s right, it does.
I don’t have much to say about what I’ve accomplished with my time on the big blue marble, so I thought I’d tell the story of my arrival, which isn’t as normal as one would think.
As the story goes, or as told by my mom, it was sometime after 2:00 (I’d have to check the birth certificate to be exact), on a Sunday afternoon during a football game of which the doctor seemed to have an interest in. (Why can’t you end a sentence with a preposition?) My mom who had 2 kids previously both girls (yes I’m the youngest with two older sisters, and no they never dressed me up in dresses and put make up on me. I still have no idea why that is always the first question people ask when I tell them that, do other people really do this? I mean outside of Hollywood?). I mention my older sisters for one reason only, to show that mom had a bit of experience passing humans into this world, turns out this experience means nothing to a doctor; after all HE went to medical school, and what would my mom know of such things as birthing?
Turns out more then a doctor who likes his football games. (Are you picking up on something here?)
You see before they put moms on the table in which babies are passed, they used to keep the mom’s on a gurney. Now remember this was a few years back, long before the world went baby crazy. It was the late 60’s, the very late 60’s and no my mom wasn’t a hippy, I was not born at Woodstock. Remember I was the youngest of 3, not the oldest. My parents are not of that era, they were 30 by the time I came along, so basically they have no idea what ”Don’t eat the brown acid” even refers to. Instead I’ve seen pictures of my dad looking like a poor mans James Dean with his hair slicked back in some greasy nasty goop and my mom had poodle skirts, yup 50’s kids; but that’s another story.
Anyway, I was on a gurney inside my mom, and she was, as I have best interpreted this, Yelling.
She was explaining nicely to the nurses that I was coming, and the nurses, instructed by the doctor, assured my mom I wasn’t, and well if the doctor says I’m not coming he must be right; after all the game was on, did I mention the football game? As I understand it, it was a playoff game, and living in NJ which means everyone in the area follows NY teams and thanks to some information compiled by my R&D team it looks like it was the Jets, but who could know for sure. Whatever the situation, I’m thinking the doctor had a few bucks on the game, because that seemed to be more important then my arrival.
I know what you thinking, I thought it too, what could be more important?
I’d like to find the guy and ask him, maybe I should put my R&D team on that, okay it’s more of an R team then a D team, but there is comedy development going on.
Proof?
You want proof?
The newest product to come out of R&D was Munt. Yes Munt, neat word, rude word, but that word was created in a most elaborate team effort.
The conversation went something like this:
Me: “ He’s such a whiney bitch, you can’t trust him, he will stab anyone in the back to suit his needs, and acts like a little girl while doing it. He’s like a male C***!”
R&D Team: “He’s a Munt!”
Laughter ensues
Good resources are hard to find. You can’t easily replace comedy gold like this.
NOTE TO SELF: Give R&D Team a raise
So that’s my R&D team.
Back to my story.
We left off with mom on a gurney a pissy nurse, an absentee doctor (who may or may not have had a few bucks riding on a game he couldn’t seem to pull himself away from), and me who had just about had enough of being all pruned up inside my mom’s make shift Holiday Inn complete with room service.
Mom told the nurse I was coming out, the nurse chose not to believe her, then after what I can only assume was an exchange of pleasantries not fit for a truck driver, the nurse finally checked on the situation only to find out that my mom might have had some insight of which she spoke.
Yup I was coming through. (Now remember mom is still on the gurney and not in the catching bed)
And with all her wisdom and medical knowledge the nurse passed onto my mother this great bit of advice “Wait till the doctor gets here”
Now I can improvise a bit here and use some four-letter words that I know my mother has on occasion liked to utter, but I won’t. I’ll leave that up to you. What I will tell you is that I was born right there on that gurney without a doctor and by a mother who had not had any access to drugs. Remember this was 1968, I’m pretty sure no one ever heard the phrase Lamaze Class, so I’m (and again I’m filling in blanks here) thinking instead of Deep Breaths, Mom was cursing out the medical staff in several languages (some still not known today).
And so that was my entrance into this world.
And a wee bit of insight into me, if not at least the ages of my parents and I. Maybe next week I’ll tell you about my death, of which I narrowly escaped.
END
