Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Poor John


When I was pregnant with both girls, John and I decided against finding out the sex of the baby beforehand. Since the number of pleasant surprises significantly decreases with age, and either outcome would have made us happy, we decided to relish in our nine month mystery. Although I have an uncanny sense for determining what other women are carrying, I had no gut feeling about my own children. People would ask if I had "the dream." The only dream that I recall of that ilk was during my pregnancy with Alice. In my dream, I had just delivered the baby. The doctor presented me with a swaddled child and announced, "Congratulations. It's a …" However, I never knew what the doctor said because in my dream I was exhausted from labor and fell asleep. John, however, did not draw the blank that I did in reality or dreamland. Every time John was asked, he replied, "a girl." If someone pressed him for his rationale, he would explain it was God's way of paying him back for the sins of his youth. I logically pointed out that if that was indeed true the world's population would be composed entirely of women with a few isolated males here and there. Still, John persisted in his way of thinking.


This came back to me while I was at the park with the girls last week. Angela was on the swing and Alice was off playing with a newly made friend. Angela loves the swing. Her whole body was shaking with delight as she went back and forth giggling the entire time. Her happiness attracted two young boys who I pegged to be in sixth or seventh grade. As I pushed, they started asking me about my daughter- her age and things of that nature. They then started doing silly things to make her laugh. They loved her deep whole body laughs and she loved making silly faces and batting her eyes at them. The thing that really amazed me about the whole interaction was when a few of the boys' friends called to them from the basketball court and asked them to come and play. These young boys actually declined the invitation in order to spend more time with Angela. Holy crap! The kid is not even one and older boys are besotted. John must have really been a bad boy.

1 comment:

  1. I love your stories! Thank you for sharing yet another amazing tale! Pamela

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