It's Just One Blessed Event After Another

Though my recollection of biblical facts is, at best, spotty; I seem to remember a famous Old Testament passage that I believe was a command issued by Yahweh to either Adam or Abraham. I'm not sure which and I'm paraphrasing here, but I believe it was something like, "thou shalt be fruitful and multiply and fill up the world with plenty of people." Though there's no longer any practical justification for getting carried away with alot of begetting and begatting, on January 5, my wife and I added one more soul to the planet's population, with what we hope will be the last of the fruit-of-my-loins--our second daughter Zoe. We've been blessed with two healthy and beautiful daughters, which is fortunate because at my advanced age, by the time any son of mine would be ready to play ball with his old man, I'd probably be in a walker--that's if I'm still ambulatory at all.

Growing up watching movies and television, you pretty much expect childbirth to be a harrowing experience complete with mothers screaming uncharacteristic profanity and a handful of medical personnel scrambling around in a nightmarish ballet of unchoreographed chaos. I'm afraid I have no such story to report. First of all, our house isn't much further than a kidney stones throw from the hospital, so there wasn't any hysterical high-speed race to the emergency room and my wife is nothing if not a trooper. She doesn't howl like a banshee, or turn into Linda Blair--she didn't even want any drugs. Give the woman half an aspirin and half an hour, she fires out the babies like a Pez dispenser. It's like Clint Eastwood having a baby. She squints her eyes, gets that look of grim determination and before you know it "whoomp, there it is." It happened so fast that the doctor wasn't paying attention and I had to make the leaping catch--kept both feet in bounds too.

I think the main reason my wife likes to get in there, take care of business and get the hell out, stems from an acute case of hospitaphobia. I too suffer from it. Aside from the obvious reasons, "them hospitals is creepy." If you're trying to get well, for God's sake go home--the food alone will kill you. This is common knowledge and the oldest comic clichZ? in the book. Yet, here we are on the doorstep of the 21st century, a time when even a five-year-old knows all about good nutrition, but oddly enough hospitals remain determined to serve up food that's almost as hard to identify as it is to eat. What's the deal with that? These are people recovering from health problems, and they wheel Ôem in a plate load of fatty, warmed-over gruel, slathered with gravy saltier than a 50 year old saloon whore, with the obligatory side of green Jello. "Honey at least try to eat some Jello, you've got to eat something, I'm pretty sure this is Jello." I swear it'd be easier to get them to bring you a shot of Jack Daniels and a pack of filterless Camels than a damn sprig of broccoli. You could take a P.O.W. who hadn't eaten anything but crickets for six months and he'd mistake a dish of hospital- cuisine for more inhumane torture. I dunno, I suppose hospitals make more money by seeing that their patients remain vegetables than by serving them any.

The other thing about hospitals that has always amazed me, is their complete lack of security. As long as you're walking along with a purposeful stride there's no place in a hospital that you can't go. I've tested this out. I had some time to kill when I was there, so I poked around a little--hell, I could've completely dismantled a catscan machine--who's to stop you? And it's not like hospitals don't make plenty of enemies. Somebody runs a stop sign and nails you broadside, you wind up in traction for two weeks and unless you're fully insured, all of a sudden you're hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Any one of these embittered former patients could stroll right in with a gift basket full of hand grenades and no one would so much as raise an eyebrow. Dress up like an orderly and you could paint a smiley face on helpless patient's butts to your heart's content. You could walk right into a triple bypass surgery and start throwing confetti around like Rip Taylor. It just stands to reason that a hospital could afford to hire a guy on each floor that would stop you and say "excuse me sir, where are you going with that rifle?" It happened at KSL just weeks ago, some woman waltzed right in with a gun. I never found out why--maybe she just wanted them to put M.A.S.H. back on after the news.

Now that I've got my little conspiracy theory out of the way, I'll have to say that our brief stay wasn't all that bad. I got a camcorder for Christmas, and since this is the last child we intend to beget, I was in that delivery room like Scorcese filming the Last Waltz. Arty camera angles, candid interviews, editing on the fly so as not to catch any of the grisly details--I captured the whole mind-boggling bizarre beauty of the thing in a way that's suitable for the whole family--PG stuff all the way.

Personally, I'm not comfortable with that kind of X-rated newbornography some proud fathers insist on filming. I've had a few friends invite me over to watch their embarrassing child birth videos--I'm tell'n ya, these people aren't right. "Isn't it a miracle," they ask? "No, it's a miracle you're wife didn't break your damn camera, turn it off you're grossing me out over here." "Look here comes the head, y'want some popcorn--" Please.

I'm a firm believer that the father should be in the delivery room and not out in the waiting room reading a magazine; but I don't think God intended for you to invite all your friends and neighbors to come on over and witness close up footage of the whole messy blessed event.

Anyway, here I am the head of a fine family of four. Ironically enough, years ago I stumbled across a strange looking old lamp in a thrift store, and just for a lark I rubbed it, and wouldn't you know it out popped a Genie. Being a novice Genie he only granted me one wish, and after pondering it for a time, I told him I wanted to sleep with three girls at once. I should've been more specific.