not that close

One of the problems that I have is that because I don’t care what people think I also do not have many friends.  A bad part of being a male teacher is that if you have friends on the staff they are either few and far between or you become one of the girls.  This has handicapped me this year because I am so used to ‘being one of the girls’ that in my present purgatory I am unused to being in the pigpen instead of the henhouse.  If that makes sense to you, praise the Lord. 

There was a point last year when I came to the horrible conclusion that I was ‘one of the girls’ and I was an accepted part of the tribe when Valerie discovered she was pregnant and she showed me the stick she peed on.  I cannot cross-reference all my articles about how traumatizing this was: who pees on something and shows other people?  Right now I work with people who pee everywhere except in the toilet so in retrospect it wasn’t so bad.  At the time it was a misfortune wrapped in a trauma. 

I thought this was the worst that could be thrown at me but I was wrong.  My friends are having a rash of pregnancies and this means sonograms.  When Valerie was pregnant I was man enough to admit, “you can show me but I have no idea what I am looking at.”  There was another key difference; Valerie and her husband didn’t want to know the sex of the child.  My current situation is different and uncomfortable. 

I assure you that it isn’t because I don’t care (because I do not, but this isn’t the reason) but I really cannot tell what I am looking at when I see a sonogram.  I assume you are having an alien or a piece of used-up chewing gum.  I really cannot see a person in the picture, sorry.  I’ll look at it to be polite but it might as well be a calculus equation, a poem in Arabic, or just about anything else of which I am ignorant. 

What I’m finding vulgar, making fun of, is when people show you the picture and ask you to find the baby’s private parts.  Stop for a moment and think for a second about what you’re asking someone to do.  I’m not a fan of “I Spy” or “Where’s Waldo” books and I’m not about to that with you and your prospective child’s reproductive plumbing.  This also goes for later with the naked bathtub pictures and when they escape the house naked or fall into the toilet.  Puppies are cute, kittens are cute (especially when they’re LOLing) and koalas have a special place in my heart.  Naked children are something I can skin, even when they’re still germinating in your uterus.  Stop imposing the yearbook from your uterus on me.  We’re really not that close. 

Then today it was so cold and my snazzy wool trousers were so inadequate that I felt like my mother was going to need to get a sonogram so we could find my privates again.  It was that cold.  I called Marna and told her that I had lost my penis in the snow squall.  The senior salesman that is mentoring me even mentioned that it was that cold.   I was about ready to call my mother and insist on a sonogram so we could find it again.  I was horrified because I was on the brink of becoming ‘one of the guys’ by engaging in such a conversation and decided the best course of action would be to have a salad with grilled chicken on top with a diet soda and perhaps use some polysyllabic words to re-alienate them.  

And just imagine, if you will, the implications of this.  I had a creepy relative who used to tell me, “I used to change your diapers.”  He did not, that is a fiction because he doesn’t know how to change a diaper and I was born toilet-trained.  He has moved on to a better place, and if you saw his house in Uniondale you’d realize that just about anywhere is a ‘better place’ after that dump.  If sonograms existed when I was a tadpole he would have said, “we used to sit around your sonogram and try to find your peter.”  I would be so emotionally damaged that I would have to change my name to George Costanza. 

 I have a friend Peter and there is a story when someone tried to say something about my peter and he said, “I’m his Peter and pretty big.  In fact, I don’t think you know anyone with a bigger Peter than his.”  That was awkward.  So is being accosted by a sonogram terrorist.  We’re excited with you about the miracle of life.  I’ll look at the sonogram with all the blissful ignorance of going to the opera or looking at the work for Salvador Dali but just as in those occasions, don’t ask me to gaze upon nakedness or know what is going on.  

Comments

[jWinters]

Hilarious as usual. I'm even finding myself a little envious of your wool trousers.

[Kathy]

I love how you say "toilet trained" instead of "potty trained." I think this is the most revealing bit of the entire post.