Before I get to last night's nightmare, this word from the fine people at Crest…
This nightmare brought to you by Crest. Have you tried Crest Whitening Gel? How about new Crest Widening Gel, brush your teeth daily for a rounder, fuller figure - and now, Ken's nightmare!
So, Vicky and I are out visiting some couple and I overhear "women's talk". "Did you hear? Oh, he almost died. Sure. Well, he was too old to have kids to begin with."
I interrupt. "Too old? Excuse me? What do you mean, too old?"
Vicky's friend says, "Well, you can't just have kids willy-nilly, you know. You have a lot to take into consideration. Now, he had angina and high blood pressure and cholesterol and arthritis and a touch of the gout and his ulcers and he needed a root canal…" She kept going and going, on and on with this list…
Until I stopped her. "So, what happened?"
Vicky said, "Oh, he died just as soon as the baby was born."
Her friend chimed in, "Yeah, dissolved on the spot. Nothing left but his wallet and two eyes."
"Well, wait," I said. "I'm getting up there in age myself. I mean, I don't want anything bad to happen to me."
Her friend asked, "Well, how old are you dear? Cause he was 35."
Thirty-five?!
My eyes opened but I didn't move. I'm sure I had that same expression Lou Costello had when the wolfman was standing next to him.
In less than a month, I'm going to be 39.
It took me a while to calm down - after all, I didn't have any children, yet - and then, I thought about it a bit.
Why would I have a nightmare about having kids?
Is it because the last time I got a woman pregnant it led to the end of my marriage? (Yes, I'm talking about Rosa here.) I don't think that's it. Vicky's a lunatic but she ain't Rosa… thank god...
Could it be because so many people have told me you should even consider having kids after a certain age? That could have something to do with it. I don't relish in the thought of seeing my child graduate from the vantage point of my walker.
No, there was something more.
I look around me (mentally - I was in bed, after all) and I realize that only one of my contemporaries had the classic, "Father Knows Best" kind of marriage, with lots of kids and shit… that was Rob. He was pretty much the only one in my group to grow up. Then, there's Rich. He had a wonderful daughter whose name I will never learn to spell but he soon got a divorce… he was like the "Eddie's Father" of my crowd. After that, we have the Tim's (both Clostio and Murphy), and Sean, and all the rest (Professor, MaryAnne, etc.) who never even had kids.
I look around me and can't help but think that I come from the first generation who never really learned to grow up. You look at the Boomers and they had kids and kids and kids. You look at the X'ers… the slacker generation… and realize that, if things keep up like this, we do not need to worry about overpopulation…
My reverie was broken, though, as Vicky started to snore. Ah hell, I thought, if she can handle it, so can I. So, I put my head back down and went to sleep.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment