It took a while for the fact to sink in. All thoughts of poverty alleviation and millions of dollars were relegated to the cobwebs of my brain. Instead thoughts of immense love for MY CHILD filled my mind. Will I be able to hold the child? Will I be able to tell stories at (yawn) bedtime to the little one? Will I be able to (yaaawwwwn).... sleepy. Mate, how can people wake up at 3 AM? Yawn....
But my wife had other plans. In a recent study jointly conducted by Gartner-New York Times, 73.856% of all 1st time mothers that were surveyed opted for a home re-confirmation test after they found they were pregnant. Not to be left in the 26.244% of the population, she wanted to re-confirm her test results. But, being someone with a strong dislike towards hoarding and being muggles incapable of summoning things with the 'Accio' charm... we did not have another of 'those' tests in our house.
Well, as many of you, logical thinkers would understand and empathize, the right way to do things would have been to listen to the cozy bed's calling for that moment... and to go to the supermarket later, after sunrise. Thanks sir, yes sir, that's you in the white shirt and you, madam, right before the monitor. Thanks for your nod and implicit support for my argument. But alas, the missus has other ideas. She wanted me to go to the 24hrs supermarket a few miles away and get the home test kit THEN. And yes, it was 3:10 AM on a cold winter night/morning.
As most of you husbands would know, the wife is always right, isn’t she? So what do we mere mortals, the husbands married into slavery, do? Yes, do what the missus commands us to do. Once my brain processed this fact and delivered the necessary instructions to my arms and legs, the autopilot kicked in. I got dressed, put my shoes on, wrapped myself in 3 layers of protective clothing and drove to the supermarket.
For those of you bungee jumping fans and skydiving addicts, I suggest the following thrill. Walk into a 24 hr supermarket/pharmacy at 3:20 AM in the morning and buy 2 home pregnancy kits. The funny look that the female cashier throws at you is priceless- You can realize that she is dying to ask you who those tests are for (your wife or girlfriend), whether it was planned or unplanned, if unplanned - what your next plan of action would be, if planned - whether you want it to be a girl or a boy, what you want to name them, how do deal with kids when they bawl in public - and other such unasked-for-advice. However, living in an 'asking-strangers-personal-questions-is-wrong' kind of society, she would just smile sweetly at you and say "14 dollars, seventy-six cents. Credit or Debit?”
Now, let me clarify this. What I suggested you adventure-freaks is that the look on the face of middle-aged female cashier would be priceless. However, do not, I repeat, do not go beyond saying "Credit. Thanks and Good night" to the middle-aged cashier. Try saying "Credit. These are for my wife" at your own peril. Because, if you do, the old-and-bored cashier would misconstrue that as an invitation to get into the aforesaid conversation which would not end before her shift is over.
Before I digress into writing about the pros and cons of talking to middle-aged female cashiers after midnight, let us get back to the story I started narrating. By this time, I bet, even the most impassive of you males would be really thinking about the questions that the old and bored female cashier did not ask. I was anxious to know what the test kit in the plastic bag next to me would say. I was anxious to see the confirmation smile on my wife's face again.
With my thoughts swirling around like that, I parked near my apartment, half jogged half ran to my apartment, went in and handed over the kit to my wife. Seconds ticked like minutes, minutes ticked like hours.... and body inactivity was leading to brain inactivity was leading to sleep. After what seemed like hours, my wife came up to me, smiled and said, "Let’s go to the temple...” The last words I heard before I fainted were "...later this evening".
P.S: Just in case the mathematical geniuses among you are wondering... 73.856 and 26.154 do not add up to 100. This is due to a rounding off error, deliberately done to check if you were paying attention to the 'details' or not.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
How it all started....
Well, you weren't really expecting to know how it all started, were you? :-) If you were, sorry mate, wrong place. Go to Blockbuster :-)
But if you are looking for how things happened once we knew we were on the path to parenthood, then this is the place. Lie back, get a cuppa, relax and read my story.
We first realized that something was not right at 30012 feet above sea level. In case you are not bright enough to understand, that is right up in the air, in a plane with 12 feet of cargo space under us. Before you start questioning me the validity of this data measurement, oh boy, this is my story and I am gonna tell it my way. Take it or leave it. That feels better!
Where was I? Oh yeah, so we were in the plane flying over the Atlantic. And my wife had this queasy feeling in her tummy. Air-sick, I thought. Junk food, she thought. But that feeling kept following her even after we landed and even after 2 days at home. As any i-am-trying-to-get-pregnant female of child-bearing age would know, feeling nauseous for 2 full days would prompt 'Where do we get raw mangoes now (as in Gult movies)? Should we take American citizenship for the baby?' kind of thoughts.
So what does the missus do? She tries the 'rabbit test' and waits for 4 days to see if the rabbit died or not. Well, not really of course. She tried a Home pregnancy test - at 3 AM in the morning. I didn't know that of course, until she woke me up whispering "It worked, It worked". Little did she know that at that very moment I was dreaming about my complex experiments with semi-heio-molecular reaction that would remove all poverty in the world. Naturally, she mistook my victorious smile to be that of a proud to-be-father... while I was smiling my way to glory thinking about the millions I would make by removing poverty and the Nobel prize, of course.
As any person who is awakened at 3 AM to see his wife beaming would surely understand, I honestly had no clue why my wife was beaming. Was it something I said in my dream induced slumber? Was it something that I didn't say? Or was it something that I shouldn't have said but did manage to say? Heck man, I needed my 8 hours of beauty sleep. While I was pulling the comforter around and was trying to go back to sleep, my wife started saying "IT worked, IT worked" again. Only then did I realize that it wasn't my blond beautiful lab assistant that said those words... but my black-haired super-beautiful wife that said those words. As I was busy pondering the meaning of these words at 3 AM of the morning of November 2nd, 2006... my wife pushed a white tubular thing into my hands.
The more intelligent of you would have already guessed what it was in my hands. But, remember it was 3AM in the morning? And I was cross that I lost my millions of dollars? Given these circumstances, I am sure even my most vehement critics would nod understandingly when I say that I continued staring blankly at my wife.
My wife, being high on happiness, decided to pardon my stupidity and told me "You are going to be a DAD!!!"
But if you are looking for how things happened once we knew we were on the path to parenthood, then this is the place. Lie back, get a cuppa, relax and read my story.
We first realized that something was not right at 30012 feet above sea level. In case you are not bright enough to understand, that is right up in the air, in a plane with 12 feet of cargo space under us. Before you start questioning me the validity of this data measurement, oh boy, this is my story and I am gonna tell it my way. Take it or leave it. That feels better!
Where was I? Oh yeah, so we were in the plane flying over the Atlantic. And my wife had this queasy feeling in her tummy. Air-sick, I thought. Junk food, she thought. But that feeling kept following her even after we landed and even after 2 days at home. As any i-am-trying-to-get-pregnant female of child-bearing age would know, feeling nauseous for 2 full days would prompt 'Where do we get raw mangoes now (as in Gult movies)? Should we take American citizenship for the baby?' kind of thoughts.
So what does the missus do? She tries the 'rabbit test' and waits for 4 days to see if the rabbit died or not. Well, not really of course. She tried a Home pregnancy test - at 3 AM in the morning. I didn't know that of course, until she woke me up whispering "It worked, It worked". Little did she know that at that very moment I was dreaming about my complex experiments with semi-heio-molecular reaction that would remove all poverty in the world. Naturally, she mistook my victorious smile to be that of a proud to-be-father... while I was smiling my way to glory thinking about the millions I would make by removing poverty and the Nobel prize, of course.
As any person who is awakened at 3 AM to see his wife beaming would surely understand, I honestly had no clue why my wife was beaming. Was it something I said in my dream induced slumber? Was it something that I didn't say? Or was it something that I shouldn't have said but did manage to say? Heck man, I needed my 8 hours of beauty sleep. While I was pulling the comforter around and was trying to go back to sleep, my wife started saying "IT worked, IT worked" again. Only then did I realize that it wasn't my blond beautiful lab assistant that said those words... but my black-haired super-beautiful wife that said those words. As I was busy pondering the meaning of these words at 3 AM of the morning of November 2nd, 2006... my wife pushed a white tubular thing into my hands.
The more intelligent of you would have already guessed what it was in my hands. But, remember it was 3AM in the morning? And I was cross that I lost my millions of dollars? Given these circumstances, I am sure even my most vehement critics would nod understandingly when I say that I continued staring blankly at my wife.
My wife, being high on happiness, decided to pardon my stupidity and told me "You are going to be a DAD!!!"
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)