(I meet my future husband when I am in college. He is eleven years older than me, but we hit it off, and I decide to move in with him the summer after my junior year. I have a summer job but can’t afford to live in the dorms. My parents aren’t happy; I am their oldest, they are Catholics, and many of my cousins got married very young due to someone getting pregnant. My mom is quite adamant that neither I nor my sister gets pregnant before marriage/college degrees are finished. [Husband] got a vasectomy years before during a previous marriage, but I don’t feel that my mom needs to know that at this stage. There are many discussions about my moving in with him, but this is the one that makes me facepalm.)
Me: “Look. I have a job, and I can’t afford to live on my own for the summer. I’m going to be over at [Husband]’s apartment all the time anyway. It doesn’t make any sense to pay for two places.”
Mom: “I just don’t want to be a grandmother before you are married. You know that [Cousin #1] and [Cousin #2] both ended up dropping out of college once they got pregnant and it led to a lot of financial issues.”
Me: *growing weary of these discussions* “Mom, [Husband] can’t have kids, okay? There is physically no way I can get pregnant.”
Mom: “But what are you going to do if you want to have kids someday?”
Me: *facepalm* “Mixed messages much?”
(We’re still together after 28 years. Solved the kid thing with adoption. Everyone lived happily ever after.)
(We’re the family from The Cats Demand You Spill The Beans. This time, my husband is in the kitchen grinding pork butt and mixing it with spices to make sausages. I overhear the following exchange between him and one of our cats.)
Cat: *whiny meow*
Husband: “This is pork butt. You don’t want this.”
Cat: *whiny meow*
Husband: “This is raw pork. Does the word ‘trichinosis’ mean anything to you?”
Cat: *whiny meow*
Husband: “Even your wildest ancestors could not have taken down a pig. Why would you even want raw pork? It doesn’t taste like ham. This is ham before it’s ham. It doesn’t even smell like ham.”
Cat: *whiny meow*
Husband: “We already discussed this, remember? You told me you wanted it, and I told you no, because it would make you very sick? Now stop it.”
(The cat whined once more and apparently accepted defeat because she wandered off to sit in the hallway, staring wistfully into the kitchen. Life is hard when you’re a cat whose humans love you.)
(A few years ago, my grandfather started having trouble walking. One day, he comes back from the store and, upon opening the door, immediately starts this conversation.)
Grandfather: “I have a cocaine!”
Me: “What?”
(I turned around and saw my grandfather gesturing to the new cane he bought, with a Coca-Cola design on it. He never let me live it down until the day he died.)
(When I become pregnant with our third child, my husband and I decide to spring for the at-home blood test so we can find out the sex of the baby as soon as possible. Both the blood test and subsequent ultrasound show that we are having a boy. The rest of the pregnancy is spent preparing for our second boy: picking a name, buying cute boy clothes, etc. The day of the birth arrives — I have to have a cesarean — and we are excited and nervous to meet our son. I lay on the operating table, my heart rate accelerating with the anticipation of meeting my new baby. The wail of a newborn fills the air, and I find myself breathless for just a moment. “He’s here,” I think. But then I hear this:)
Doctor: “It’s a healthy baby girl!”
(The best part? She was born on April Fools Day. All I can say is, well played, baby girl. Well played.)
(Back in the seventies, my mom babysat a lot. One of her favorite stories was when she was babysitting a boy around eight years old. He had apparently gotten into his dad’s stash of — ahem — adult literature. When my mom found him with a certain bunny-themed racy magazine she took it away, much to the boy’s dismay. His best argument?)
Boy: “Hey! Give that back! My grandmother gave me that!”
