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I wrote this in January of 1989 when I entertained thoughts of writing
free-lance humor columns for a local newspaper.  I never submitted it
though, so I thought I'd dust it off and share it with you netters.

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O Baby Baby

My wife, Anne, and I are expecting our second child in about three weeks.
This is a positive development for our family in the sense that it means
we have survived just over eight months of pregnancy without so much as once
having succeeded in making our first child, Laurie Beth, an orphan.

This remarkable accomplishment is a tribute to all the help we get from kind,
helpful people like my brother-in-law Jim.  Jim is really a swell,
understanding guy in this matter -- largely due to the fact that his wife,
Linda, just happens to be expecting a baby in only two weeks.  So he and I
often chat cheerfully about the Exciting Event about to take place in our
families:

	ME:	"I'm going to kill your sister, Jim."
	JIM:	"Lay one hand on her and I'll reach down your throat and rip
		your heart out."
	ME:	"You mean like you tried to do to Linda?"

And so on.  This kind of intimate, brotherly friendship -- coupled with the
fact that Jim is approximately as big and strong as the NY Giants defensive
unit -- has helped me to earnestly look forward to Delivery Day as if it were
the Second Coming, only I sometimes still pray that the Second Coming would
happen first.

Now don't get the wrong idea here -- my wife does have the harder job.  She
has to endure drastic hormonal changes that make her want to scream at me and
cry all the time.  But the most difficult part of pregnancy for any woman is
the fact that she ultimately ends up looking like a middle-European refugee
girl, breathing heavily and smuggling watermelons back to prison camp under
the military tent she's wearing.  The very thought of looking like this often
brings on many endless weeks of nausea, but the Doctor says that if I drink
lots of Maalox, the feeling should go away.

Ha ha!  Just a little humor there about what the Doctor says!  He never gives
any instruction to the father, except, of course, to tell him how much of the
bill the insurance carrier didn't pay.  And despite the fact that my wife has
never, ever listened to a Doctor's advice before, she relays the Doctor's
orders to me and does exactly what she's told:

	DOCTOR (to my wife):	"Get plenty of sleep;  remember that you're
				eating for two; don't lift heavy objects; don't
				climb too many stairs; don't overheat yourself;
				go for a walk every day to get some exercise
				and relieve stress."

(...hours later...)

	ME:	"Hi honey!  I'm home!  What did the Doctor say today?"

	ANNE:	"The Doctor said I should sleep late in the morning, so you'll
		have to get your own breakfast and lunch; he said I can eat as
		much as I want; also, I can't do the laundry any more because
		it's too heavy and besides I can't climb stairs; and I can't
		make dinner any more because he doesn't want me standing over
		the stove and getting overheated.  So I'm going shopping at
		the mall while you make dinner and do the laundry."

	ME:	"But the stairs and all that walking at the mall..."

	ANNE:	"That's DIFFERENT.  He said I needed to go for a walk to
		relieve stress."

	ME (on the phone):  "I'm going to kill the Doctor, Jim."

You have to treat your wife very delicately during those last few weeks.
Sure, her body is in a fragile condition, but her emotions are also, let's
say, just a teensy bit more sensitive.  For a woman like Julie Andrews this
means she might frown gracefully at a joke that otherwise would have made
her laugh, but for any other woman not fitting this description it means
Marital Armageddon.

To give an example of this, my wife and I were having a pleasant chat the
other evening when I made the mistake of burping while still within earshot
of her.  I couldn't help it; it's just one of those things that happens when
inexperienced cooks like myself attack perfectly normal spaghetti sauce with
chemical warfare levels of crushed red pepper and garlic.  This somehow caused
our pleasant chat to turn into a Marital Discussion, which escalated into a
Marital Debate and finally into an Extended Marital Debate which finally ended
at 3:17 a.m., when we reached a settlement on the central point of the Debate,
which had somehow mutated into who was going to fall asleep first so that she
wouldn't have to lay there and listen to me snore.  Really.  I am not making
this up.  It was 3:17 a.m.  Ask Jim.

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(C) 1990 by Tom Pfannkoch (tap@ruhets.rutgers.edu)
May be reproduced and distributed freely in unmodified form on a
noncommercial basis provided that this notice remains intact.
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