I had a baby. And when I said ‘had’ I don’t mean that I actually had one but I do, have one that is and I wasn't implying that she had one at some point and she now longer has it, like she lost it or something, or that she was holding someone else’s baby and she gave it back, I mean that she quite literally birthed a human, but you don’t say it that way, well, no one else does.
We weren’t really ready for the baby, kind of like you’re never really ready for a root canal, not that I’m comparing my baby, our baby, the baby she birthed, to having oral surgery, but I mean that as much as you prepare for it, you’re never fully prepared and I felt myself digging my nails into the figurative armrest as the event unfolded.
I was there for the delivery and I should have been more prepared for that as well as ‘delivery’ is when someone shows up at my door in a clean uniform and hands me a package, I sign or I don’t, I mostly don’t these days, and I take possession of said package. This was more like deliverance and I could have filmed the sequel right there in the delivery room, no casting, no directing, no Kraft Services food table which might have helped, just set the camera up in the corner of the room and grab a bag of popcorn, which is why I mentioned Kraft Services.
And when babies arrive, they don’t look like they do in the movies, ewww, and the birth is a two-partner, that would have been good information to have, as she had to push and then push again when the pushing on screen is typically over. But it was mine, or ours, and when they handed me the baby, before the swaddling, I counted, of course I counted, I think most fathers do. I expected them to count as well, "ten fingers, ten toes, everything is going to be fine sir," but they didn't, and ai think we were paying them to. You want to count ten and then to ten again, and less is not what you want and more isn’t any better, you want to start counting, wherever you start, and when you’re done, you should, ideally, obviously, be at twenty, but I wasn’t.
Somehow, someway, somewhere, I wound up with extra. And normally, in a non-baby situation, more is good. Extra change at the cash register is better but no one pays with cash anymore, and more money in your paycheck is always good as is an extra slice of pie, but more weight and more pain in my lower back and more bills, well, I feel this is going a bit left when right isn’t preferred either.
And I am typically good with counting, not as good as The Count and I'm competent for amounts less than twenty-five, and I have a degrees in accounting and analytics, but also in literature as well. So maybe Shakespeare brain was in control during the first go through and I still had dueling banjos playing from the scene that had just transpired. So I wanted to give it another go, but I had to go.
I had to use the restroom, and not because I needed a a rest, I’m not sure if anyone goes in ‘there’ for ‘that’ reason. But I thought I should give it another whirl just to ease my mind. One, two, three…twenty…one…was the count once again and I couldn’t determine if the top or the bottom was the offending appendage or digit, and not that my, our child, her child or anything about it was offensive, well after the wipe down anyway,
When I came out of the bathroom, no I didn’t do that either, my wife was holding the baby and she had that look in her eyes that even if the baby looked like a golem, they have less digits, not more, it would be our precious, her precious. But of course she only held the baby post swaddle where there wasn’t much baby to even see, and no one else was saying twenty-one, and I don’t remember anyone counting that exaggerated ‘count’ reserved for cartoons and the Three Stooges.
And there are a couple of reasons for unswaddling a recently swaddled baby…diaper change, diaper check, looking for markings resembling 666, but doing a recount isn’t on that list.
I have an analytics job and, of course, my grad school studies were in that area, and if I miscount, I never miscount, I thought I could lose my job which would mean I would go back to my alma-mater and request a refund, my wife would push for that.
I thought about having to invest in custom gloves or maybe wider shoes, or just one shoe or one glove, and I still wasn’t even sure which. And I would have, we would have the only kid who could count to twenty-one without repeating.
