I have been mistaken for a trickster from time to time, but only because most people don’t know what a charlatan mother was.
This true account occurred when the tradeoffs of medical technology and medical methods were somewhat different. A time when your obstetrician recognized the expectant mother by sight rather than chart number. They didn’t have the benefits of ultrasound imaging, but could refer to “HIM” or “HER” with a very high degree of accuracy during examination, particularly in the later stages. The encounters of a checkup didn’t take place on a conveyer belt, but with an exchange of personal information and seasoned experienced that sent a mother-to-be home with comfortable assurance in spite of uncomfortable mobility.
My second son was scheduled to arrive 15 months after his New Years eve brother, almost to the day. We knew that he wouldn’t be an early arrival after the Saturday visit to the doctor that ended with “I’ll see you next week!”. My wife had learned the fine art punster and practical jokes from our four years of dating and five and a half years of marriage, almost by osmosis, if not by injection.
That itself was cause for caution on Monday morning after sharing breakfast and being sent off to work only to arrive twenty minutes later to get a message to call home.
Our neighbor answered the phone and said she was taking my wife to the hospital that was three blocks away. Not sure if I was being had on this April first, I headed home to find the empty house and that the neighbors car was indeed gone. With little option, but much skepticism, I headed to the hospital. After inquiring at the ER desk, it wasn’t a joke and my wife had been admitted minutes before. This was not good news
, for it was at a time when fathers must have been suspect of eating their young because they were quarantined not only from the mother, but from society in general. There was a “special” fathers waiting room that was not even on the same floor which had it’s own coffee machine and not one, but two cigarette vending machines.
The day of being the delivery assistant in the OR and camcorder operator was soon to come, but for now I knew there would be long hours of concern about the mysticism taking place.
I knew how the three hour wait for my first son seemed to stretch into days, so I began to bolster my thoughts and prepare for the wondering mind that I knew was to come, when a nurse broke my daze with a poke to the shoulder and instruction to take the elevator up two floors and a turn left to see my baby.
The confusion mounted as this all was within just over two hours of sitting at the breakfast table with a glowing and smiling wife. I did manage to arrive on the right floor and into the dim hall that wasn’t open for business yet as only the light from the large window shined out. Sure enough! There were rows of baby faces sticking out of blankets in little carts and one pushed to the front corner with a naked little girl. I would have to quickly read the little tags to find my son.
In the milliseconds it took for this thought process and before my eyes could flash away to the first tag……. it hit me! My eyes were back to the tag on the front of this closest cart in one exiting and returning movement.
“Girl-
Last Name”
There was the most perfect little pink baby in the world!
A couple hours later when I was allowed to see my wife, I found out that I was only the second most surprised person on that April Fools day in 1968.
That’s MY April fools story. ……………. And mother nature pulled the best one on me I'll EVER see.
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PANTIES
the best thing next to cuchie
"If God didn't want you to play with it, He would have put it between your shoulder blades,..... not at the end of your arm"
Except for speculation, we ONLY have NOW and EACHOTHER!
real world of cyber people ~ Pixies ~ real people of the cyber world
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