On the expectations of parents, defensiveness, and why the sonogram lady was probably a terrible person

S: Did you eat a peach today? We need to get rid of them.

M: No. Are you going to impeach me. (Sigh)

Later

M: I can't find a place to put the apple juice?

S: Why? Note: Earlier in the day she made fresh strawberry jam, canned and refrigerated it).

M: It looks like you just jammed things in here. (Sigh)

One of the biggest fears of any parent is that their particular child is going to be some kind of massive failure when it comes to life. Why? Because the child not only has to live up to but surpass all the unfulfilled dreams of their parents. At least the good parents. A lot people will tell you to let the kid be an individual and all that crap, but as we know, in general people are kind of insipid. Ergo; why not transfer all of your latent dreams and desires on that little ball of potential? I can't find any compelling reason not to.

That's probably why the second sonogram was a tough experience for us. The lady who was helping was turned out to be somebody who worked in the gulags in Stalinist Russia. Though she'd learned to mask her accent and appear to be like forty years younger. The problem was that at the second sonogram the Rusky needed the baby to flip into particular positions in order to verify that the tadpole had a heart and lungs or something. I don't know, I'm not a doctor, I just watch them on television. So handsome.

Anyhow, during the sonogram it takes a while for the image of the baby to appear. At first it just appears to be some sort of alien inhabiting a tiny part of space. Eventually it materializes, and you hear the heartbeat and you start to have feelings welling up within you that you usually only save for Michigan Football games and a really great episode of Friends. The latter is a lie. That show is/was vapid. Well, just after these feelings have begun to subside the babushka starts complaining about our child. Apparently our little squid decided that it would be a good time to practice his/her breaking skills and thus, he/she (let's just go with he for a while) was standing on his head and refusing to move.

Rather than being impressed by the amount of time that our child was performing a pretty solid headstand the middle aged harridan asked Stephanie to shake her hips in order to move the child. I don't know much about babies, but I thought that shaking them was pretty low on the things you're supposed to do list. I thought about making some sort of quip about British nannies but reconsidered because people who have been in Siberia don't really have senses of humor. Thus, she put S up to shaking her hips in a manner that I can only describe as troubling. Thank god our child refused to move, standing steadfastly on his head through this whole ordeal. That a way, kid, I valiantly thought in our little one's direction.

Eventually the nice sonogram lady left, throwing up her hands in disgust at our child's inability to properly align himself. And truthfully, I felt a little defensive. And I had the slightest glimmer of why parents would come into to talk to me when I worked with kids and claim that their child was a good boy and that they couldn't understand what the problem was? Well, the problem is, the kid is a pain in the ass. However, when it's your own unborn child working on a solid yoga pose you feel a bit defensive. You feel like saying, "Look lady, that kid is not disappointing, it is beautiful just the way it is." While at the same time you're a little disappointed that your sprout is a little slow on the uptake and that the shakes weren't induced in order to increase the difficulty level of the pose, but rather, that some sort of movement was required.

The now exasperated sonogram lady came back inside and our little blob of squid moved in the requisite positions. And we walked out into the light of the day and wondered if our child was always going to be so stupid....kidding. Can you believe that lady?

I was reminded this evening of this kick ass song by Semisonic called "Closing Time," except that it is the worst song in the world for people of a certain age because it was played at least twice an hour for a period of about three years during the years before iPods when all you had was the radio, and they just kept playing f-ing closing time. So, to those of you of a certain age, sit back and listen to this piece of shi- song for the one millionth time in your life.

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