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"Carol Burnet described labor pains as to take your bottom
lip and pull it over your head."
- Bill Cosby "Himself"
"Why are you banging your head against the wall? Because
it feels so good when I stop."
- Unknown
"My wife stood up, in the stirrups, grabbed my bottom
lip, and said 'I WANT MORPHINE!!!'"
- Bill Cosby "Himself"
November 18th, 2002
My father had always wanted
to hide a tape recorder in a birthing delivery room.
Not a video tape recorder but just the standard
audio cassette tape recorder. They make them small enough nowadays
so you can hide it under your scrubs or plant it in the room
about an hour in advance. When the actual labor comes, turn
it on. He has told me this many times when the topic of child
birthing has come up. It seems to be a very strange thing to
do.
My father, who is one of the world's more unsung
philosophers, said for me to trust me on this one. I pressed
him on it one time and he told me it was a strategic defense
move of sorts.
He said, "There may come a time after a
man has his first child that his wife will say, 'Let's have
another.' At the point, most men will offer some concern for
their wife and ask them if they can remember all the pain from
the first delivery. The answer is always the same. The wife
will say, 'I don't remember it being so bad.' At this point,
most men will have a very vivid memory of what their wife was
like in labor and try to convince them that it was that
bad. Now, if a man is smart and plants a tape recorder in the
delivery room, he can play back those ever so precious moments
for his wife. The screams, the swearing, the accusations of
'YOU DID THIS TO ME!!!' and so on and so forth. You see you
always have to have a plan."
I love my father.
As I have said many times before, I have no children
nor am I likely to have any - ever. My wife does not want kids
and I don't want them either. I'm happy as I am. I have dogs.
My brother-in-law is a parent of two. He's not
thrilled over the concept of having more kids. He'd like to
retire sometime in his fifties with no worries. My sister wants
more kids. He didn't have a tape. Some people don't plan.
Oh well.
As I understand it the joy of childbirth is quite
unique. There is unimaginable pain involved as a woman attempts
to squeeze an object the size of a small watermelon out of an
opening about the size of an olive.* There is a lot of bleeding,
pain, screaming, cursing, speaking in tongues, accusations,
demonic possession, and sweating involved. Some women don't
survive. Sometimes the stress is too much and they die.
However, most of the time, according to the natural
child birth procedures, breathing techniques (ie - controlled
breathing) and proper coaching (ie - the coach yelling "Push")
will get the perspective mother through the ordeal with only
minor injuries to the father and community service time for
the mother.
The pain is incredible. But at the same time,
I think it is so bad that women have a tendancy to block it
out of their minds. It's sort of like having a very traumatic
experience and not being able to recall it even weeks afterward.
My friend, Louis, is a father of one. He lives
in Staten Island with his wife and son.
I remember when he became a father. He spent
a week home with his new family and got about two hours sleep
in a week. He and his wife spent the first bit of time sleeping
in shifts. One person sleeping and the other taking care of
the child. He went back to work, eventually. He and his wife
are very happy.
Recently, Louis was one of the casualties of
my company's idiotic layoffs.** He left me a good book on Linux
Red Hat and a couple of books about Dynamic HTML and intranet
design. We both were bracing for the possibility of being cut.
It was (and for me IS) a hellish time. We were in a company
that was not being a company rather it was a demented game of
musical chairs. Louis saw his number coming up when they stopped
giving him work and had him essentially do pointless maintenance.
The sword of Damocles hovered over him for about a year and
fell about three months ago.
Luck smiled on him though. After taking a week
to collect himself, he gave a call to an old boss of ours, who
had moved on, and his company hired him on the spot with a good
salary. It's a rare thing with this economy but it does happen.
He loves his new job. He works with people he
can learn from. It's a small staff of about 45 people but there
is none of the corporate bull that he had to contend with here.
I envy him. *** Plus, due to the terms of his severance package,
he was getting 3 month of paychecks regardless of whether he
found a job or not. It's nice to earn a double salary for 3
months.
Louis made an unexpected visit to our office
last week. I was glad to see him. He looked good, had a big
smile on his face. He told me that he missed the place.
I asked him if the had gone insane.
He said, "No, I just forgot what it was
like around here. I went to our old area and saw that it was
completely deserted. I had heard they'd been moved now that
they have a smaller staff. It's depressing to see it like that."
"Do you like your job now?"
"Yes, I do."
"Good," I said. "Just so long as you remember
that."
Sometimes, it's good to remind yourself how bad
things really were before you romanticize on the past. Sometimes,
you need to step back and take a good look at a situation from
a different perspective.
Is the glass half empty, half full, or twice
as large as it needs to be?
Have we taken what we have learned from our past
and applied it?
Where is your tape recorder and where do you
plan to hide it?
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* - Forgive the food analogies, but I haven't eaten yet today.
** - I mention him, Louis Lopez, in my ever growing rant,
Saying Good-bye.
*** - He knows it. It's no secret that I've been practically
begging for the axe here. It's just a matter of time.
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