Yap, here it is, ladies and gentlemen, the Moment I’ve been anxiously awaiting for some time now… well, the actual moment will never be known for certain (note to parents: pay attention, damn it! what else have you got to do?!?)… My mum had been swearing for ages it was around 8 in the morning, until we discovered the Lost Notebook containing critically important data, among which the Actual Time of My Coming.
Somewhere around 10 a.m. sharp, if you must know.
My mum was safely asleep, as the Nice Mr. Doctor cut her tummy up, and pulled me out.
They say birth is a very traumatic experience (for the Baby! hello!!); so you just try to imagine what it must have been like for me…
I must have been swimming around, in my nice, comfy, warm puddle, minding my own business, making air-bubbles out of my ... err… special bubble-machine, when …
Wham! Bam!
Cold, rubber hands jerking me out! Out! Into the BIG COLD NASTY world.
Damn it!
My temper – now do you understand?!?
Do you suppose they pinched me or something? Did they pinch you? No? So… why did you scream? Weeeelll, I mean… You knew what was happening… you probably packed your bags and were ready to go when the Big Wave carried you down-stream gently…
Me… I wasn’t prepared, man! I didn’t know! I was still dealing with some New Year’s Eve hangover… I wasn’t ready! I needed more time!
What do you mean ‘for what’?
To prepare. To plan things out. You can’t expect me to undertake a whole new LIFE and improvise, can you?
Welll, anyways… what’s done, it’s done. There was nobody there to protect My Interests, you see. Mum was overwhelmed by the huge tummy and restrained to bed, and they must’ve put her to sleep before she could say anything. Poor thing. I guess it was better for her as she must’ve been scared to death. (having something alive growing inside of you … c’mon! haven’t you seen Alien?!? Did it seem like fun to you??)
Anyways… it was very cold that day - January the 5th is in fact known as the coldest day of the year – which is probably why I’m always cold. (it took me a while, but I've got it all figured out). The city was covered in snow, and unexpectedly, on the morning I was born, the sun shined brightly, as it did all day long. Or so the legend goes.
I can imagine the Good Mr. Doctor waking up that morning, seeing the colorful sun-rise on his way to work and saying to himself: “Today – is a good day – for science!!”
Despite my attempts to teach them any better, the White Ladies squeezed me into these white sheets, like I was a darn cocoon. Very uncomfortable, as I’m sure you all remember (well, if anything, you must remember that! You couldn’t move your legs or anything, and that thing was getting in between my bums…). Rather disconcerting, my tiny body was only able to sustain a bit of a fight, and my scientific and detailed explanations sounded more like raging baby-crying. Of course they lied to my poor parents and told them that I was ‘very quiet’ and ‘slept all day, like a baby’… I guess they didn’t know any better.
All in all, after a couple of nice meals (mum made my milk just the way I wanted it, not too cold, not too warm) and some nice massage around my … private parts, I was satisfied with their attempts to make amends, and I accepted what seemed to be their sincere apologies. There’s no point in holding the grudge for a rough start, is there?
The sun was shining, the snow sparkled in what seemed like millions of shiny diamonds, I felt nice and warm, and this darn world seemed like it was going to be a nice place afterall. So I decided to give it a chance.
Oh, a man they called ‘dad’ showed up like a couple of days later; he must’ve felt kinda guilty about missing the whole thing so he brought along this black box that made tiny copies of me and my mum, to remind him of that day. My mum keeps one of those in a frame, by the mirror, in out living room. She missed the whole thing too, I guess.
Don’t know exactly what that was, but it seemed like an electric current going from mum to dad, like they had some sort of special connection. When one smiled, the other smiled too, instantly, like they were wired together. Good thing, too. I wouldn’t have recognized him otherwise. He felt like a complete stranger to me. I even tried to tell them that I wasn’t comfortable around him – but they seemed rather happy about my fussing about: ‘look, honey, she’s happy to see you!’ (Gosh, grown-ups are such losers sometimes!)
Dad? Oh, he had been miles away to a land they call China. Yeah. Big Business or something. Very important. World-saving enterprise. Power-puff Girls didn’t pick up the red-phone, so he HAD to go. Can’t say ‘no’ to saving the world, can you?
Well, I know that his one and (as it turned out) only child was about to be born, BUT…as a man, being there for the actual birth is overrated, really. The woman’s doing all the work, the kid is but a ball of tissue and … errr … blood… can’t even tell it’s human or not… chances are you’ll either faint (terribly embarrassing) or stay in the hallway anyway. So, if it’s either China (and saving the world, don’t forget!) or the off-white, hospital hallway… My dad was too smart for his own good; very responsible, too. He HAD to go. I understand.
You know, he turned out to be a welcome addition to my life. If it was for my mum alone, I would’ve never learnt anything. Everytime I reached for something, she screamed “no, pumpkin, don’t touch that!”; but he was cool about it. He let me play with his … arrr.. tools, and then, when I managed to take apart the tape-recorder into like a thousand pieces, while my mum was screaming in despair, he was smiling calmly – don’t know what the *uck he was so calm about. We never managed to put them all back IN afterwards…
But he was a lot of fun… we laughed a lot together, and he taught me many things. They say I get my cranky sense of humor from him. I couldn’t say. By the time I was old enough to understand his jokes, he was gone.
Yeah. Big Business or something. Very important. World-saving enterprise. Power-puff Girls didn’t pick up the red-phone again, so he HAD to go. Can’t say ‘no’ to saving the world, can you? I understand.
So, anyways… looks like there’ll be snow for my birthday, and my dad is missing it again. Hope there’ll be sun-shine too! I’m probably going to be busy the next couple of days (that’s code name for hiding in the darkest corner, crying in the pillow, feeling sorry for myself) and I wanted to share my memories with you all. It’s been 29 years…
Yeah, I remember everything – just like I’ve told you.
P.S. Should you forget to or deem as unimportant to say 'happy birthday' to me, all hell will brake lose and you'll be very, very sorry!