No matter what you think the ultrasound experience is, perhaps from movies like “Knocked Up,” “Juno,” etc., or anecdotally, no film nor preconceived notion prepares you for this kind of drama. It’s very Shakespearian (hopefully not Macbeth) and can be a little Greek tragedy (definitley not Oedipus). You think you’re just gonna breeze in, check out the health of the baby, the growth of the baby, and quickly and ultimately, the sex of the baby—but that’s not what happens.
What happens is, you enter a dark room with a technician (ours was female), an examination table, two glowing monitors, and your future heir or heiress to the throne hanging in the balance. My wife at-the-time was calm, cool, and connected, my nine year-old daughter was distracted, and I was more nervous than I’d ever been in my whole life. By the time we got started, I realized I couldn’t hide behind my spoken feelings of just wanting the baby to be healthy. I wanted a boy, dammit; put a stem on that apple! A spittin’ image of me, minus the internal issues; someone to carry on the family name, no matter how tarnished I’m handing it to him. Surely the 3 females in the room could see right through me and my transparent longing for a penis. I hope that last sentence never gets taken out of context.
When you’re nervous you make jokes. When you’re nervous and you’re a stand-up comedian, you make funny jokes, albeit inappropriate ones. As the woman shot goo all over my wife’s belly, I said, “You know, if I did that, we wouldn’t be here.” My wife laughed, my daughter tilted her head like the RCA Victor dog, and the technician acted like she didn’t hear it. Tough crowd. She then very matter-of-factly took the transducer probe, rubbed it over my wife’s abdomen like a magic wand, and voila! Up there on the screen, unsure of what I’m looking at, appears to be a prehistoric bird. We’re having a pterodactyl. I hope it’s a boy pterodactyl.
I don’t know what I’m listening to, or what I’m seeing up on the screen, but It sounds like a submarine and looks like that thing that came out of the guy’s stomach in “Alien.” She spends a laborious amount of time carefully measuring oblong shapes, pointing to a pulsating image she says is the heart and a spine that looks like a sea horse. I assumed she was going to get to the genitalia soon, and if I squinted my eyes, I was pretty sure I could see something, but she says nothing and as the Ultrasound tech continues to point and type, I think to myself, “A boy or not a boy? That is the question.” After what seems like an hour of this, even though it was only twenty minutes, she asked if we wanted to know the sex of the baby. “Yes” flew out of my mouth before she even got to the “ex”.
She asked us what we wanted and what we thought it was, and I gave her my standard answer, “We don’t care as long as it’s healthy. You know, ten fingers, ten toes.” Then I whispered, “And one penis.” It took her forever to ask her next question, which was of our daughter, “So what do you want to have, Avery?” And I thought, “Get on with it, already. Penis, vagina—boy, girl. Let’s end this little slideshow and finish this period drama, for Christ’s sake.” Avery responded, “I want a sister.” The technician smiled, and I had no idea what that meant. She then drew an arrow, pointing to what looked like a Rorschach blot and proceeded to type, “It’s a…”
My heart was beating as fast as my unborn child’s on the screen; exactly 164 beats per minute. I know because she told us ten times. And as she was typing it, she said it: “Boy. B-O-Y!!!” I shrieked like Kate from “Taming of the Shrew”, then jumped and fell into the wall, and at first, the tech thought I had fainted. What happened next is a blur, but I was told that I kept saying, “It’s a boy, it’s a boy,” then cried and danced in the other team’s end zone. I should have got a penalty for excess celebration. I gathered myself and immediately felt guilty for the way I reacted, and then went right back into my, “Hey, as long as it’s healthy. You know, ten fingers, ten toes” mantra.
I hugged the technician, maybe a little too long, and thanked her profusely for it being a boy, something she had nothing to do with. I’m surprised I didn’t tip her. As we left the office and walked through the waiting room, I recall raising the scroll of pictures over my head and singing the “Theme from Rocky.” Afterward, the girls and I went to lunch, but I didn’t do much eating. I called and texted everybody. One of the best responses I got was from my friend, Tom Griswold, who wrote back, “It’s a boy. Congratulations. Here’s an Irish toast I wrote.
“May the road rise to meet you, at his birth’s celebration. Let’s hope he’s endowed with the enormous Godwin manhood, which skips a generation.”
Dear woman below me,
I apologize for referring to you as the “woman below me” but the two times that you knocked on my door to complain about the noise you never properly introduced yourself.
I’ll get to the point. Last Saturday at around 4 o’clock in the afternoon you made your second emergency visit to ask if the “Radiohead” CD set on volume 3 could be turned down because you had a cold and were trying to sleep. The first time you knocked on my door was shortly after I moved in at 7 o’clock in the P.M. on a weeknight. You told me you were a teacher and had to get up in the morning and could I kindly stop unpacking because the sound of shuffling boxes was keeping you up. I don’t know why you felt it was necessary to tell me your occupation was that of an educator, but I do think you’ve missed your true calling. With your acute sense of hearing and leadership abilities you could have been in charge of quality control down at the local dog whistle factory or an incredible piano tuner. I think your constant need for a little peace and quiet or a bad case of narcolepsy gets in the way of your dreams.
I have a few suggestions that may make your life a little easier. Since you are a sensitive soul in need of your own space I think you need to reassess your current living situation. At this point in your life you are trying to make ends meet on a teachers salary by renting one of the bottom units of a loud Apartment complex in a large city. I think you should quit your day job and play the lottery. When you win (I’m rooting for you!) buy yourself a stretch of land in Arizona, build an underground, lead reinforced bomb shelter and sleep in one of those oxygen chambers that Michael Jackson used to block out the outside world. Good luck!
Yours quietly, The man in Apt. H
P.S. Feel free to grade my letter and make the necessary corrections. I think you’ll find it’s full of sarcasm and run on sentences.
Here’s an iPhone conversation via it’s text function with my ex-wife, Kimberly, back when we were in love. Watch this escalate into a Tracy/Hepburn movie or an episode of Law and Order.
I asked her to review some of my recent tweets (Twitter updates), and so it starts.
Kimberly: I like stupid police chief, politician affair, Halloween costume, lying about the meteor, diet cola, vomiting models, balloon boy as Anne Frank and trailer trash. There.
Me: Hell, you could have just said you liked them all. Btw, You forgot the one about Avery that you said you liked over the phone.
Kimberly: I didn’t forget Avery’s. I told you about it on the phone, so there was no need to include it in the written report.
Me: So you admit your written report wasn’t thorough?
Kimberly: No, I admit nothing of the sort. It was fully thorough. You were trying to say that it was missing a tweet, and I was merely pointing out that the tweet in question had already been adequately communicated.
Me: Sidebar… “Your honor, I’ve had it with Mrs. Godwin’s blatant disregard for the law. How do you rule?” (he whispers me his ruling) That’s what I thought. The judge said the oral agreement was predicated on the premise that you, the defendant, who is representing herself would give me a WRITTEN report on what you thought of my Twitter updates, regardless of your previous oral thoughts on one particular tweet. Gavel smack… “Dismissed!”
Kimberly: Why would he whisper his ruling to YOU at a sidebar? Is this court some sort of “Boy’s Club”? I demand a retrial!
Me: The Judge whispered for one simple reason, that the truth should never be shouted, for it’s message is a subtle, fact-based nod between intelligent people. Liars yell, so that their madness is disguised by sheer volume.
Kimberly: That sounds like something a Christian would say. Are you and your judge boyfriend Jesus freaks?
Me: No, just lovers… of justice.
Kimberly: If you are a true lover of justice then you should be ashamed of yourself. You know you’re wrong and I’m being persecuted without cause.
Me: All I’m ashamed of is being engaged in this mental duel. In the battle of wits, I have the experience and fire power of the United States and you are… Guam. I love Guam, it may be tiny and relatively new, but it’s a beautiful place with potential and heart.
Kimberly: But apparently a stupid, tiny, new, beautiful place with potential and heart.
Me: Inexperience is sometimes diagnosed falsely as stupidity.
Kimberly: I love you
Me: I love you too.
Christine,
I am trying in vain to get our divorce finalized. Time and time again you’ve told me that since you are a lawyer, you would do the paperwork-and so I wait. You have asked me to sign credit repair documents to explain my responsibility on bills that were in your name- and still I wait. I’ve sent you my share of the filing fee as per your request and guess what? – I’m still waiting. What should have been a no brainer, no contest divorce has turned in to a no way, no win situation. I can’t imagine that you gain anything by staying married to me and since we are both in long term relationships with other people, it makes no sense.
During the course of writing and mailing this letter I realize that I list your phone number and address under the name Wolverine. It’ s a little dishonest, but I do that to avoid any problems with my current girlfriend: a very beautiful, albeit jealous 18-year-old Japanese girl named Sake Mykocky (I met her while getting my ass waxed at a full service salon called “Happy Beginnings”). With no malice or ill intent I picked the name Wolverine and never thought about the irony until I was watching The Animal Channel one night. These nasty sharp-toothed creatures were used as a form of torture during the Civil war. The soldiers would put the poor POW in a big burlap bag, throw the Wolverine in, Tie the bag tight and the furry heathen would claw the poor bastard to death in mere seconds. Well at least it was quick and easy as opposed to long and drawn out.
Speaking of long and drawn out, this August 30th will be our 9-year wedding anniversary. Can you believe we’ve been together that long? – And they said it wouldn’t last. We should write a book! Let’s call it “Staying married while living with other people for over five years and avoiding the responsibility and pain of getting divorced ”. I haven’t a clue what to get you this year, but I do know what I’m getting- a big basket of meaningless oral agreements, notarized chicanery, cute little excuses and to top it off a card that reads, “Go f*ck yourself Pat Godwin”.
Enclosed are copies of the current paper trail and a lock of my thinning hair for your voodoo experiments.
Sincerely someone else’s
J. Patrick Godwin
I try to keep my worldview and language in check so as not to fog my 6 year-old Jimmy’s sunny outlook on life. If I say something inappropriate, I let him know that it’s not a word or philosophy that should be repeated outside the home. He knows what NOT to say in polite company, but I did not count on was how absorbent he is to seemingly harmless conversation.
I am not good at remembering people’s names; I have the bad habit of giving silly nicknames to neighbors, store clerks and various others with whom I have limited contact. They are for the most part quick, thoughtless and superficial observations. For example, I call the 6 foot 5 inch waiter with the slight hunch we see at Marco’s Pizza, “Big Bird”, and the lady who jogs by our house in spandex with the huge thighs “Ham Hocks.” I’ll use them in a sentence: “Boy, I sure hope ‘Big Bird’ brings our pizza soon, I’m starving. Hey, Jimbo, look, it’s ‘Ham Hocks’ again. She’s been running every day for months now and hasn’t lost a pound.” Jimmy laughs and it’s our private little joke. No one hears, no one gets hurt.
The other morning I was on my way to the airport and suddenly greeted by the man from across the street. He says, “Hi, we’ve never met officially; my name is Jim Reichart but you may know me as ‘Gin Blossoms.’ Your son told me that’s what you call me.” I said with a straight face, “Son, what son? “I don’t have a son.” He continued, “I’ll have you know, Mr. Comedian, that these bumps and spots on my nose are not alcohol-related, they’re genetic. I’ve had surgery to repair the damage and that’s why it’s red and swollen. No one in my family thinks your childish name-calling is funny. My wife ‘Chatty Cathy’ is not amused and neither is our son, ‘Salad Tosser.’” He paused and then added, “When I Google ‘Salad Tosser’, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna have to kick your ass.”
I felt terrible on the flight to Ft. Lauderdale and as I was waiting for the cranky, older, flight attendant to bring me a Diet Coke, I decided that I would be more careful with nicknames around the “Little Sponge” when I got home. Boy, I sure hope “Saggy Puss” brings the beverage cart soon; I could use a soda as a diversion, instead of having to make small talk with “Ballsack Breath” next to me.
Dear mygodwins.com,
Thank you for listing me in your Godwin family genealogy website as the 3rd most famous Godwin. I’m flattered to be in such illustrious company as King Harold Godwin, philosopher William Godwin and Frankenstein author Mary Shelley Godwin but I think you’re missing some very important members of my family. I come from some pretty impressive lineage. My father, J. Gerald Godwin was a theater professor and director at King’s College in Wilkes Barre, Pa., my grandmother Esther Godwin was a very popular vaudeville singer and my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great great, grandmother dated Adam. Feel free to use her in your site if you wish. I don’t think any headshots exist because all of her belongings were ruined in the flood but there are some paintings.
Famously yours,
Pat Godwin
Margaret and Mark,
I accept your generous holiday invitation and look forward to seeing everyone. It just so happens that I’m performing in Scranton, PA that weekend and since Thanksgiving falls on a Thursday this year, that would be perfect. Yes, my birthday coming up is a big one and I do know how old I’m going to be.
I will be traveling with my nurse Kimberly and her assistant Avery. One empties the bag and the other pushes the chair. God has sent these angels to me and if you do engage them in conversation, keep it simple… they’re from Ohio. During the meal they will be instructed to stay in the foyer and remain quiet. I sleep sitting up so I can be put anywhere at night and the girls nap in shifts by my side.
Margaret, as you know I have special meal requirements and will need all my food to be pureed and served at no more than 84 degrees. This is due to esophageal scarring as a result of drinking rubbing alcohol in rehab. Please refrain from using vanilla extract, cooking sherry or liqueurs when preparing the meal for even if I were to ingest trace amounts of hooch accidentally, it could trigger a 5-day binge (oh, how I’ll miss your Jameson stuffing).
I’ll forward our flight plans so you can arrange for a handicapped equipped van to pick us up at the airport and transport us to your place.
See you soon (God willing),
Your loving brother, Pat
