tap@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Tom Pfannkoch) (12/23/90)
I wrote this in January of 1989 when I entertained thoughts of writing free-lance humor columns for a local newspaper. I never submitted it though, so I thought I'd dust it off and share it with you netters. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- O Baby Baby My wife, Anne, and I are expecting our second child in about three weeks. This is a positive development for our family in the sense that it means we have survived just over eight months of pregnancy without so much as once having succeeded in making our first child, Laurie Beth, an orphan. This remarkable accomplishment is a tribute to all the help we get from kind, helpful people like my brother-in-law Jim. Jim is really a swell, understanding guy in this matter -- largely due to the fact that his wife, Linda, just happens to be expecting a baby in only two weeks. So he and I often chat cheerfully about the Exciting Event about to take place in our families: ME: "I'm going to kill your sister, Jim." JIM: "Lay one hand on her and I'll reach down your throat and rip your heart out." ME: "You mean like you tried to do to Linda?" And so on. This kind of intimate, brotherly friendship -- coupled with the fact that Jim is approximately as big and strong as the NY Giants defensive unit -- has helped me to earnestly look forward to Delivery Day as if it were the Second Coming, only I sometimes still pray that the Second Coming would happen first. Now don't get the wrong idea here -- my wife does have the harder job. She has to endure drastic hormonal changes that make her want to scream at me and cry all the time. But the most difficult part of pregnancy for any woman is the fact that she ultimately ends up looking like a middle-European refugee girl, breathing heavily and smuggling watermelons back to prison camp under the military tent she's wearing. The very thought of looking like this often brings on many endless weeks of nausea, but the Doctor says that if I drink lots of Maalox, the feeling should go away. Ha ha! Just a little humor there about what the Doctor says! He never gives any instruction to the father, except, of course, to tell him how much of the bill the insurance carrier didn't pay. And despite the fact that my wife has never, ever listened to a Doctor's advice before, she relays the Doctor's orders to me and does exactly what she's told: DOCTOR (to my wife): "Get plenty of sleep; remember that you're eating for two; don't lift heavy objects; don't climb too many stairs; don't overheat yourself; go for a walk every day to get some exercise and relieve stress." (...hours later...) ME: "Hi honey! I'm home! What did the Doctor say today?" ANNE: "The Doctor said I should sleep late in the morning, so you'll have to get your own breakfast and lunch; he said I can eat as much as I want; also, I can't do the laundry any more because it's too heavy and besides I can't climb stairs; and I can't make dinner any more because he doesn't want me standing over the stove and getting overheated. So I'm going shopping at the mall while you make dinner and do the laundry." ME: "But the stairs and all that walking at the mall..." ANNE: "That's DIFFERENT. He said I needed to go for a walk to relieve stress." ME (on the phone): "I'm going to kill the Doctor, Jim." You have to treat your wife very delicately during those last few weeks. Sure, her body is in a fragile condition, but her emotions are also, let's say, just a teensy bit more sensitive. For a woman like Julie Andrews this means she might frown gracefully at a joke that otherwise would have made her laugh, but for any other woman not fitting this description it means Marital Armageddon. To give an example of this, my wife and I were having a pleasant chat the other evening when I made the mistake of burping while still within earshot of her. I couldn't help it; it's just one of those things that happens when inexperienced cooks like myself attack perfectly normal spaghetti sauce with chemical warfare levels of crushed red pepper and garlic. This somehow caused our pleasant chat to turn into a Marital Discussion, which escalated into a Marital Debate and finally into an Extended Marital Debate which finally ended at 3:17 a.m., when we reached a settlement on the central point of the Debate, which had somehow mutated into who was going to fall asleep first so that she wouldn't have to lay there and listen to me snore. Really. I am not making this up. It was 3:17 a.m. Ask Jim. --------------------------------------------------------------------- (C) 1990 by Tom Pfannkoch (tap@ruhets.rutgers.edu) May be reproduced and distributed freely in unmodified form on a noncommercial basis provided that this notice remains intact. --------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Edited by Brad Templeton. MAIL your jokes (jokes ONLY) to funny@looking.ON.CA Attribute the joke's source if at all possible. A Daemon will auto-reply. Jokes ABOUT major current events should be sent to topical@looking.on.ca (ie. jokes which won't be funny if not given immediate attention.) Anything that is not a joke submission goes to funny-request@looking.on.ca