December 16, 2009
The Ultimate Trade
I’m too tired to do a great prose on this, though I had intended to. I guess it’s more difficult when I’m not doing it in order to procrastinate on an assignment. Anyway….
I woke up Sunday morning and went into the kitchen to get something to eat. Dad followed me in and stopped me before I could sit down in the living room with my cereal.
“I had the worst nightmare last night,” he said to me. Saturday Mom had dragged us to the mall and then told us she didn’t want us around, so we had gone to Outback and sat at the bar until she was ready to leave. I had impressed him with my beer guzzling skills and he had been getting all buddy-buddy ever since. Still, hearing about my father’s nightmares creeped me out, considering we had gone through the majority of my life barely saying a word to each other…and what we did say, we shouted. I tried to look interested and non-creeped as I shoveled cereal in my mouth as an attempt to not have to respond. He bought it and continued his story. “I dreamed that you and Zach had a baby.” Let the weirdness persist. I raised my eyebrows. “You know that if you do, his parents are going to want to put it in Steelers shit, right?”
“Yeah…” I figured out where this was going and suddenly realized that he was not sharing this in order to tell me all the intimate details of his life. Thank God.
“I dreamed that I bent over to pick him up and was horrified to find him wearing a Steelers shirt.” His eyes got wide. Yes, this was his worst nightmare, but it was entertainment for me. “STEELERS! On MY grandson! Promise me that’s not going to happen.”
“K.”
“You promise?”
“Yes.” Sort of.
“You sure?” I nodded. “OK.” He walked out of the room and I finished my breakfast. Mom walked into the room as I rinsed out my bowl and set it in the sink.
“Did Dad tell you about his nightmare?” I asked her. She looked at me a moment and shook her head. This is where I inherited my conversation skills. I explained the dream to her and she laughed.
“If they get him clothes, you can’t just not use them,” she said. I knew this, but also beginning to feel very uncomfortable with everyone attaching a gender to my hypothetical child. The gender didn’t matter, but…I wasn’t even married yet. Creepy people.
“So I use Steelers clothes when I’m with them and Browns when I’m with you.” Simple solution. Mom smiled.
“What if you’re with both of us?” Zach and I had been together for three years and my father hadn’t met either of Zach’s parents. Mom only had because she worked in a grocery store. You meet everyone in a grocery store. It was probably accurate to assume that our parents would never be in the same room again after the wedding.
“Then it wears what I want it to wear.”
Micah already pointed out to me how strange it is to refer to an unborn (unconceived) child as an it. It’s also my hypothetical child, so I’ll call it what I want. Get off my back.
