I Hope They're Not Boys

So, I promised that this wasn't going to turn into a Daddy Blog, but, as those little buggers are kind of on my mind (and on my wife's bladder) a lot, I'm allowed to nattle on on about it a little bit, aren't I?

When you announce that you're having twins, people say stupid shit to you. They can't help it, though-- they're sort of like dogs who impetuously slam their muzzles into your balls. You can't really yell at or blame the dog, it's just something it does. People who have heard that you're having twins are no different. Except for the fact that they're not (usually) placing their faces in your crotch.

I won't go through the litany of annoying and repetitive questions people ask you, but there is a pre-determined formula or script, believe me, and, somehow everybody knows it, because everybody recites it with very little variation and, at work, I go through this kind of annoying Q&A session with people regularly.

My wife brought home this book called "Twinsense" from the library, and it was written by some chick whose name is "Dagmara", which is funny to me because, obviously, if you're reading a book about twins, you're thinking about baby names. And there is no way in hell you're going to be thinking about "Dagmara".

You know, unless you're an idiot. But you're reading this blog, so, clearly, you're not. Unless you're one of those idiots who got here by Googling the phrase "donkey porn". Do me a favor? Stop Googling my site looking for donkey porn.

Anyway, this book, "Twinsense" features the exhaustive list of things people say to you/ask you a.) When you tell them you're having twins and b.) Once you've had and are parading around with your twins. It's funny, because people really do say this shit. What's even funnier than that is that she goes on for quite a while about how politeness is the way to deal with people who ask inane/inappropriate/annoying questions about twinnage. And I was reading that thinking, "Mm, that's mature." Except that, on the next page, she creates an intensive list of fresh/snappy/snarky retorts that you can use to answer every single question/comment listed on the previous page. And I was thinking, "Mm, that's mature."

Mrs. Apron and I are going to find out the gender, in approximately six weeks. We're not going to tell you, though, or anybody, really. It's not going to be a secret, because we'll know, but it'll be our secret, because we'll know. If it were just one, we'd leave it alone until birth but, with two, we feel like we need to know.

Mostly, in my opinion, to cut down on the amount of names we need to come up with. Seriously, it's no fucking joke. Girl names we're good on. In fact, the more baby name books I read, and the more websites I look at, I end up adding more. Boy names are, um...

Well, let's be blunt: boy names blow. They suck. They're for shit. They're fucking awful. And most of the good ones end in the letter "n", and my last name begins and ends with the letter "n", so those "n"-ending names are pretty much out, because, with my last name, those names sound ridiculous.

Let me tell you something, if these kids both turn out to be boys, we're really fucked. Not only is there going to be pee ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE, and I'm including our walls/ceilings/hair/food as part of "ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE", but these kids are most likely going to end up with some terrible-ass names.

She likes Jewish names.

I am trying to convince her that our children will have the map of Israel tattooed on their faces and their airplane hangar-sized noses such that they will not necessitate being branded with Hebjew names that scream out "JEW, JEW, JEW!"

I like names descended from the U.K.

Surprised?

Regardless of the ethno-friction between us delicious little marrieds, the simple fact remains that, even if we agreed on which nation/people the boy names ought to be descended from, they're all basically awful.

I mean, sure, there's "Hrothgar". But what if they're both boys? What boy name goes well with "Hrothgar"?

Swipe My Face!

My photograph is on my debit card.

Apparently, it makes it harder to steal my identity. I'm not convinced that this added layer of alleged security is worth the constant embarrassment of having to look at this grainy, unfortunate image of myself every time I pull the card out of my wallet.

There are people who enjoy looking at themselves in the mirror. I am not one of those people. I know people who weren't even awkward-looking in middle school. I still struggle with a chronic, potentially fatal case of the awks. I've considered placing the card in my wallet so that the back, with the signature line, faces me when I pull it out-- but I'm way too much of a creature of habit to do that. That would be almost as momentous a change for me as putting my keys in my right hip pocket as opposed to my left. I mean, come on. What is this-- Revolution?

They basically made me do it at the bank, when I made the mistake of complaining that my magnetic strip didn't always read when I was making debit purchases.

"Oh, we'll get you a new card-- and we're doing this cool thing with pictures of our customers on the cards now, for extra security. Can I take your picture, please? I need the practice-- I've only ever done one before you."

It shows. I wish I could blame the end result entirely on her ineptitude, but that wouldn't be fair. I think my parents each bear forty percent of the blame each-- we can lump the other fifteen percent on the dummy bank employee, and the remaining five on the tremendously out-dated, guinea pig-sized digital camera she was using to immortalize me in debittude.

Wait... that's a hundred percent, right? Eighty, plus-- nevermind.

I look scared. I always look scared when my picture is being taken for the purposes of photo I.D. badges, and I guess that this, in principle, is no different. It is some card-like-thing that you present to people to verify that you are who you claim to be. When I got hired for my job a an EMT lo those many fruitless years ago, I looked petrified, as if someone had just flashed me and, instead of a penis, there was a second set of teeth-- pointy ones. At the psych hospital, my I.D. badge is slightly less horrified, though it probably should have been moreso. Maybe I just didn't realize what I was getting into. After all, I had only spent a week there by the time the picture was taken, and I was doing orientation stuff, on the second floor, away from all the patients, in a room with one other employee and the attractive nurse educator. What was there to look scared of?

Ah, what indeed.

I've had my new debit card with my stupid picture on it for maybe two months. It hasn't changed anything. No vendor at the movie theatre or at the supermarket or the whatever place has scoped out the picture and checked it against my face to reassure him or her that I was not some black guy or Asian lady using my card. Nobody has even given the picture a second glance. The only person who knows it's there is me, and I'm not thrilled about it.

Actually, the short Chinese lady at the dry cleaner is, of course, the one exception to this rule. If there is anything in this world that she can do to make me feel awkward, anxious, and/or uncomfortable-- it will be more than her pleasure, it will be her done duty. I went there last week to pick up three of my wife's coats. As soon as I walked through the door, she started giggling. I looked down, instinctively, to see if my fly was down. It wasn't. I would love, by the way, to own a business, where I laughed in my customers' faces, for no apparent reason, and still demand that they give me significant quantities of money.

She went to the back of the store and brought out the coats.

"$51.23," she said. Now, of course, I didn't have that much cash on me. I never have cash on me. I am a pauper. If a mugger held me up at gunpoint, he would invariably look at the contents of my wallet and angrily shoot me in the face-- after laughing at the picture on my debit card, of course. Speaking of which, I reluctantly handed her my debit card. She took it, and stared at the picture, looking up at me, then looking back at the picture. She laughed again.

"So cute!" she exclaimed, sliding it through the processing machine.

"Yeah, I asked if they would put someone else's picture there, but they said, 'no.'" I joked. It was wasted on her. She looked at my name on the card and said,

"Jewishako?"

"What?"

"You-- Jewishako?"

At least, "Jewishako" is what I think she said. Even if it's not what she said, it's definitely what she was asking.

"Um, yes," I said, uncomfortably. It wasn't as uncomfortable as when a psych patient asks me if I'm Jewish, but the sensation inside me was similar.

"From Israel?" she pressed, handing me my receipt.

"Uh, no-- my father is from Israel."

"Oh! How funny!" she said, laughing.

Next time, I told myself, I will bring cash. Let her laugh at George Washington's fucking face.

In the Mud

I got sent home from work yesterday, not for talking about my dick too much, as the title of this blog may imply, but for being ill. See-- when you work in a hospital, even a psychiatric hospital, they don't like it when you show up to work sick. Of course, being a relatively new employee, I don't have any sick time, so I stayed for three hours, saw some patients, ran a group, wrote some notes, and drove home.

On the way home, I listened to a radio program on NPR, because that's what elite snobs who drive Volvos do, even when they're sick. On this particular program, the topic was sex. This, coupled with the fact that my other two favorite public radio stations were in the midst of mind-altering fund-drives, was enough to compel me to listen.

I listened even though I maintain a pretty rigid policy of eschewing call-in shows. I can listened to any amount of talk radio run by educated professionals who are skilled and comfortable being on the radio, but as soon as some dunder-drawered donkey-dick from West Philly calls, my spine starts to disintegrate-- just a little bit.

I don't understand what it is about having your call get accepted on the radio that turns ordinarily logical, couth, appropriate people into, well, ham-lipped fuckheads, for lack of more florid terminology. People who call in to radio call-in shows just can't seem to get their acts together, and they inevitably end up embarrassing themselves and, consequently, me. They drone on endlessly, they interrupt people, they insist on having the radio on in their room or their car or wherever they're calling from, making it impossible to hear, or there is just dead air which, most of the time, is preferable.

Back in the days when my father had an eighty mile round-trip commute, he would often call in to sports radio shows and generally flip out on people as Israelis have been trained for centuries to do. My father always identified himself as "Frank," which is definitely not his real name. Frank is, in fact, the name the judge who processed my father as a citizen suggested my father adopt to "fit in."

"Frank?!" my father shouted at the judge, "FUCK THAT!"

Clearly, even back in 1972, Daddy Dearest was well on his way to American assimilation.

So, getting back to yesterday. I was sick driving home in my Volvo, with the seatwarmers turned on to help soothe my aching, elite body, and I was listening to this call-in show about a new report released about American sexual behaviors. I thought it was very ironic and annoying that the report studied Americans aged 14-94, and yet, the host of the show was constantly inserting the disclaimer that, "This is an adult conversation" and that "the content of this program may not be suitable for children."

Well, wait, I thought-- you're allowing "children between the ages of 14-17" to be studied, to be asked the most intimate, personal and revealing questions about their sexual status and behavior, and they're discouraged from listening to the fucking show about that selfsame study? Had I been a full-blooded Israeli instead of a watered-down half-breed with asthma, I would have whipped out my cell-phone to vociferously point out this hypocrisy, but, as it was, it was all I could do to keep from choking on my own phlegm and keep the car straight.

So, what did we learn from this study?

* Well, floppy, sloppy, crinkly, stinky, dusty, musty old people are having sex more. Thanks, Viagara.

* Teens are less sexually active than the prudish establishment thinks and, when they are, most of them are using condoms. Thanks, Trojan (who, incidentally, funded the study).

* More "newly-single" people in their forties and fifties are re-entering the dating scene and are not using condoms. Thanks for the herps, aging yuppie assholes.

* And, speaking of assholes, more people across the age spectrum are dabbling in anal sex. A couple of months ago, a former coworker shared with me a euphemism for this particular sex act: "Doin' it in the mud."

Play ball.