Ugly boys don't get prom dates!

Anybody who knows me is aware that I like the cold weather much better than heat and I prefer rain to sunshine. (I am sure that right now you are thinking, “She’s weird” but seriously after all that I have confessed in this blog you should have known that before now). However, despite the warming temperature and the dreaded sunshine, I do tend to enjoy spring. I like to plant things (actually I like to buy plants and then have my husband plant them). I like to play fetch with my dogs. And I like to sit around the fire pit with my family. But the part of this season I don’t like is Spring Cleaning! Every year my husband marches me to the garage and makes me tackle at least two or three boxes of what he calls “my crap”. I am a packrat of epic proportion and for years I would just throw everything in random unmarked boxes and then just toss them into the basement or the garage. The day after my wedding that all stopped (seriously ,the day after, when I tried to save a piece of wrapping paper off of the first gift we unwrapped as a married couple). So now each spring he trots me out to the driveway where he has pulled out a few rapidly disintegrating cardboard boxes and I am supposed to “thin out” their contents and repack them into nice new plastic tubs which are then labeled, organized and stored neatly. Why not do all the boxes at one time, some of you might ask? Because it takes me at least two hours to go through every box. I pull out each thing I’ve saved and tell him its story (this is the napkin from my senior prom, this is my kindergarten paint shirt, etc…) But as long as I keep working, he keeps listening. About two years ago, he dug out the boxes from 1984 and 1985 and it took me twice as long.

My oldest son, Robbie, was born in 1985 and the box was filled with memories from my pregnancy, his arrival, and the weirdest junior and senior high school year ever. Let me just tell you no girl should have one box containing a junior year yearbook, gym shorts, her son’s first onesie, homecoming pictures, a baby book, a cassette tape that only had Prince’s When Doves Cry repeated over and over on BOTH sides, a Seventeen Magazine featuring a story on Judd Nelson, and a box of unfinished thank you notes for her baby shower gifts (some of the i’s were dotted with little hearts). The combination of stuff in the box was just peculiar! And looking in that box I was reminded how pathetic teen pregnancy was. I know that now it is common to see a pregnant 16 year old but back then I was pretty much alone (if there were other “pregos” they had either been shipped off or were lying REAL low).

I remember the day my water broke; it was actually my due date. I was sound asleep and a couple of friends had spent the night (because, again, nothing shows that you a mature enough to raise a baby like a slumber party), when I woke up to run to the bath room. It took me about two seconds to realize that my water had broken and I had NOT pee’d my pants. So I did what any normal “baby having a baby” would do, I stuffed my wet underwear deep into the dirty clothes, got dressed, and joined everyone in the kitchen for breakfast and morning gossip. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t discuss anything about the baby. I just chilled and ate a blueberry muffin and some bacon. (My general way of dealing with things that made me nervous was to ignore them. You know, the whole “If I don’t say it out loud it can’t be true” way of thinking. Which is probably why I didn’t tell my parents I was pregnant until my 6th month… they just thought I was finally porkin’ it up again.)

Nearly another hour had passed when I finally told them that my water broke, and as you can guess craziness ensued, but we finally made it to the hospital. All of us, my mom, dad, and sister, my friends, and I think two members of the basketball team that my boyfriend (who was in East St. Louis at the time) had sent up to “be helpful”, and, of course, my Aunt who was my Lamaze coach. Everything was good at first. I was getting a lot of attention and everybody seemed so concerned with me being comfortable. And as far as labor pains… they were non-existent. I couldn’t understand why I had needed to take classes , this was just fine. I thought to myself, “I will just lay here and let everyone fuss over me and at the end I will have a perfect, beautiful, little baby”. Easy as pie! But apparently I hadn’t had real labor pains. How did I know this? A very mean nurse came in and told me (I don’t think she liked me very much because she kept squinting her eyes at me and referring to my age). She told me that they were going to induce labor at which point my mother started hovering… and I hate it when my mother hovers.

They induced labor and explained that I should start feeling some pain in an hour or so. Within 3 minutes a pain so profound and severe hit it me, that I could only pray for the relief that sweet death could bring and I began to scream for my mommy. I explained to my mom that obviously the doctors had heard how old I was and were giving me something to teach me a lesson. I wanted, scratch that, NEEDED her to tell them that I had learned my lesson and I wanted them to stop it RIGHT AWAY! She explained to me that they had NOT dosed me with anything that is just what childbirth felt like. I just cried (I still wasn’t old enough to cuss in front of my parents).

The good news is I only had an hour and five minutes of labor. The bad news is I only had an hour and five minutes of labor. When you have short labor it is a very hard labor. When you have any labor when you are still in high school (and think the worst thing that could happen is that after you have the baby is that you may not get to go to homecoming) it is a very, very, very hard labor. But I made it through, screaming for my mommy the whole time. And then he was out, my tiny little bundle of joy. 10 fingers. 10 toes. (Covered in what appeared to be cream cheese and raspberry jam). He was screaming and crying and before they even cut the cord, he pee’d on the doctor (I was so embarrassed). I guess I should have paid more attention during the film they showed in Health Class because I was not at all prepared for any of this. His head seemed to long and his lips were a weird color, he looked nothing like any baby I had ever seen. Nobody in the room seemed to notice, though. The doctor claimed that he was perfect. The nurses took him away almost immediately to wash him up and I was wheeled into recovery. All of my family and friends gathered around the nursery viewing my new little miracle and I was alone for a little bit, which was good because I was really tired and just wanted to reflect on everything that had happened. How much I had grown up in just a matter of a few moments. My life had changed, I was a Mom now, and now someone would be screaming for me. My sister’s boyfriend, Stevie, came in after a few minutes. He smiled and asked me how I was. I told him “fine”. We were quiet for a minute and then I just blurted out, “Is he still ugly?” He just lowered his head and nodded. “What am I gonna do?” I asked him. “When no one will go to prom with him, do I tell him it’s cuz’ he’s ugly?”

And that, in a nutshell, is why babies should not have babies.