Inspired Epiphany

The other day I had a revelation... an epiphany if you will.  I'm the father of 3 girls. (That's not the epiphany!) With my wife and I deciding that the last child was going to be our LAST child, I will not have a son (again... no epiphany).  Now, I wouldn't trade in any of my girls for anything (minus Super Bowl tickets (and they don't even have to be good seats)). But as a father, I realized that I will never be able to pass along my fatherly advice to my son just as my father did to me and his father before him. (Normally, you'd think this would be the epiphany... but we are not quite there yet.)

So I had 2 choices in the matter.  I could let this little quandry consume me.  I could dwell on things that I could not change.  Or... I could turn this into one of those lemons to lemonade stories that you hear about. (Just to clarify, having all girls is not the proverbial "lemon" it is the not ever having a son that is covered with lemons... juice, seeds, peelings and all.)

In the spirit of adding the right ingredients to make my lemonade, I began to think of all of the positive things that this unplanned scenario has brought into my life.  And one of those things stood out (*insert epiphany buildup here).  The more and more I thought about it the more I began to realize that this is AWESOME (epiphany is almost here)!  Since I'm the father (wait for it) and I have all daughters (w..a..i..t.. for it...) I will NEVER have to have THE TALK!  And *BAM!!!* just like that... there it was! (For those who missed it, that was it.)

For most of you this is not that big of a deal.  I really struggled with the idea of THE TALK.  I really didn't know what I was going to say. First off, everything I would have told my son would have been a lie.  I don't know what I'm doing!  So I would have just been making stuff up.  It took me 3 times just to figure out what causes babies to begin with.  (And when I found out, you better believe I stopped that mess right then and there!)

Then there's the whole what to call everything.  I could have called it the birds and the bees.  OK... I'm pretty good on solving problems by figuring out the relationships between (sometimes seemingly unrelated) variables.  But what does birds and bees have anything to do with... well... you know?  If you are going to bring birds and bees into the conversation, why not bring in other animals?: the raccoons and the wildebeests... the turtles and the dolphins... the pigs and the elephants (South Park reference).  Each of these has just as much connection as a bird and a bee. (Quick Note: If anyone reading this had the talk with their parents or had the talk with their children and actually used the birds and the bees to explain things, please email me excerpts from the conversation. I would almost pay good money for that.)

But I get to leave that ALLLL to my lovely and wonderful wife.  Just like with the birth of our last child, I don't even want to be in the same room when all of that is going on. (Yes, I was there(Yes... there will be a post about it).)  I will trust that she doesn't need backup on this one and I will let her do her thing.  I'm not going to interrupt.  I will find out when the talk is and I'll be leaving the house for the evening.  That will relieve me of the temptation to want to go in there and say something.  Because if I do, I know I will screw it up.

If I had to explain the babies without using the stork or a cabbage leaf then I would probably have used sports.  That would completely ruin it for the girls.  Because in sports there is a winner and a loser.  So I probably would have told them that if you let the "other team" score, you lose (and that includes field goals - ESPECIALLY field goals)!  I would have told them that there will be no first base, second base and definitely NO home runs.  As a matter of fact they should try to hit the batter every chance they get.  There will be no free throws or dribbling of any kind.  And 3 pointers are COMPLETELY out of the question! (And right there, I just made a connection I can't figure out myself.) If anyone tries to get the puck in the goal, YOU CHECK THEM RIGHT INTO THE WALL!!!  NO mercy!

And I probably wouldn't stop there.  I know computers too.  So THAT conversation would have been even more confusing than the first one. Say NO to gigabytes and terabytes! Say HELL NO to floppy disks and hard drives!  USB ports?!?!? (I'm not even going there)  Mac? PC? It doesn't matter! Don't let either one touch your spreadsheets.  The'll be NO Internet Explorers of any kind on your desktop.  And you let me know if any guy even TRIES to Google you.  And if I'm still breathing you can forget about anyone Facebooking you as long as you live in MySpace!

You can clearly see that it is in the girls best interest if I stay as far away from THE TALK as possible.  Now that I'm done with with this blog I'm not even sure how my wife and I even had the 3 kids we got! I'm pretty sure if God had asked me to explain the birds and the bees to Adam and Eve, the world's total population would have ended at 2.  I guess I'm OK with that, though.  We all play to our strengths.  So if for some reason my daughters DO ask me about THE TALK I'm just going to point them to Wikipedia.  Because if it is in there, it MUST be true.  (Situation resolved.)

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