2004-3-8 10:42 a.m.

Oy, With The Babies Already

So TheBoy and I were over at the folks' house last night with Sweetcheeks and Turtledove, and Turtledove asked to see the baby locks I was telling her about the other day.

My parents still have plastic baby latches on several of the kitchen cabinets. They put these in shortly after they bought their current house, which we moved into right after Sweetcheeks was born. Sweetcheeks will be turning 29 this week.

Turtledove and I, though, in mocking the baby locks, had both forgotten a cardinal rule about dealing with my parents these days: Thou Must Not Utter The Word "Baby" In Their Presence. Thou must pretend that children don't exist, because if one admits to the existence of children, one admits to the existence of grandchildren, and boy do you not want to go there. They've largely been behaving lately but whenever a child is in the vicinity, or whenever a person who's our age who happens to have children is mentioned (even if the children themselves are not mentioned in the conversation), my parents fairly quiver with unspoken grandparental longings. And, sadly, saying, "well, you go have some, then" doesn't put a cork in it.

So while we were laughing over the locks, Dad yelled from the next room, "Where are the babies!?" (And of course this is intended for me, because whenever it's been directed at both of us, Sweetcheeks has learned to punt it to me on the grounds that I'm older and therefore should go first.) Anyway, I should have been expecting it, but I wasn't, so I didn't have the story ready that I'd planned to use next time they brought the subject up: the Michael Jackson plan. As in, "Mom and Dad, children are not on the immediate agenda and may never be on the agenda, but if you keep this up and I do have a kid, you won't hear about my being pregnant and you won't see that child until he or she is six months old. Just like little Prince Michael Jackson XVIII, the one that was dangled off the balcony. You don't want dangling grandchildren, do you?"

But I did have the presence of mind to shoot back with, "In your fertile imagination." Sometimes you actually do manage to get the right words out at the right time.

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