Stories I’ll Tell Forever™

Here’s the first in a series of stories I’ll definitely tell about you for the rest of your life. Likely harbingers of the person yet to come — those tales you hate to hear and which come up at every family get together from the moment you cry ’til your mom and I are long gone. Here’s the first:

When you were just starting to move around in your womb, your mom loved it. I did,too. These days you’re kicking and shoving things out of the way — probably to make room for a bike or something. But every once in a while things get abrnormally quiet. You don’t move for hours, or even entire days. This freaks your mom out pretty good, and she mentions it. I usually come over and talk to you through “the microphone” (i.e., her belly-button — it’s gotta work like a loudspeaker, a direct line in), and after a few seconds you start squirming around.

But one day you didn’t. You wouldn’t move. And, so, I gave you a little poke. Nothing big, just a soft little poke, as if to say: “Hey, little dude. Wake up. Move around. Show us you’re there.”

The moment I took my finger off your mom’s stomach you poked back. Literally one-half second after I poked you, you poked me. As if to say, “Hey, big dude. I’m fine. And I was sleeping up until a second ago.”

Yeah, get ready to hear that one for the rest of your life. Especially any time you show that attitude again, young man.