"I don't understand it," I said. "It's eleven o'clock Sunday night, she wakes me up and demands I go out and find her some pecan twirls and pina colada mix."
"Ooh. There's a combination that'll make your taste buds dance," said Horace.
"I mean, does that make any sense to you? I say to her, honey, where am I going to find pecan twirls and pina colada mix on a Sunday night.' You know what she says to me? Just guess what she says to me?"
"I imagine something like: If you loved me, you'd do it,'" said Horace.
"You're so close. She says to me, look at what I'm going through to give you a child. And all I ask is a little food for me and the baby.'"
"Wow, your wife is much more pathetic sounding than mine. But mine was pathetic enough at the time."
"Why do they do that to us?" I asked.
"The better question is why do we let them do it to us? I don't think our forefathers put up with all of this. The women worked in the fields until labor started, dropped the baby in the barn, and then went right back to the crops."
"I dunno," I said. "I have a suspicion this kind of behavior has been going on for a long, long time. I suspect this is one of those secret knowledge things that is passed down through generations of mothers and daughters. I can just see my wife sitting down with our daughter when she reaches child-bearing age and whispering now honey, here's how you treat your husband when you're pregnant.' We just never heard about it before because men wrote all the history books. No man is going to admit in writing he once scoured the countryside at midnight looking for pecan twirls."
"You know it's going to be a girl?" asked Horace.
"No, we have no idea what it's going to be. That's another interesting story. Here we are with this sophisticated ultrasound device that can give you a pretty damn clear picture of whether it's a boy or a girl, and my wife is lying there yelling don't tell us-we don't want to know the sex.'"
"I've been there. Meanwhile, all the relatives and in-laws are wanting to buy clothes for the kid ahead of time, but don't know whether to get blue or pink. They all bought yellow. To this day, I hate the color yellow."
"My wife has solved that problem. Since we don't know the sex of the child, she buys both blue and pink so she'll be prepared either way."
"What are you doing about names? We picked out a boys and a girls name well ahead of time."
"How primitive you were. My wife has a list of five names for each sex. We will determine the appropriate name in the hospital after seeing the baby's gender and facial characteristics."
"How...interesting. Is she aware that a newborn baby's face usually inspires names like Yoda,' Pruneface,' and Mr. Magoo?'"
"No, I think she conceives of the birth experience as a singularly beautiful and enriching event."
"I know our obstetrician found the experience singularly enriching. But I have to admit, looking back, it was beautiful in a sort of disgusting, painful, nerve-wracking way."
"But how does your wife feel about it now?"
"Oh, now she remembers childbirth as one of the most wonderfully pleasant episodes of her life. At the time I remember her squeezing the blood out of my hand and yelling something like look what you did to me, you scum-sucking dog. If I come out of this alive, I'm gonna to stick an eight pound turkey up your ...' well anyway, you get the idea."
"Sounds rough. Did you videotape the birth?"
"Yes I did. I also destroyed the videotape and lied to my wife about what happened to it. It's for the best."
"Was it because of the screaming and the gore?"
"Oh no, nothing like that. I was just embarrassed because I got into a shouting match with the doctor after the birth."
"My god, what happened?"
"When he held up the umbilical cord for me to cut, I accused him of trying to escape malpractice liability by having me perform the surgery. It got ugly."
"I understand. We all do things under the stress of pregnancy we regret later. I threatened a grocery store stock boy Sunday night."
"Why?"
"I couldn't go home without that pina colada mix."