A Little Infertility Humor
A couple of years ago, I was out running errands with my three youngest kids. The errands took longer than anticipated (don’t they always), so we stopped at a fast food place to grab something to eat. The lady taking our order stared and then did a double take, staring first at me and then at each child. It is worthy of mentioning at this point that two of the three kids look absolutely nothing like me and none of them share any resemblance to each other. The woman gave me a sly smile and said, “Lord, you sure like your men different!” It had been a long day and I really wasn’t up to extolling the virtues of adoption. The kids weren’t listening, so I replied, “Yep, variety is the spice of life.” She chuckled, “Ain’t that the truth.”
I know, I know. Not only did I miss an opportunity to educate, I was horribly politically incorrect and set a bad example for my kids if they had been listening. Yes, and I know that they are often listening even when they are otherwise engaged. But appropriate or not, I’ve laughed over that incident for years, and parenting is supposed to be fun, at least some of the time. I asked on my Facebook page for funny stories to lighten up the holidays. Here’s a few.
Kathleen: When we lived in VA a lady actually said to me “Ahhh, she’s so cute. How much did ya’ll pay for her?” To which I replied “Oh, we aren’t from Virginia, we don’t buy people”. We now laugh about how uninformed some people can be.
Cindy: Hubby was shopping at Walmart with our son. The young man behind the counter asked him, “Is your son mixed?” My husband replied, “With what?? A splash of cherry flavor?”
Susannah: After three semen samples, hubby decided he had had enough of the “sample” room at the clinic. (He actually said he was tired of their porn selection.) The clinic agreed for him to get the sample at home and bring it in. He was carrying it up to the lab in a brown paper lunch bag when a woman on the elevator said, “Oh, your lunch is making my hungry.” He responded, “It has that affect on my wife too.”
Michelle: While at the check out at a local WalMart, I had my adopted daughter (less than a year old) with me. A lady told me she has my eyes. I don’t know if she didn’t know what to say or what. My daughter is bi-racial, white/black with big brown eyes and the afro curly hair and skin looks a little tan, not dark. I am very light skin, blonde hair with blue eyes that are not big. I didn’t know how to reply and just smiled and said, “Really?” [I suspect the lady was looking for a way to engage Michelle in conversation and complimenting our kids or saying they look like us is usually a sure fire way to start a conversation. Still, I thought Michelle’s startled response was funny.]
Tammy: My bio daughter so loves her adopted sibs that she can’t understand why she can’t be adopted too.
Me: When my family was younger, I only grocery shopped once every two weeks to save time and money. Needless to say, my cart (actually carts since I usually had at least two) was always full. I was loading 10 gallons of milk into a cart, when a woman asked me what institution I was buying for. I felt like saying “An insane asylum and actually I’m the head patient.”
7 comments:
How funny! After my oldest bio son was born my 9 year old sister-in-law held him then asked me what he cost! My only guess is that she had heard her mom talk about how much babies cost. I was so surprised that all I could think of was hospital bills, which we had none since DH is in the military.
In fairness to Michelle, I have a friend who is blond and very light skinned and she is married to an African American. Naturally their daughter is very dark, but I still see Christa's eyes in her daughter. Not the same color of course, but I can still see it. Perhaps the cashier thought it was something like that and was trying to be helpful since most mom's (or dad's) like my friend rarely get people saying how their children look like them.
I loved this! I was at the grocery store this weekend and the checkout lady asked me if I had kids (I don't know what prompted her to ask me this, I wasn't buying anything kid-related, just a bunch of produce... of course, I had just started coupon-clipping, so maybe that was it!) I HATE this question (it's like a stab in the gut), but I knew she was just trying to be nice, so I said "No, but hopefully soon." Then she said "OOOOOH! When did you and your husband start trying?" I realized immediately I should have kept my mouth shut!
This was very funny. I was once in line at the walmart with my then 4 kids and this sweet old lady said something about all my kids having different colored hair. I was taken aback thinking she might think that I had given birth to them with different fathers. I, of course, couldn't think of anything funny so I told her in a whisper that they were all adopted. Sometimes I wonder why people think they can comment on people's families the way they do.
I have always babysat, I love it. Well 4 weeks after the birth of our first daughter a friend who was single and white adopted a black baby boy. i started keeping him. a year later my WHITE husband and i took the little boy and my little blonde hair, blue eyed daughter to a waffle house. people were staring the whole time and it was annoying my husband. finaly the waitress said "are they twins" my husband said yes and then said "she had him and 4 weeks later she had her". she got quiet and then all the tables started telling us how they had seen that this could happen on a talk show. I about lost it, we finished eating, picked up OUR babies and walked out. Please know my husband is the most honest person you have ever met.
Funny stories!
I love my husband response to the constant, "I knew you would get pregnant once you adopted." He said, "I know what got her pregnant and it wasn't doing all the adoption paperwork."
These are simply wonderful (as someone who is living in VA and often has culture shock with some of the people I meet, I particularly appreciate the first one!) I think I'm going to need to find a way to fit some of these into my repertoire!
so funny! I love it. Sometimes you just have to put some humor in to an awkward or sometimes annoying situation! God gave us a sense of Humor for a reason.
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