Milk Story
I was born unto expectation. When my father (non-biologically speaking) met my mother (biologically speaking—I was all up in that womb) he was a mid-30s divorcee with two grown kids and a desire to spend his middle years free of the most resistant form of STD—children. I can’t say I blame him. In some ways kids are worse than a venereal disease. He never had to take herpes to see The Power Rangers Movie four times in theaters. Crabs never ran off with his hard-earned money to a private school in the city to experiment with drugs and do “hand-stuff” with other dudes. They just need a good scratch once in awhile.*
He even went so far as to get a vasectomy near the end of his first marriage. That’s how done he was with having kids. It’s not like he lived next to an airport and got tired of the noise so he bought some noise-canceling headphones. It’s like he got tired of the noise and blew up the airport; an airport….in his balls. So, needless to say, when he decided to marry my mother the agreement was that they wouldn’t have any kids.
A few years into the marriage my mother retracted her end of the “no kids agreement,” but my dad wouldn’t budge. They were at an impasse. They both loved each other, but the brute fact of the situation was that the disagreement was a marriage ender. My mother and father decided to spend one last weekend of fun together before they split forever.
How they could manage to have a swell time knowing all along that the end was looming so near amazes me. My parents don’t have Super Bowl parties or New Years parties, but I think they would throw a solid pre-Armageddon bash. I can never picture my mother saying, “everyone raise your glasses to toast the new year,” but something like, “does everyone have their coin to pay the ferryman for the voyage to hell?” seems fitting to her skill set.
They opted to spend a drunken weekend at King’s Island amusement park in Ohio. I have no clue why they chose this place, but for some reason after the trip they knew they had to be together. My dad decided another kid was worth keeping her in his life. When they told me I was born via artificial insemination, they added this anecdote I guess to add some Raymond Carver-esque magic to it all. All I took away was that my existence was predicated on the fact that the scrambler was working that day.
How could there not be expectations for such a child? Artificial insemination is a long, painful and expensive process and the baby that would be born of it was the crux of staying together. All those expectations and what came out grew up to be this awkward hipsterish Beetle Bailey character.
Despite all this, my father loved me and never slacked off from his fatherly duties. But once in awhile, when I’d break something or mess up at school, he’d give me a look that said, “could’ve had a boat. Boats don’t get a D in math.”
The main problem I had with this new past of mine is I didn’t have any friend that really understood how it made me feel. Under sworn secrecy, I explained the basics of how artificial insemination works (i.e. the sperm inserted on a rod to hopefully impregnate an egg in the mother) to my friend Dwayne. My school chum summed up to the class one day by pointing at me and yelling, “Josh’s mom fucked a robot!” This inspired a lot of questions.
Mainly I just had to uncomfortably explain the process to them and then field their crazy questions. One kid named Leonard asked me if I had “like super powers or anything.” I said, “no,” but now I wish I would have said, Yes. I have the power to cry at random intervals during the day and disappoint my parents.”
I can only imagine their disappointment when in 5th grade their little miracle of science turned out to be questionably retarded at science. The parameters of our science projects were simply this: 1) it must be an experiment you can easily transport from home to school everyday 2) it must be sustainable for three weeks and 3) demonstrate one or more scientific principles. The morning we were supposed to announce our idea to the class I had forgotten to prepare so following the little genius of our class, who planned to make a very complicated Rube Goldberg Machine, I stood up and said, “I want to see what happens if I leave milk out for three weeks.” And what happens is your friends and family hate you.
I wasn’t even smart enough to pour the milk into some kind of lidded Nalgene bottle and instead opted for an open glass. This made transporting it and containing the smell nearly impossible. My life fell apart due to this grave error.
After the first week it smelled beyond my ability to convey it with conventional language. No one would sit with me on the bus. But the milk still got to them because every bump or hard turn made a large “chunk” fly out of the cup like a stinky bullet. Out of sheer laziness I was waging amateur level chemical warfare on my social life. But still I pressed on.
By the end of the 2nd week everything went to shit. The smell made my dog and I throw up everyday. The bus driver wouldn’t talk to me. And my “girlfriend” at the time walked up to me at recess and said, “I think we have to break up. Everyone hates you.” Still I pressed on.
Finally the day came when we had to present our experiment and our findings to the class. Again I followed the genius, who explained with ease how his experiment exemplified the properties of mass, kinetic energy and gravity. After an extended applause all the eyes turned on me.
“Josh, please explain to the class the scientific value of your experiment,” my teacher said.
My social life and gastrointestinal tract in tatters, I knew I didn’t have shit. In a moment of panic, I downed the milk to the groans and disbelief of the class.
“I think I need to go the nurse,” I said to the class.
I threw up several times before I got there. The nurse said she had never heard of something so stupid. However, about an hour later, a kid from my class was sent up the nurses office. We all got ribbons in those days, but he was holding something else. Now I received two things. A note that excused me from having to write a report on the scholarly nature of the experiment and a ribbon embroidered in gold, “Best Performance.” Science, you may have made me, but I will drink you and throw you up. Suck it, science.
*This is not to say my dad has any venereal disease or dislikes kids. He loves his kids, but he’d spent his entire adult life raising them and hadn’t planned to have any more at the time he met my mother.
