Probably not. And that will be the last thing said on that topic for the rest of the post.
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| A McLaren. |
Why do we have mountains of stories about romance and so very few stories about babies? I can recall holding our youngest son on my chest as he slept when he was 1 day old. I let him lay there until the weight of his tiny body made my chest hurt. A half hour? An hour? Who knows?
It was heaven. I will remember everything about that moment until Alzheimer's or the grave.
I don't recall making the boy. I can work out the math and show you on the calendar when it must have happened, but I can't recall any of our efforts to make a baby from that time period. It's not that I don't like making babies, I like it very much indeed. I just don't remember it. I do remember the baby.
I would argue that we read and watch stories about romance because that's where the drama is. Once the baby is made, it's a linear progression from that point to the time when you're telling them why leasing a car is probably a bad idea. The drama of parenthood is much less dramatic than the highs and lows of courtship.
I can spin a thrilling yarn about a first kiss with no effort. Spinning a thrilling yarn about changing a diaper is much harder.
If I own a McLaren and I want to take it out for a spin, it's one thing if I'm heading south on I-15 on a Wednesday at 0300, going nowhere in particular, than if I'm heading east on I-8 on a Wednesday at 0300 to get a cup of hot coffee at the Chevron in Ocotillo. Both are suffused with the joy of blasting down a nearly empty freeway in a supercar, but one has a purpose and the other does not.
I said yesterday that writing with AI helped me to grow as I asked and answered questions about life in the persons of my characters. I started thinking about what brought me the most joy in my life and babies ranked in the top 3, easily. Making babies was in the top 10, probably, but somewhere around 9th.
In my disposable fiction, I had the protagonist girl, who was the center of a ferocious love triangle, meet a friend who was recently married. In my setting, it made sense that her friend would have been pregnant. A married couple in their late teens or early twenties with no birth control means babies and right away. For all my complaining about AI, it did a bang-up job with their conversation. My girl saw her future in her friend's joy anticipating a baby. It was lovely.
McLarens are a lot of fun, or so I'm told. Personally, I've only gone out on a few joyrides in my life where there was no end goal. I have, however, driven to strange places for the sake of going to the strange place many times. Port Sulphur, Louisiana comes to mind. The trip to Port Sulphur was happily memorable. The pointless joyrides weren't. If you drove a McLaren from San Diego to Ocotillo to get a lousy cup of coffee at a Chevron station at 0-dark-thirty, that's a story. If you drive the bloody thing in a big freeway loop around SoCal, it's not.
The coffee gives the story its purpose. It's weird and silly and funny. The ring on the finger and the bun in the oven gives the romance its purpose. It's beautiful. It's sublime. It's life.
A Question
Young people, a phrase I love to use because I'm older and that's what we geezers call the whippersnappers, are more depressed and unhappy than ever. Why? They've got Tinder, so they can connect with a rando and put Tab A in Slot B whenever they want, provided they meet some minimal standards. For decades, I've been told that orgasms were the pinnacle of life. Crosby Stills and Nash told me that in the early 1970s with their vile song, "Love The One You're With."
So what happened? Kids these days can have all the Tab and Slot action they could hope for and they're mopey.
Maybe driving a McLaren in a loop from I-15 to I-8 to I-5 to CA-52 to I-15 isn't that much fun after all. Maybe going to Ocotillo for tarry coffee is where it's at.
3 comments:
I would say that there are lots of stories about babies and raising kids. They aren't romances or dramas or action thrillers for the most part, though. They are mostly comedies. Which is appropriate, because small children are hilarious.
Well said!
I've been telling my wife for years of the gold she has in the stories of 17+ years of teaching pre-school. No one is funnier than a 3-4 year old.
We were out walking a few nights ago, and there was a 4ish year old out riding his bike, and a younger boy riding as well. 4 adults (2 each sex) were trailing behind. The 4ish yo got to a small backhow/bulldozer at the construction site rebuilding the road at the lake here in downtown.
The boy climbs up on the tracks of the machine, and is looking in the glassed in cabin. As we get closer and the adults get closer, my wife is muttering "I'm retired, I'm retired...". The boy looks up at the parents and said "Look at the digger I found!"
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