Midwifery

OK, so I forgot to come back to this and add something after last week's half-ass post. I can't believe I used to do this like six days a week. I guess it's what you condition yourself to. The dynamic nature of human tolerances has always been fascinating to me. I figure at some point we'll stop being physically able to set 100-meter dash world records, but I don't know, it just keeps happening and happening.

Just a single child birth falls into this category. I've seen it happen, live and in person, three different times and I still have no idea how any single human can endure it, let alone two of them. I know it's too much for three. The second time around, I had the prescience to keep a chair near me. Watching someone suffer like that--and it is suffering, don't let anyone try to sell you anything less--and not only see the thing through to the (ultimately satisfactory, in our case) conclusion but then to VOLUNTARILY DO IT AGAIN at any point later in one's life is more than my active mind can fully reconcile. I'm convinced there's some kind of collusion going on between the obstetrician and mothers to convince present fathers that the whole thing is worse than it is. I don't know where they find the time to rehearse or where the keep the box the ACTUAL baby comes out of, but I have a hard time believing there's any way the whole business with the fallopian tubes and uteruses and birth canals is actually real. I've seen my share of the necessaries pre-pregnancy and I'm sorry, it just doesn't seem scalable. So it's either a complete put-on to put the lifelong guilt-whammy on dads or OB/GYNs are actually some class of sorcerers. I'm willing to accept an answer that's a hybrid of those two positions.

So what I'm saying is, every time I feel like I'm in position to complain about something, I have to remember that the tolerances are always stretchable. Yeah, trying to date people again sure seems like it sucks, but it's probably because I'm just not applying myself. If dating one person seems hard, the answer is probably to date five people simulatneously. Then one will seem like a piece of cake. Plus, then when I finally get chlamydia, I won't be so accusatory toward the one person since I won't be sure who introduced it to the group. Because at that point, it will probably have been me.

I just remind myself that a downer is only a downer in the context of my emotional stamina and my serotonin levels. Plus, no matter how bad things are, worse things could happen. Much worse things.