April’s Fool

I don’t have many expectations when I walk into a room. I expect the floor to be there. I expect a ceiling, a few walls, perhaps even a window. Overall, my demands are minimal. In fact, the number of things I do not expect to see in a room far outnumbers the things that I expect to see. When I walked into the front room of my house, one day of my sophomore year of high school, I did not expect to see my mother’s legs spread on a pair of stirrups, her hairy vagina opened wide and yellowed with iodine, sparkling like moonlight on a wet stone. In fact, it was probably the last thing on Earth I had expected to see.

I have a number of very good fight or flight responses. I can react immediately if a knife is pulled on me. I can raise my mind to a strategic plane when involved in emotional shouting matches… however, when I saw my mother on the living room television, screaming in a hospital gown, with her nether regions exposed… I honestly did not know what to do. No nature or nurture had programmed me with an appropriate response.

For the longest time, I stood in the doorframe staring, my backpack still strapped around my shoulders. It was undoubtedly a number of minutes before I turned to the left and saw my mother and her friend Kendra sitting on the couch sharing a bowl of popcorn.

“Mom… what the hell is going on?” I had finally managed to turn my head from the TV holding my hand between it and my eyes like the scene was a blinding sun.

“Kendra and I are watching your birth video,” she said around a mouthful of popcorn.

“Hi, BC,” said Kendra.

In a daze I responded, “Hi, Kendra.”

I could have asked my mother why she watching my birth with a woman who was pregnant with her first child. I could have asked her why she was playing the tape in the middle of the day with the volume cranked up. Instead, when the smell of butter hit my nostrils all I could think to say was: “Why are you eating popcorn?”

“I was hungry,” was her nonchalant reply.

My mother screamed on the video, the contractions becoming stronger. Against my will, my eyes riveted to the television set.

When I tell people about my birth, I now have the advantage of having had a first hand account of it. At the age of sixteen I saw myself being born.

April 1st, 1985… a day so ironic it’s almost impossible to believe it is my actual birthday. It started as my father was watching the climactic second half of the Villanova - Georgetown NCAA championship game he had bet half of his pay check on. He was writhing on the sofa, cursing at the set, and squeezing the remote tightly in his hand.

My mother came in to the television room, the front of her pants wet, and said “Gary, I’m going into labor.”

My father replied, “Ha ha, April Fool’s.”

My father then turned his head, saw the wet spot and said, “Oh! Oh… FUCK!”

Five minutes later, in the hospital after having thrown my sister into the back of the car like a piece of luggage and driven like mad, my mother’s legs were spread, smothered with the aforementioned slimy disinfectant, and ready to squeeze me out into the world. It is here that the tape begins.

There was only one problem with my birth, from the standpoint of my actually being born: I was too large for the hole that was provided. Much too large. In a testament to just how much larger I was than average, I offer as evidence the fact that I was the last infant ever delivered by my family doctor. I can only imagine the experience was so traumatic, that to this day whenever he tries to move large pieces of furniture through narrow doorways in his house that he experiences post traumatic stress disorder.

For thirty minutes my mother pushed. When she became exhausted two nurses got on top of her stomach, and began to push for her. When that was not enough, it was four nurses. When my scalp started to appear, yet another nurse reached inside of my mother, grabbed hold of my head, and yanked like she was trying to start a lawn mower. They were as confident of success as a hillbilly backing his car into a garage that is too small, smoking a cigarette and saying “I know it looks tight… but it’ll fit. Trust me.” Behind the camera, my mom’s best friend Jeanie muttered: “Jesus Christ.” Demonic Exorcisms have been conducted in a less sensational manner than my birth.

It happened so slowly a single adrenaline rush could not sustain the need for energy. My father stood in the corner, nibbling his mustache with his lower lip. He had stopped speaking ten minutes ago, aware that today might go terribly, awfully wrong. I was pushed, pulled, and prodded… until finally “something snapped” and I slid out. That something was my clavicle.

As there were no instruments hooked up to my infant body it would be unfair to say that I was born clinically dead. Rather, judging from the way that Jeanie said “Oh my God” and the blood ran out of the faces of everyone on camera, I would prefer to describe my state as “uncomfortably not alive.”

With my doctor’s back turned to the camera for about half a minute, my lifeless, soundless, infant body was worked over with a fury. Finally, while I did not cry, I made an audible gasp for breath. Sighs of relief soon followed from everyone in the room. When the doctor turned around, my body was displayed in all of its gruesome glory. A lot of children are born covered in grime and after birth. I had that… but due to the extreme stress of my labor all of my body had hemorrhaged. I was the deep royal purple of a plum.

What follows next is a story my father has told me many times.

After a few minutes were spent with my parents, and everyone was finally assured that I would live, I was taken to be weighed and measured in the common tradition of bass fishing and viviparous birth. At 11 lbs 3oz in weight and 23″ in height I would not have disappointed any river fisherman, and I did not disappoint my father. For months at the mill, his penis was held in supernatural awe for producing such an enormous child.

Now Dear Reader, I will reveal my true name… and my shame of it. For when it came time to christen me, with the name that I would carry with me through the rest of my life my parents had only one inspiration. The man who was in their minds, the greatest professional wrestler of all time up to that date: Andre the Giant.

“You see honey, he’s so big, just like Andre. It makes sense doesn’t it?” My mother explained.

“Yeah Darcy… but do you really want our son to have a French name?” My father’s face was serious, his brows heavy with the responsibility of naming his first born son. If someone had informed him that Andre the Giant was not French I can only speculate on what my name would now be.

“Oh… I hadn’t looked at it that way before.”

“Andrew then?” my father offered.

“Deal.”

Now, 22 years later I prefer to be called BC.