Factory Closings

Ladies, take note. Time is running out for you to obtain my highly coveted genetic material. Oh sure, cheek swabs and skin cells will still be available for purchase should you want to go the cloning route, but should you want to try combining my DNA with your's to create a race of super-babies, the clock is ticking. Yes, we're talking about the big V, two small cuts with big, big sterile taste.

Before we talk more on this subject, I'd like to have a chat with just the fellas. Gentlemen, normally I wouldn't address this topic with you as I'm loathe to bring up anything regarding that place with others of the same gender, but I feel that I can't go forward without giving you proper warning, should you decide to go this route in the future. As part of the procedure scheduling process, I had to watch an instructional video. This video was created in 1974 and due to this fact, and the fact that the information in said video is unchanged since then, there's a very good chance that you may see the same instructional video. Once I saw the animations as how things work down there, I thought I had seen the worst that the video had to offer. Oh no. Not by a long shot. Not content with animating things, I was subjected to watching an actor, shave, ice and, oh God, gently wash his area. The horror. As a side note, I don't know how the medical community thinks that men go about washing but due to the emphasis on "gently" they must think that men furious attack dirt, pounding away with animal intensity in an effort to be clean. Not our actor though, he was very thorough. Very thorough. Be warned, here there be monsters. That is all.

The impending procedure fills me with mixed emotions. I love my children but I sure as hell don't want any more of them. While it is true that the amount of love one has to give is infinite, it is also true that the amount of patience one has is not. In fact, there are days that I think I have brung as much patience up from the well as there is ever going to be. Dividing up this patience amongst additional life forms would only prove disastrous.

However, at the same time, this procedure will hereby end any possibility of Linda and I ever having our own children. It's been a long time since either one of us thought that this would ever be possible, but the thing about unexplained infertility is that the lack of an explanation leaves the door open, for things to fix themselves, however slight the chances. Once I do this, our infertility will be forever pushed into the realm of completely explainable. Presentations, complete with pie charts and 3-D logos are not out of the question.

I think that part of the interest in having a child is the curiosity of seeing which traits, physical and emotional, your child gets from each parent. I have seen our respective junior high photos, and placing a child in that particular pre-pubescent House of Horrors could be construed as genetic assault, however I still would have liked to see the being that would have arisen from our genetic soup. On the other hand, I don't think there exists a pair of glasses large enough to correct that poor child's vision. Chemical compounds have yet to be discovered to allow for those lenses to be of a manageable size and weight.

I see this operation as not just an end to my child producing capabilities, but as an end to the infertility and all the pain, emotional turmoil and sleepness nights that it caused. For that reason, and despite my above misgivings, I can't think of it as anything but positive. Now that I have some time and distance from the situation, and can look back somewhat objectively, I can't help but think that the universe was trying to teach us a lesson. Thank the gods that the methods it chose were fairly benign, all things considered. The lesson, as I have learned it, is this: sometimes we make choices, sometimes choices are made for us, and the line between the two is smaller than you can imagine.