A midnight trip to the drugstore

October 11th, 2008 § 10

A few weeks ago, Lyra’s back was causing her a lot of agony late at night.  We had just been camping and so sleeping on the hard ground probably did it.

I happened to know where I could get a pretty strong pain killer, so I thought I could help.  Of course anytime a woman the age of my wife takes medicine that strong there are some precautions you should take.

So I went out at about 11:30 to get a pregnancy test.  You never want to mess around with that sort of thing.

I walk up to the register with this pregnancy test in my hand and lay it on the counter.  The cashier is this guy in his late teens.  He eyes the product on the counter and then looks suspiciously up at me and says, “you nervous?”

I answer, “well not really, I don’t really think she is, and this would be number three for me anyway.”

His eyebrows shoot up, his mouth drops open as he looks at me like I had told him I was going to give him my Ferrari (I don’t have a Ferrari).  The guy is absolutely stunned for a moment and then he asks, “by the same woman??“  And there was this tone in his voice that indicated he could not believe I had even done the procreative act that many times with one female.

For a moment I didn’t know if he was going to shake my hand or hit me.  I hesitantly answer in the affirmative, not certain what to expect.

Then he gets this puzzled look on his face as if he is trying to fit this information into his paradigm of the way the world works.  He looks down for a minute at the counter, then back at me. Clearly struggling to make sense of what I had just said.

He finally asks in a voice that makes it clear he expects a negative answer, “are you married to her?” I answer that, yes indeed, I am married to this lovely woman who has given birth to my other two sons.  He then sort of laughs and says, “oh, then you’re OK.”  As he checks me out.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at this interaction because it was so obvious that his value system has no place in it for monogamy, or even marriage.  But at the same time it was funny to see him battle with the strange worldview he had been confronted with.

Oh, and the test was positive.

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