Newly-hep logs into FB after ages to update her status message. My first winter…the snow looks amazing! Going skiing today, wish me luck – she writes, breathless with excitement.
Elsewhere, a friend reads and smiles a sardonic smile. Wow, lucky you! Have fun.
And silently – Break a leg!
K and his wife are going to be parents. Yup, they’re gonna have babies. Yup, babies. Twins. Which means that in a few months they will have gone from 2 to 4. If that isn’t awesome, i don’t know what is.
Now, K is a new friend, albeit one of the kind that one takes an instant liking to. Little as i know him, it’s no error of judgment to state that he is an incorrigible prankster, a human dirty-joke-book, an outrageously…exaggeratedly flirty man with an endless treasure cove of one-liners, sexy jokes and witty retorts. Of course, he’s also a very intelligent and well-read guy with an impressive reputation in the quizzing circles, and one with a very astute understanding of women and what works with them (or doesn’t). In a nutshell, there is no denying that there is much more to him than meets the eye. However, the fact remains.. it is JUST too hard to imagine him as a daddy. Oh, the loss of his cherished freedom, the mad-cap plans, ALL that cigarette and other assorted vices… what shall now become of them? And without them, where would K be?
And yet, you know what, you can just tell that he’s going to be a very good daddy. An indulgent one – particularly if its girls.
God save the world if he has boys.
Point is, it is heartwarming to see the pride and concern pouring forth from him. Even a blind man could see that in spite of all his flirtatious ways, here is a man who truly loves his wife, and will dote on his kids. So happy am i for them that my own maternal instincts have gone into the overdrive, and i’m really tempted to skip the pill and spring a surprise (understatement) on hubby. And believe you me, coming from me – this is a HUGE thing. Not that i dislike kids… just that i don’t go mad about them either. And such is my selfish need for fun and enjoyment in life (travel, a few vices) that it is (was?) imperative to stall the baby-plan for as long as one possibly could without challenging the laws of modern science and nature.
On a side, the funny thing is, that the lesser i try to be popular with kids, the more miserably i fail. They LOVE me, and time and time again i have surprised myself with my totally incidental success/ ability to connect with kids. Especially boys. Ahem!
Which is not, i wonder, a sign?
But for this crazy hormonal rush, K isn’t the only one to blame. My good ol once-tomboyish-friend M is pregs a 2nd time, due next month. The once-ambitious-career woman DS had her 1st child 2 months ago, child-like-herself P& her hubby S are trying for their first, and quite-lost-&-confused Abhi & his wife back in Bombay are already expecting theirs. These aren’t people who, 10 years ago, seemed to me like they’d ever be having babies, least of all beating me to it. But guess what, they are!
Arrgggh.. I hate being beaten at anything. And that is the point of this post. That i’m a sucker for peer pressure and that it’s making me really mad at myself.
You see, at first there was school with all its exams and sports days etc. And then college, where there were exams and sports days. And boys. And popularity contests. And boys. And intercollegiate talent competitions and fashion and rose-days and gorgeous women all around. And boys. You get the picture, right? And then came work, and the rat-race for the coolest job. And on and on it went, and it never really got any better even as i got older.
And then, the big baap of all peer pressure – the race to get married. There, unlike ever before, i was sure that i’d totally missed the bus as i attended one after another friend’s wedding, with absolutely no signs of one materializing for me. Finally i did manage to find a good guy to get hitched with, and breathed a gigantic sigh of relief. Just as it seemed as if i’d seen the last of this monster, here it is – looming large with its ugly face staring me in the eye.
Peer pressure. My ridiculous reason for wanting to have a baby.
Ridiculous yes, but unsupported with brilliant logic, no. There are explanations aplenty as to why this is a perfectly fine time to step towards parenthood, foremost being the age-funda. Then there is the thing about health, money, support from parents – blah blah blah.
But, the endword is – i knows it’s only been 4 months since the wedding, and this is the time to put my feet up, be a bum, wear pretty clothes and go out and have a blast. Besides, with the big three-ohhh still as many as twenty-four months away, i guess i just need to take the chill-pill (pun intended, bad quality not) and watch the drama unfold in the lives of the assorted bunch that is getting the knitting needles out, scouring the mother-care stores for little booties and cribs and table-corner-pads etc.
As and when i jump onto the bandwagon, i will beg/ borrow/ steal shamelessly from these idiots. Hand me down, dearies – your wisdom and outgrown-too-soon designer threads.
Oh and K, i’d be happy with your 20-thousand rupee motorised double-carriage for twins. Mwahhh!!
Foxiemoron, true to her name, is part Foxie, part Moron. Equal parts mostly, except when Other People bring out one or the other more strongly.
By and large, People complain that they see more of the Foxie than they do of Moron, on a regular basis. They complain, because People are not comfortable with anything foxie. They’re ok with Moron, because moron is easier to deal with. With Moron, they feel in control, even superior. Smug, patronizing. With Foxie, they’re left with That Feeling that they get when they know they’re the only ones who haven’t got the joke. That too, when they know that the joke’s on them, but they aren’t sure how or why or what.
So anyway, here is to set the record straight – for them, and for anyone else who maybe bothered. And if in case it all sounds uber filmy, a flourish and bow to you; i just blame it all on… the-way-that-i-am. And on hub – because he must bear the blame for everything that i cannot blame on anyone else. Coming back to the point, FoxieMoron is not any more Foxie than she is Moronic. She really is equally Foxie and Moronic. Now don’t you ever forget or doubt that, ok?
By the way, a little bit of the background on FM. She wasn’t always this way. She was once, till not too long ago, Sweet and Intelligent. These virtues, heralded by her folks (who she now knows ought to have been defied a lot more) as two of the most precious in the universe, didn’t come naturally to her though. It took considerable teeth-gritting and number-crunching, respectively. And yet, the fruits never seemed too sweet to her, and the ROI was clearly lopsided. High-investment-low-return, that is. Sweetness made her boring and invisible, and Intelligence hammered in the final nail in the coffin of her potential as a cool-chic. Before long, many an infuriating and/or frustrating experience with the mankind (and often with the womankind) convinced her to forsake both (sweetness and intelligence, not mankind and womankind).
And thus was the old buried (cremated?), and born from the ashes, phoenix-like (told ya it’d get a li’ll filmy) – the new… the ravishing… the Foxie AND Moronic… Foxiemoroooonnnnn!!!
Foxiemoron now knows that it was the right thing to do. Men deserve morons like her since they crave just that. Women deserve li’ll foxies too, since they…er…deserve them. And this, is FM’s new space for offloading her contempt, musings, observations, truisms and the like. You’re welcome to read and comment, but nastiness aint allowed, love. On FM’s blog, ya gotta be sweet to her.
Having said all of that, some traces of residual sweetness, niceness and intelligence remain, and makes themselves felt from time to time. Worry not though, it shall be taken care of and concealed well. There are after all, masks all around and it really takes so little to dazzle, decieve, mislead. All it takes is some feigned interest, mock sincerity, practiced innocence and fluttering eyelashes.
Oh but how i go on. Tell me dahling… then again, how are you?
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