AN OK PROPOSITION

Dear Spike:

I was playing soccer most of the night, so I didn’t get to see many of the trick-or-treaters who came by our place.

A few kids from the neighborhood did come by before I left for my game — one was a princess (and like a true princess, she didn’t so much as say thank you for all the suckers I gave her) and the other was a super hero.

But the biggest treat of the night was when your mom came over to me and asked me to feel her stomach, right below her belly button. There’s a little hard bump there, as if she swallowed a stone. She was a little bit nervous about it and was poking at it. I told her i didn’t think that was such a good idea.

Later, she consulted one of the books about pregnancy that we picked up at the library. It said the bump was normal.

Deep inside that bump, you’re about two inches long now. You’ve got a beating heart and fingers and, most nifty of all, you’re now definitively either a boy or a girl.

The people who know about you often ask me whether I’m hoping for a boy or a girl. I keep telling them that it doesn’t matter to me and they keep telling me that I’m lying.

Well, I’m not. It really doesn’t matter to me.

My friend, Matt, told me the other day that he thinks I’ll have a girl. I thought that was an OK proposition. When I was in southern Utah last week I met a girl who — if you are a girl — I think I would like you to be like. She was very pretty, but not in the typical way that teenage girls try to be pretty. She dressed in fun and funky clothes and had a pierced nose. Her hair was several colors. Mostly, though, I was impressed with her intelligence and self confidence. She was a unique person. and in Utah — and especially southern Utah — that’s not always easy.

When I told Matt about this girl, he told me that I would probably not have a girl like that, but rather one who, for all our trying otherwise, will like to play with Barbie Dolls and wear pink dresses and skip rope and have an E-Z Bake oven and do all those other stereotypical ‘girl’ things.

I suppose I don’t care.

Be who you are. Be a girlie girl or a not-so-girlie girl. Be a tough boy or a sensitive boy.

Just be you.

And, on Halloween, whether you’re a super hero of a fairy princess, always say thank you. OK?

Love,
dad