Monday Morning Haiku

The sight of perfect
yolks unbroken makes me wish
I still ate bacon.

The Fake Guy Cry

My friend has been planning a surprise for his wife's birthday for a while now. They moved away from home over a year ago, for school, and the homesickness has been wearing on both of them. The surprise was to fly in her mother and sister to be there on her birthday and spend the weekend. Now, his wife is a young one, but sly, and particularly hard to fool. She started to suspect, and in a moment of either raw weakness or cunning guile, she asks him, through tears, if he's sure that her birthday present isn't her sister coming to visit. Like the kind and caring husband he's pretending to be, he pulls her in close and whispers "I wish it were." He soothes her, and then to seal it, he begins to fake cry himself. Apparently she's satisfied.

But I'm not. Here's the problem, and this goes out to not only my friend, but all the young husbands out there. The fake cry is a last resort technique, not one to be wasted on a mere surprise party. God willing, you've got another forty or fifty years of bliss with your bride, and some day, you're going to wish you had that fake cry back. You only get to use it once - maybe twice - in all your years together, so save it for that clutch moment when you can maximize its effectiveness. It's like the flea flicker in football, or the flush draw bluff in poker. Once she knows you are capable of the fake cry, she'll never forget it, and it's never going to work again. What about when you lose a few thousand dollars in the market? Or the casino, for that matter? What about when you forget a birthday or anniversary? Young men, I implore you not to use the fake cry frivolously. Beware its power and its ephemeral nature. Give the fake cry the respect it deserves and reserve it for those times when destiny forces you down the path of destruction and your only recourse is a salty charade.

Sex, AIDS, and Morning Radio

There's a radio commercial that plays in my market that's supposed to make me feel concerned about getting tested for AIDS, I guess, but really only annoys and disturbs me. It goes as follows. Speaker One (Male) confesses that he suspected he had the virus even while he was having sex with his male partner, but didn't want to ruin the relationship, or whatever. Next, Speaker Two (Also Male), apparently Speaker One's partner, confesses that he caught it from Speaker One, but didn't want to tell his wife, because then he didn't know how. Speaker Three (Female) then says that she is now infected, because her husband, Speaker Two of course, never told her the truth. The kicker is that then the woman, who is by all accounts the only innocent party here, actually apologizes for the group, saying that she guesses they all should have been "a little more careful, and a lot less afraid." It bothers me that she's the one that apologizes, since, as far as I can tell, having monogamous, heterosexual intercourse with a spouse who is assumed to be faithful is about the safest sex one can ever have, and if not for the husband's adultery, neither he nor his wife would have contracted AIDS. Perhaps you can see why the commercial upsets me.

The point is that this commercial invariably comes on when I have the kids in the car, and I usually turn it down, because I'm never sure how much of it they might understand or be confused by it. This one particular time I didn't turn it down, because I was a bit preoccupied with morning traffic. So, of course, right after the commercial, my 10-year-old daughter, who's just learned about sexuality recently, starts asking questions.

Question 1: Why would they be so worried about getting AIDS? Aids is a good thing. Like when you get hurt at school, doesn't the teacher give you first aid?
Response: This is not aid, like "help," this is AIDS. It's a disease that can kill you if you get it, and there's no cure for it yet.

Question 2: How can it kill you?
Response: It takes away your ability to fight diseases until your body can't even get rid of a cold. If you even get a little sick, you would die.

Question 3: That's scary. How do you get it?
(Dad has to think about answering this one, but as they say, in for a penny, in for a pound.)
Response: Well ... it's a sexually transmitted disease, so you pretty much only get it by having sex with someone who has it.

Question 4: Oh. Wait ... then how could the guy get it from the other guy?
(This is the moment when I realize that I should have just turned it off.)
Response: Yeah, right? What is that about? That doesn't even make sense. This whole channel is stupid. Let's see what else is on.

I think she bought it, but I'm not sure.