Aspirations?
Sunday, April 6, 2008 at 6:59PM A casual conversation with Jr.
Me : What do you want to become when you grow old?
Jr.: (puts finger on her chin and thinks...)
Me : It is okay. Take your time. Don't say something because it is the last thing you did or see. Think and tell me what you want to become (of course hoping all the time that she would say "want to be just like daddy, wear a smock and work in a fab"..)
Jr.: I am thinking.. don't rush me!!
Me : Okay. I will wait!
Jr.: (comes back to living room after 5 mins). Daddy... I know what I want to be when I grow up.
Me : What ? What? Come here, sit on my lap and tell me.. I am all ears.
Jr.: I want to be "pregnant"!
Me : (stunned silence) Why?
Jr.: So I can have a baby! like mommy..
Me : Takes a full two minutes to recover from the shock.. (clears throat and launches into a monologue). Kuttyma, you WILL be pregnant when you grow up. Every girl who managed to grew up, on your dad and moms side of the family, went on to become pregnant and have kids. So the probability of you getting pregnant and having babies is very high! But before that, you have to finish elementary school, then go to middle school, high school, then college, then go to work like mommy and THEN get pregnant!
Jr.: Okay daddy! But why should I go to work at IBM?
Me : (I never mentioned IBM in the monologue) Well, only if you work, you will have money and only if you have money, you can buy diapers for the baby! Otherwise she will poop all over you!
Jr.: (after some more thinking) Okay daddy!
There were two points on the monologue that struck me as odd.
The first one was that I was just trying to send the message to get an education first. The job is not a pre-requisite to getting pregnant (neither is an education for that matter!). It was more of an instinctive thing I said because of the percentage of working mothers in our families and to let her know that there has to be some economic security before having kids.
The second point was that there was no mention of men and the getting pregnant part etc. That was a godsend! Now, on the off chance that the @#%$#$$ that is eventually going to get married to my daughter and get her pregnant, eventually reading this post.....
a. "YOU" there, are a #@%$@$$ till you prove yourselves otherwise! Granted my daughter is only five at the time of writing this post, but what did you expect? I have fully morphed into a combination of my father and father-in-law! I am in short "just an ordinary daddy" by now, and it has only been five freaking years! God knows what I will morph into when I am fifty plus years old!
b. Chances of me arranging a wedding twenty years from now are slim. However you can redeem yourself when Jr. gives you a "good husband" certificate on her first Quarterly Marriage report.
As usual, I digress. The message to the dude is, well... "I have no say in what my daughter does when she grows up, but hopefully by the time you read this post, we would have raised her to be a responsible woman who knows how to make important decisions".. and of course "I will be watching you!"
Kids.... aaaaarrrrrghhhhhhh!
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Reader Comments (9)
Truly hilarious!!
But it sure was such an innocent thing to say! :)
BTW, is there a way to link to your posts?
LOL, that was cuuute of ur daughter to say that :)
I love your conversations with Junior.
You are such an archetypal Daddy- I can almost see you oiling your shotgun in anticipation of your perhaps son-in-law:)
Way to go Sundar. Great explanation. Education and financial security before pregancy.
I would have freaked out :)
Did I mention it? Mine wants to be a butterfly. So far so good.
BTW, saw Dus Kahaniyan in Indian stores and remembered you review abt it. Watched it yesterday and I really liked the idea of putting together 10 stories.
Was wondering, even people who have the guts to take a movie that is different from the norm, don't have the guts to give credits for the original, like the first story was a rip off of Roald Dahl.
you are Hilarious! I envision you as the Robert de Niro character from Meet the parents :)
Sundar annah you realize from the looks of your daughter, she's gonna be heart breaker don't you?
Forget the future son-in law, what about the list of admirer's she'll have as a teen. (My friend's and I call guys like that the puppy squadron. I will say things like hey X how are you? How's your puppy squadron?) Lol.
You should start to prepare yourself for that first!
I already feel bad for the little dude. :D
Sundar, in this season of announcements, I thought this was your way of announcing that baby no. 3 is on its way.
~nm, sometimes it is not hilarious.. in retrospect it is..
btw, you can click on the time next to the Posted by at the bottom of the post (it opens that post), then you can copy the URL on top of the Address bar and link to that.. at least that is how I do it..
directhit, they somehow manage to come up with these on a regular basis.
dipali, maybe you will gift me the shotgun?
utbt, my intial reaction was shock. then I realized that instead of getting angry and making her go for it, turn it into a daddy -baby girl advice session..
Butterflies are good..
Kodi's mom - at this rate will give RDN a run for his money.
Sivajini, as the adopted aunt for these kids, you can give me inside info on what they will possibly do as they grow older.. wont you?
Terri, San read your comment. She said there has to be an intermediate announcement of my second marriage before we announce my third kid! Guess that settles the "issue"?
:)