Like a lizard might have.
Last night I convinced the Actually that babies are born without ears.
We were sitting on the couch watching Law & Order (our default position), the Actually cradling Irma in his arms. She can be very needy.
“Aww,” I said, “she’s just like a baby, only with bigger ears!” (And a tail, but never mind that now).
And then, for some reason, I kept going.
“You know, babies don’t have ears,” I said, stroking Irma’s furry underbelly.
The Actually gave me a look. A weary, familiar look.
“They do so.”
“Well, okay,” I said, as if he were splitting an unnecessary hair, “technically they have ears, but they’re not developed—at birth it’s just a little flap, with a hole. Sort of like a lizard might have.”
The Actually stopped petting Irma, looking skeptical.
“But of course by the end of the first year, most babies’ ears are full grown,” I assured him.
He went back to silently petting the cat, and I turned my attention to the television.
I say things like this all the time, and the Actually very sensibly ignores me, never fooled for a second.
But this time, he turned to me after a few minutes and asked, quietly:
“Were you kidding? About the ear thing?”
When I had wiped the last tear of mirth from my eye I sighed contentedly.
“Oh, I am SO blogging this.”
It astounds me how easy it is to convince otherwise intelligent men of absurd things, as long as these things are related to periods, childbirth, babies, or female-ness of any kind. In college one of my best friends mentioned to her boyfriend that girls’ nipples fall off at puberty, only to grow back later. When the boyfriend expressed his disbelief she laughed at him.
“I can’t believe you didn’t know that!” she said, chuckling to herself.
She told him that his mom probably still had his younger sister’s nipples in a box somewhere, as they are generally saved for sentimental purposes, like baby teeth. The boyfriend was horrified. My friend shrugged and returned to filing her nails.
He didn’t learn the truth until he called his mother and asked whether she had his sister’s nipples in a box. I believe the force of her laughter after he advanced his nipples-falling-off-at-puberty explanation blew his hair straight back on his head.
It is important to take joy in the simple things that make life worth living. For instance, the pleasure of convincing a loved one that earless babies are born every day in delivery rooms around the world. Try it tonight. You won’t be disappointed.
26 Comments
I wish I could keep a straight enough face to toy with people like this. Unfortunately I’m super gullible, so I’m usually the one making the stupid phone call ;-)
Congrats on getting your papers done!!
NO. That is awesomely hilarious. I love The Actually.
This is freaking hilarious. I once convinced a student of mine that my real first name is “Mohandes” but that’s the best I can do.
Oh, Alexa! Life with you is never dull. Earless babies…you slay me.
How I wish I could lie with a straight face! And like Nico, I’m ridiculously gullible. I probably would have snorted at you if you’d said it to me, but secretly would have flipped open baby pictures of P, just to double-check.
Can’t stop laughing! Ear flaps… nipples in a box…
And I thought I was a frighteningly good fibber. I have met my master!
I am ashamed to admit that my husband manages to do this to me on a regular basis. Soon after we met, he convinced me that he had no idea what a douche was and made me explain it to him in ear burning detail. And then laughed. Last summer, he convinced me that a blade of grass he had just stuck up my nose had an ant on it, leading to a soccer player like display of nose-blowing all over the lawn. And there was more laughing.
I knew a guy in high school that was convinced that women “only have two holes.” He actually asked me how it can be comfortable to have sex in the “peehole.” I almost hated disillusioning him of that because it was one of the funniest things I’d ever heard.
Mollywogger–
I dunno… men have sex with their “peehole”…. maybe she could have just turned that around and asked him the question?
YG
I would laugh harder (and I am in fact laughing pretty hard), but I feel for the poor guy because I too am incredibly gullible. My husband once convinced me that the sun was burning out in the next couple of years, which led to a panic attack, which in turn led to him not messing with me as much any more. What can I say, it was early and I wasn’t fully awake.
omideargawd!!! I just read this post out loud to a colleague of mine and our laughter created such a ruckus that we were subsequently joined by the rest of the office. Your post ended up prompting a 20 minute discussion of the crazy things we have believed over the years… I think the most disturbing one was the guy who was led to believe that Soy Sauce is actually pigeon blood. Believed it for years and was so traumatized he no longer eats any Asian food.
Mean. But very funny.
This is why we love you. Keep up the good work, Alexa!
Hi Alexa, still cringing from laughter :) thanks for writing!
ROFL!
My dogs are frightened by how loud I just laughed. There are tears in my eyes. You’re the best.
So should baby have fully formed ears by now? Um, we have issues.
You of course, mentioned the fact that the baby DOES have a tail in utero, but not by the time he/she is born?
Oh my. I was taking a bite of yogurt when I read the part about the guy calling his mom to ask if she had his sister’s nipples in a box. I nearly choked!
Oh how I adore you.
I’ve been convincing Jeff that when my placenta is delivered it will be a pulsing mass of veins and flesh with teeth and hair akin to something from a sci-fi movie. I think he’s buying it.
nicely done, my friend. nicely done. you’re putting the ‘ass’ back in embarassment.
A lot of people don’t know that stars are faraway suns, either. Or that in real life I own the van we used in the tv show.
My high school BF was under the impression that a woman’s breasts began growing during puberty because that’s when they began filling with milk. He wondered why it “didn’t go bad”…or how women with A-cups would have enough to feed their babies.
Yep. That’s my guy.
Dh just came running upstairs as I shrieked with laughter and the dog is hiding behind the X-mas tree.
You crack me up.
awesome. at first i thought you were being very evil until i realized you were talking to a grown adult. aaaaahhhhh the gullible. so fun to toy with. when i was 18 i convinced my brother (who was then 13) that he and i had been abducted by aliens throughout our lives. it took a long time and was aided by understatement and mockery in turns. it also helped that mom believes she’s been abducted and talks about it ad nauseum. i told him they suppress your memory until you turn 18, then they give you the choice whether you want to remember the visits. i, obviously, had chosen to remember. the process of convincing him took forever and the only satisfaction i had was to realize that, for years, he was a little embalanced and unsure. of course, the joke will be on me if it turns out mom has been right all along and we’ve *all* been repeatedly abducted, but my money’s not on mom. not at all.
Uh, wait. My nipples weren’t supposed to fall off when I was 13?
My last name is Lee (as in “Robert E.”, not of asian origin.) My brother convinced a friend of his in middle school that our mom was the famous Sara Lee that nobody doesn’t like. I think he sold him an autograph.
Another time, we convinced a friend of ours that grits grew on “grit trees” and were harvested by spreading out a tarp around the tree and shaking the tree really hard so the grits fell out.