I Am The Unicorn

Of all the things I never expected to be doing, being pregnant had to rank right up there with removing my own gallbladder with a soup spoon or voting Republican. Which might be why I feel amazed that people actually believe me when I tell them that I’m pregnant. Actually I was all for not telling anybody at all and waiting for people to say something. But, I was persuaded by the other party to this grand genetic science experiment that maybe this was not the best option. Whenever I do tell people now, I feel like a text book example of “How To Tell If Someone Is Lying,” My eyes dart around the room, I say it quick and low, like I’m trying to buy crack on street corner on a Sunday afternoon. And then the strangest thing happens—people believe me, even though I feel like I’ve just announced, “I’m a unicorn!” (Actually, becoming a one-horned horse and becoming pregnant had roughly the same likelihood in my book up until a few months ago.) It makes me think though, that we are a country that wants to believe--in $700 billion dollar bailouts, in Nigerian businessmen with million dollar checks, that the world makes sense even if only through the lens of a conspiracy theory--and apparently in the possibility that a totally-unprepared-for-parenthood 35 year-old with misanthropic tendencies, having a baby is not the greatest catastrophe yet set down upon mankind. Huh. Go figure. Coo-coo-ca-choo.