OKay I am but that is sooo not the point...
Well today marks another day more spectacular than many others. Today, my first born turns... dare I say it... fifteen!!! I am seriously wanting to cry over here. I'm not old enough for this!!!
Fifteen years ago today, my now ex husband drug me to Rent a center because he wanted to rent a playstation... yes the original NOT the 2 or the 3... or the 4 (Great, I just made myself feel freaking older) and on the way there I made him stop at burger king because I wanted three chicken sandwiches. Now I can see the face that most of you are making now but there's a few factors in that. One, back in 1999 those sumbishes were not as thick as you would think. Two back then, they were 2 for $3.00. And three, I was nine million months pregnant and hungry all the damn time. So back to my story. The man wanted to rent a playstation and he decided I needed to get out of our brand new apartment that we had just gotten into a week before. I decided that if this tard was going to make me drag my pregnant butt out of the house where people could see a beached whale walking I was going to eat something good. I inhaled those sandwiches. So we get to Rent a center and I'm sitting on the couch with these pains that keep coming and going and the coming felt like I was going to be ripped in half. The lady looks up and realizes that I am tearing the trim off a God awful puke green pillow (I will remember that pillow all of my days because we had to buy it) and she's the first out of any of us to realize that I just might be in labor. She gets all alarmed, I wave her off and tell her that it's just gas because I just had BK, the ex gets impatient because he wants his playstation. This continued for about a half an hour more (Back then you had to fill out booku paperwork to rent to own something and they actually called your references to check up on you BEFORE you walked out of the store with the swag) And the ex was none too happy about having to buy this puke green pillow that his wife had destroyed. (He actually threw this pillow at me literally and metaphorically several times over the next few years) Finally the woman behind the counter asks me about the pains and when I described them, she looked at my ex and told him that the hospital was right down the street and if he didn't take me there right now, she was going to call an ambulance because I was clearly in labor and he needed to stop thinking about the damn playstation. I swear on a stack of hymnals she said it just like that.
So ex ponied up and took me to the er. All the while on the phone complaining to my mother about me tearing up the pillow. My moms advice? "Go in the er and tell them that your 19 year old wife is in the car and in labor." He did so. They naturally requested that I come inside the hospital because you know parking lot babies weren't really done back then. I flat out refused. Just the week before my doctor whom I had seen before I moved 200 miles south to the land of nothing and nowhere had informed me that my baby was backwards and would require a c section. I had informed him that the child would stay in there until he learned how to act and turned around. He laughed and Uncle Sam said move so I left my comfort zone and moved. So Randy then come back out the car, still on the phone with my mom and says I need to get out. I kinda pulled an exorcist move on him and screamed that it was just gas and to leave me the bleep blep bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep alone. My moms advice? "Take the keys and go tell them she won't get out of the car." His response? "But ma, she can't drive stick." My moms response "Randy, she is scared and in labor. SHE WILL LEARN. Take the keys."
Damn my mother knows me so well. She's right. IN full blown labor, I would have slid over to the drivers seat as best I could and learned how to drive a stick shift that day. Unfortunately, he listened to my mother and took the damn keys. It took three orderlies to pull me out of that car. Partly because it was a Mazda Protege and I was the size of a buick and partly because I was holding onto the dash and the seat for dear life because I was not going into that hospital. I simply wasn't.
I ended up in the hospital. Three orderlies and needle full of sleepy medicine is absolutely no match for a vastly pregnant and scared nineteen year old. I woke up in a bed in a gown with monitors on. The kindly informed me that I was indeed in full blown labor and my baby was backwards. I was going to have a ce section. Two hours of me telling them that they were going to turn my baby and NOT cut me open later, they informed me that my baby was in distress and they were going to cut me open whether I liked it or not. There were a few discrepancies in their story there however. I've watched birthing shows so I know that when they say a baby is in distress they knock the mom out and get the baby. Not so here. They had time to take me to the OR and position me to get the epidural. It wouldn't take and the nice nurse who said "I don't care if you bite me or clow me, just don't move." while she held me for them to try came away with blood running down the side of her face because the doctor tried five times in the same spot to put the epidural in and kept hitting resistance. (I have back problems to this day) It was at this point that decided (A whole 30 minutes later with a woman who had a baby in utero in distress... see the discrepancies??) that they were just going to put me to sleep. I woke up a few hours later to see my husband sitting in the rocker looking up at me with this goofy grin. "So that gas... it was six pounds and eight ounces." That was all he said to me. Lovely lovely morphine knocked me out again and when I woke up my son was named Jovan. Like the perfume.
I flipped out. First of all I wanted to name him Nathaniel and second Jovan was a direct naming for Randy's sister Shavon. In my drugged sleep my child got named for my husband sister. Noooooo no no no no! The best I could do at that point I was told was change the spelling of his name. So i changed it to Jovaughn.
I didn't call my son by his actual name until he was two. I called him Jojo, buddah, or sweetpea. Never his name. After he was two I had two more babies and I had to give up the nicknames and call him by his actual name. It grew on me.
Interesting thing though. In my ex's family the boys all have their father's name as a middle name. Randy is Randy Paul because his father is Paul. Jovaughn is Jovaughn Randy because his father is Randy. If he chooses to continue the tradition his son will be XXX Jovaughn. I may have wrapped up most annoying grandmother of the year award fifteen years ago...
I love my son. We have issues because he was in his formative years when his dad treated me like crap and I took it so he slips and thinks this is the way to treat women most of the time but I'm hoping one day he'll meet that one good woman who will set him straight in a way that I haven't been able to do.
I'm taking him to the mall on Saturday after I get off from work. Because year... working an eight hour shift then trolling the mall with a teenager who probably doesn't want to be seen with me is JUST what I want. I wonder if I can con him into dinner and be done. I can't tell you how much I hate the mall.
Let me clarify. Hate the mall with my family. On dates it's actually pretty fun. Sort of.
So Happy Birthday Jovaughn. Thank you for reminding me just how old I am. Thank you for being my son and when you grow up and have flashbacks of all the mommy mistakes I made that probably should have killed you (I swear that child is alive by the grace of God cause only He knows what I was doing most of my child's youth, I was so unequipped) please don't put me in a groady nursing home and forget me. I love you boo boo! (No I won't call you that on your facebook page... or maybe I might...)
Stay frosty Bloggers!
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