Odd Comings and Goings

You're shelling peas and one of the pods has a baby in it! (Photo: Anne Geddes)

A recent news story told the shocking tale of a 60-year-old British woman who stumbled inside her own home, landing face down onto a metal straw that was sticking out of the drink she was carrying. The straw punctured her eyeball, causing a fatal brain injury from which she died a day later. Now that's just freaky, and certainly not something you could ever plan for. Just like those unfortunate souls who are eaten by alligators or fall off a cruise ship or have a tree fall on them while camping in the woods. Or, like Australia "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin, whose heart was pierced by the serrated, poisonous spine of a stingray as he swam with the creature while shooting a new TV show on the Great Barrier Reef.

That got me thinking about all the odd and unexpected ways people die, yet we are all born the exact same way: floating for nine months inside another human being (!!!) until being violently ejected out of their vagina. It  sounds like something straight from an editor's slush pile of rejected science fiction scripts, yet that's how every one of us got here, and crazy as it is, nobody ever speaks of it again. We all just go on living our lives like that whole thing made perfect sense.

That being the case, it seems to me we should all die the same way, or at the very least, be born in different ways. Imagine the possibilities! Like with death, they are infinite. Forget the nine-month gestation period -- the blessed event could come at anytime, anywhere. You never know. Two minutes, two weeks or two years after conception, your baby could fall from a cloud during a passing storm. Or maybe you're enjoying a day at the beach and a huge wave delivers your new baby from the briny deep, covered in seaweed, right into your arms. Or you get a package from Amazon and instead of it being that book you ordered, it's Junior. It could be anything!

At least those birth stories would be more interesting than hearing how long the mother was in labor or that the baby was born in an elevator or a taxi. Best of all, it would be quite a conversation-starter at parties:
     "So, how were you born?"
     "Well, my mother had a bad cold, and one time she sneezed really hard...."