Every once in a while I'm seized by the realization that everyone on this planet is here because someone had sex.
Whether it was rough and tumble, sweet and slow, down and dirty, or quick and uptight like a sneeze they couldn't hold back -- it had to happen for the zygote to take.
I realize I'm not the first to have this thought, but while it lasts it transforms everyone around me, in much the way imagining them naked might. I wonder at the mashup of their parents and grandparents features, and think of them as some kind of crazy cubist coupling creature, all compact.
I wonder if their disposition is determined by the mood of the moment they were conceived -- are sweet optimists born of tender, hopelessly romantic unions? Are cynics born of dry and loveless mergers?
Probably not, but I like to wonder about it anyway.
One pleasant side effect of thinking this way is the benevolence for humanity that accompanies it, unbidden.
Admittedly, these thoughts usually come to me after one too many glasses of wine.
This one was called Sexto, a Spanish table red meritage sort of thing, with a healthy splash of tempranillo. Tasty.
Still posting by cameraphone from Austin, TX
5 comments:
This will completely alter my thinking process from now on. Have often thought of everyone being someone's child but never the act that brought them into being. A very interesting thought!
I should probably add that none of this has been empirically validated. Nor does it account for the offspring of artificial insemination. I fully expect to receive comments of outrage from their representatives, shortly.
;)
I like how you think. But this is going to seriously distract me next time I'm at Starbucks.
I think I read somewhere that the first test tube baby is in her twenties now. And actually there are probably millions of kids now who were conceived that way. I wonder what the ratio will be for kids being born 50 years from now?
there was a great piece about "surrogate siblings" recently in the NYTimes -- kids born of the same donor father who looked each other up and found all kinds of cool connections between themselves because of the father they had never met.
had no luck at all finding the link, unfortunately.
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