BABY, TRUST ME, PICK YOUR FATHER'S NOSE

When I graduated from music theatre school and performed in the graduating showcase in front of a panel of New York’s busiest casting directors and agents, this is what one of them said to me; “great voice, fabulous acting, excellent dancing, pity about the nose.”

I tell you this not so you feel sorry for me, (at the tender age of thirty-one I’ve dealt with that by now) but because this week, as I type in fact, the baby is working on its nose. Growing cartilage the book tells me.                                          

I have a friend who has a gorgeous nose and she has so little cartilage she can squash it flat against her face. Not me. Mine is so cartilage-filled, robust you might say, that I’ve copped a few water polo balls in a direct hit and even managed to score a goal with my very own schnozz. So I’ve been talking to the peanut and telling it that if it knows what’s good for it, it will pick its father’s nose. I’ve got red hair and we’re all the rage at the moment, so it can pick my hair colour if it likes, but really, to avoid merciless teasing at school and the eternal fact that no sunglasses will ever look good on you, pick your father’s nose.

Wouldn’t that be funny if it worked that way – that your baby was in the uterus with a list of its parents body parts and sat there ticking off which ones it wanted…Don’t know what I was doing – I got it mixed up and picked my mother’s nose and my father’s tree trunk thighs instead of the other way around. 

If I could pick for the peanut I might do something like this; either of our eyes, we both have blue ones but one of Gregory’s has a green section in it, which might be cool. We both have big legs, so either way it's sunk on that one. If it’s a girl I’d go for my upper body, but if it’s a boy, pick Gregory’s for sure. He’s quite ‘ropy’ after some fifteen odd years spent lugging things about a kitchen. Skip both of us and go straight to the uncle or grandfather genes for money-savvy-ness and general interest in fiscal matters. Patience from the grandmother’s, I’d go for my hands over Gregory’s if you’re inclined to play the piano – his are like meat hooks, but there’s not much we can do about skin colour. The baby is destined to be pale and freckly and spend its summers doused in buckets of 400 plus sunscreen and having me screech at it to get out of the sun in the middle of the day.  

All in all, I guess it’s not too bad a gene pool, although that’s what everyone thinks – that we’re all so great we should reproduce and leave the world a little bit better because a part of us is still walking the earth – but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Whatever we get, we’ll love it regardless. How can we not? We’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.