Parents Met. Combined Photos. Thought I would be Cute so they Googled "How to Make a Baby."

So I was at this party the other month when some lightweight vegan started getting perky off of too much tomato juice and asked the host if they could get everyone to sit down and share their conception stories. I quickly saw two ways out; tell a crafty lie or play mute. When the turn came to share the events of my conception, things got out of hand. I tried to lie and play mute, and many party-goers inconceivably walked out.

To start things off I held out my hands for something to draw on. I was handed a baby and a laser pointer. So, as I practiced laser exfoliating the baby’s belly with stirring red light, I conceived of a lie. I figured the lie would go like this; parents meet, combine their headshots, see that I will be adorable, Google how to make a baby, then make a baby.

There were several reasons this was completely false and unbelievable to me, but I figured they wouldn’t catch on. How could they know that my parents never “met” because they are actually fraternal twins, that they couldn’t combine their headshots because their heads are already attached, that they couldn’t "see" I was going to be adorable because they are both partially blind in their shared eye, and that they can’t Google anything because they only trust Baidu, the Chinese search engine?

To convey to the attendees that the first part of my story was that my Parents Met, I drew some sloppy stick figures holding hands. I should probably point out here that I can’t draw and have no concept of head-to-body ratio, so the general consensus derived from my drawing was “Ah, his parents were aliens.” I couldn’t dissuade them. Hell, I couldn’t even speak… so I moved on.

Next my parents Combined Photos and fell in love with my potential face. To convey this touching non-reality, I drew a picture of two faces smashing together with DNA strands exploding in every direction. Their only guess was “aliens combining DNA.” I was starting to get a weird crowd from the vibe. I decided to stay away from stick figures.

In my flustered state I predicted that the furthest possible thing from a stick figure would be an Emporer penguin. To show everyone that my parents Thought I would be Cute enough to bother Googling what sex was, I drew a penguin holding a headshot in one flipper and a hatching egg in the other.

“Aliens implanted the combined DNA in a penguin egg!” shouted Sigourney Weaver. 

I should have known she was behind this messy chalk outline of Pictionary murder. She was in Aliens and Avatar and she voiced over the American version of Planet Earth. She had been planting guesses the entire game, I never even had a conceivable chance of winning.

Partially because I wanted to leave but more because I wanted to hear Sigourney’s conception story, I decided to wrap up my own struggling scenario. To show that my parents Googled “How to make a Baby” I drew a comfortable looking twin bed with a computer on it, and waited. I waited impatiently for a good answer. There were many murmurings and then:

“A desk?! Is that a desk?” 

Either some wise guy in the back was completely unable to interpret what a good Serta looks like or Sigourney was off her alien kick and on to solid oak idiocy. I’d had enough. I took myself off Mute.

“A desk? A desk!!? No, it isn’t a desk. My dad HATES desks. Why? Because my dad was RAPED on a desk. BY MY MOM. And THAT’S how I was CONCEIVED!” To add insult and salt to the phrases I had bulleted into Sigourney’s hanging jaw, I told everyone that I would MUCH rather have a British man narrating my waterfall chase scenes then some washed up, crack-addled poor man’s version of Susan Sarandon. Sig looked as if she had been slapped around by an otherworldy being.

When I was done with my tirade, I handed her my keys and said, “I don’t feel like driving… can you take me home Mom?”