ENTRY:  July 30, 1970

So, is this fakokteh box doing anything?  Hello, HELLO?  Buttons, now I’m a button pusher.  Some kind of secretary now.  Hello?  Oh, hell, if it’s on it’s on and if not that’s Saul’s problem.  So yesterday I tell my Saul, “You wouldn’t believe, we’re pregnant!”  And Saul says, “you mean you’re pregnant Yetta, now isn’t a good time – can we talk about this later?”  “Later, schmater,” I say, “we’re going to have a baby, so what do you feel?”  And Saul pauses like emotions are alien to him somehow.  “You know I’m excited,” he says.  Like a dead person shows excitement as they lower him into the ground.  “But I thought we were going to wait until the business grows.”  And I’m thinking so Saul, did you tell your sperm they should be patient, maybe they should forget how to swim.  But when he gets home he got this plastic box with the cartridge thingee that only goes in backwards, a true goyish design.  “It’s a cassette recorder,” like I’m stupid, he says, “so you can keep a journal of your pregnancy so our child will know more about where he came from.”  So my hand is broken Saul, nu?  A pen and paper won’t do?  For five thousand years it worked just fine, but no more?  And so he’ll know where he came from?  He came from you getting all hot and bothered after watching Sophia Whatshername, the Italian one with the big you know whats.  Like your memory is so short you forgot what she looked like in the time it would take me to put in my diaphragm?  And four minutes later, I’m pregnant?  Charlton Heston, such a cutie even if he is a goy, couldn’t part the seas so fast as Saul is finished.  So I say “how does this thing work?” and my energetical Saul says “Yetta, I’m tired, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”  Which means my beloved husband, Thumbs Goldstein, hasn’t got a clue, what else is new.  So box, you getting this?  My child should know his father wants we should call her Sophia if it’s a girl.  I tell Saul she’ll be Sophia right after a blind moyel I hire recircumcizes you.  But by then, of course, he’s already snoring to wake the neighbors.  We’ll I’m gonna push the button says STOP/EJECT and hope it works.  If only our bed had an eject button.  God, now that my figure’s going to hell for nine months or so, thank You very much, you think on the next model of man you could put a nice on/off switch?  Well my kinder, welcome to the world, and if you’ve got complaints, go talk to your father.

First appeared here on April 3, 2016