Gooseberry: Sugar and spice

Just more than nine years ago My Wonderful Wife and I faced the single most frightening prospect of our married life.

I can remember exactly where we were when the doctor told us those three words that struck terror into ourhearts and changed our lives forever.

It was January. We were in the hospital. It had snowed the night before and it was shaping up to be a quiet day. We knew, however, that something was up. They had just performed a series of tests on Holly. Her numbers looked good and by all accounts she was in the hospital to have a very routine procedure, but we could tell by the way the doctor was acting that we were about to go through something like nothing we had ever experienced before and that there was absolutely nothing we could have done that would have prepared us for what happened next.

"It's a girl."

And just like that, our peaceful, simple, quiet life was shattered.

Before Sweet Princess was born that cold wintery January day, we only had sons. First we had Son Number One, a caveman. Even now, at age 17, he grunts when he answers questions, wants the potatoes passed, or is expostulating on the finer points of regional economics. Then we had Son Number Two, or Che, as we have taken to calling him because of his selective socialtistic tendencies. Che was very different from Neaderthal. He not only speaks in full sentences, but he speaks in full paragraphs and complete discertations. He rambles ad nauseum on every thought that enters his mind. Once, when he was in second grade, his teacher gave him a test just to make him be quiet. She about passed out when she heard him pick up the paper and say, "Question number one..." We then had Son Number Three. A diabolically precocious child that loves to pull practical jokes, eat fish, play video games and fully expects to rule the world by the time he turns 15. He hates the nickname Chad, so of course that is what we are calling him right now.

The difference between boys and girls goes way beyond plumbing and the tendency of one group to be dirty, slobbering idiots while the other likes to wear pink. There are subtle emotional and relationship differences that make raising girls a most perilous enterprise indeed. For example: If I walk into the room and hand one of my sons a piece of candy and one of the other boys happens to see what I did, I will invariably be met with the question, "Why did you give that to him and not me?" I can answer back "Because I like him better," and Che, or Neanderthal, or Chad, will laugh at me and say, "No really, why did you give it to him and not me?"

If I were to say the same thing to one of my daughters it would be a disaster. Decades later I would still be apologizing and trying to make up to her. And no matter how many ponies, or dresses, or shoes, or hair dohickies I bought her I would still be that mean old man who ruined her entire self image and life.

Girls smell better than boys -- but they also scream a lot louder.

Boys can be destructive. They are like forces of nature. They blow into a room, rumble around the furniture, shake the rafters and break invaluable objects. Girls cause much more destruction, they just do it on a much more quiet way.

Boys are all about themselves, their stomachs, their entertainment, their hair, their latest video games, to the point of being distracted from any emotional or relationship ties to the conversation. Girls are all about themselves, their stomachs, their entertainment, and their hair and you had better not forget any emotional or relationship ties whatsoever.

Boys are happy if you give them food. Girls want you to hold their hands while they nibble on chocolate and tell you they don't like what you fixed them for dinner.

Boys want to be left alone. Girls want you to drop everything you are doing and rush to their sides and protect them from monsters 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Yes, our lives were indelibly marked that day nine years ago when we found out child number four was a girl. Of course, after that stunning development we did the only thing we could to save us from what surely would have been a fate most dire -- we had another girl.

We had no choice.

The first one had us outnumbered. We had to have another one just to balance things out.