Friday Poundings: My car's boyfriend, and Vanishing Twin Syndrome

My poor car, you guys. Ugh. I just don't know what to do about this situation.

You see, my car has a little boyfriend. It's adorable. On my morning commute, I often see this souped-up black off-road Jeep pass by in the HOV lane. It's got a white gas can with a skull and crossbones on it mounted on the spare tire -- totally badass. My car is just absolutely smitten. It's Honda puppy love.

We (my car and I) only see the Jeep in the morning, never on the afternoon commute. And my car just gets soooo excited about it. She demands I leave at the same time every day and drive in the leftmost lane so that she can maybe catch sight of her crush. If she doesn't see him for several days, she gets terribly depressed. I don't know if her little crush even notices her, though -- I mean, how can a big black Jeep like that be bothered to notice a nondescript gray Honda Civic?

Maybe my car needs a makeover ... ?

But of course I don't say anything like that to her. Every time we see the Jeep, I just announce "look, car, there's your boyfriend!" she she gets all excited and does a little dance and then gets better gas mileage the rest of the way to work. (I mean, she also gets toooootally embarrassed and is like "he's NOT my boyfriend" but I can tell what's going on. I was in middle school once too)

But my lease is almost up. In a few short weeks, the Honda will be returned to the dealership, and she'll never see her boyfriend again. My new car (expected to be a Subaru Forester) probably won't be nearly as into the black Jeep. Foresters aren't typically attracted to the "bad boy" type the way Honda Civics are. 

I just hate to see young love interrupted like this. Poor car. I honestly don't know how to break the news to her. Probably just on the way to the dealership to return her, I'll blurt it out all at once and then leave before she really has a chance to process it and get upset. Because I'm an asshole like that.


As for other things going on ... I'm still pregnant, as you may recall, and am now over five months into this thing. Not much of interest to report, really -- I'm still cruising along easily. 

The baby kicks really hard now, though. Last night, I ate some chocolate before bed, and then as we were lying in bed watching TV, the baby started playing Footloose. So I pulled down the blankets and pulled up my shirt and was like "Jesse, look!" and he looked and saw my stomach bouncing every which way all on its own and he screamed in genuine, unbidden terror. So, there's that.

And then there's the coworker of mine who starts laughing every time she sees me. She says I look so adorable that she just can't help it. This does not bother me in the least -- it's kind of funny.

Not like the coworker who has repeatedly asked me if I'm sure I'm not having twins. Okay, you may recall that we all discussed this and agreed that it's not very nice to say that to someone (not that I really care right now, but I probably will later when I'm the size of a house and ready to punch anyone any time for any reason). But mostly it bothers me because ... I'm NOT having twins. We've talked about this many times, coworker. You know there's only one baby. And yet, the same joke every time. "Well, you never know!" he says.

I mean ... I just ... well, I kind of DO know, y'know? There is only one heartbeat in there. One set of feet kicking me. At our last ultrasound, they looked into my uterus from every possible angle -- I even got ultrasound goo on my bra somehow. There is only one baby in there. "Well, you never know!!!!"

I do, though. I know.

Although, while we're on the subject of twins ... Jesse was originally a twin, very briefly, in utero. But then he killed and ate his twin. HE KILLED AND ATE HIS TWIN. I don't know how to feel about this. Do I respect him more? Do I fear him? What if he gets really angry one day -- will he kill and eat me too? Will it be easy for him to do this, given that he has killed before? They say the first one's the hardest, and after that it just gets easier and easier. I mean, if he was willing to murder his own brother for no reason at all, what's to stop him from murdering any of us?

Apparently this is actually really common. Like, REALLY common. It's called Vanishing Twin Syndrome, and studies show that something ridiculous like 8% of pregnancies (OR MORE) start out with identical twins until one of the twins Cain & Abels the other one to death. I mean, from an evolutionary perspective it makes total sense -- your body splits the fertilized egg in two and doubles its chances at having one of them survive. The murder usually happens so early in the pregnancy that the mother doesn't even know about it. 

In fact, it's theorized that this may be where left-handed people come from -- many sets of identical twins have one left-handed and one right-handed person, so perhaps any singleton lefties are just the surviving half of a set of identical twins.

"Vanishing Twin Syndrome"? More like COLD-BLOODED MURDERING TWIN SYNDROME.

Uh oh, you guys. My sister is left-handed. So is President Obama.

Perhaps they, too, have killed.

We are not safe. None of us is safe.

NONE OF US IS SAFE.

WE'RE SURROUNDED BY MURDERERS!!! RUN, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!!