The Dow Is Up!

Last night, I had my fantasy football draft with all my homies from UIC. Yeah, that’s right, my “homies.” I’m all urban now. Maybe they just rubbed off on me last night. You see, they’re all (for lack of a better term) urban. By that, of course, I mean that they live in the city.

I won’t bore you with the details of my draft. If you ask me, there are three things that people should never talk about: poker hands they’ve played, rounds of golf they’ve played, and anything related to fantasy football. That made our draft a little difficult last night because I insisted that nobody could say a word about who they were drafting. We ended up using semaphore to signal in our picks. Unfortunately, nobody knew how to either give or receive the signals. So nobody knows who picked whom. I like it that way. I don’t see how I can possibly lose this season.

This was the first time I’ve seen my UIC Homies in months, so it was nice to catch up with them. One of them had a kid about 5 months ago. So we were exchanging child-raising stories, much to the chagrin of the other Homies. All I could think of was “just wait.”

Do you know about “just wait”? Perhaps you’re a Just-Waiter. A Just-Waiter is someone who has the uncontrollable urge to respond with a “just wait” story after someone tells them a story about their child. For example, if I told a story about how Luke just started sitting up, a Just-Waiter would tell me, “Just wait until he starts crawling. He’ll be all over the place!” And if he starts crawling, a Just-Waiter tells me, “Just wait until he starts walking. You won’t be able to sit still again until the day you die.”

You see, when I was talking to Brian last night about his son, I kept thinking “just wait.” Only, instead of thinking of all the horrible things that go along with having kids, all I could think about were the fun things. For example, Brian was telling a story about taking his son to CostCo and how much he enjoyed it (as an amorphous blob). I just wanted to tell him, “Just wait until he’s old enough to help you load your car up with groceries.”

Maybe I’m just an optimist or maybe I just really enjoy having kids. (Or in truth, it might have something to do with how easy Luke has been to raise thus far.) But having Luke in my life has been nothing but positive. And when people tell me stories about their kids, all I can think about is the fun things that Luke does. And it’s sad to say, but I actually look forward to other people encountering those things with their own children. It’s like having a talking dog. It’s just wicked cool. (As long as he doesn’t turn out to be one of those talking dogs like they have in cartoons that talks in front of you, but then as soon as you’re around someone else, he won’t talk at all. And then you get him alone again and he won’t shut up. That kind of talking dogs sucks.)

Anyway, if you know a Just-Waiter, do yourself (and the rest of humanity, really) a favor and punch that person right in the nose the next time you see them. And if that Just-Waiter happens to be none other than you, feel free to punch yourself. (If you think it’d be weird punching yourself in the nose, just let me know. I’d be happy to help you out.)