My Call, Ma

Add my mother to the list of complainers. She just wrote me on the Blackberry (man that thing's addictive!), asking to have "a word." Turns out she's miffed about the Naming Contest. Says she's the little Sea Monkey's mother, and it's her prerogative to pick a name for him.

Now the way I see it, a mother acquires naming rights over a child in one of two ways: (1) she carries the child around inside her for nine months, which I hear is uncomfortable, and (2) at a certain point the kid comes out of her, which I hear hurts like hell.

All that's well and good, but this is a special case. By either measure, I have a greater entitlement, viz.:

(1) Ma might have carried my brother around for nine months, but I bore the load for thirty-three years. Shoot — even when the little guy was inside her, he was also inside me. So there was never even a moment when Ma had exclusive sovereignty over my brother.

(2) When my mother went into labor with her twin sons, it was the bigger one — me — who brought the pain. Remember, now: my brother was lodged in my head. So as much as it probably sucked to give birth to me (I was a big 'un, weighing it at 8 lbs., 15 oz.), Ma did not suffer any additional pain on the margin in delivering her second son. We both came out at once. And she got all this done overnight. Whereas the pain I felt over Christmas went on for days. I don't know how it compares to labor — and I won't dare to speculate, Sisters — but the headaches I had sure lasted longer, and I'm looking at four months' rehabbing from the surgery. In short, I believe I can confidently say that I went through more hell getting Lil' Bro extracted from my sinus than Ma did delivering him so many years ago.

I'm naming this kid, Ma, and that's that. Don't try writing me again on this — I've reconfigured my spam filter to bounce any further messages on this subject.