Because it’s New Year’s Eve, I’d like to pay tribute to maybe the finest TV show ever, which ran on the Discovery Channel from 2009 through 2011, and which was called, gloriously, I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant. This show told the stories, through documentary interviews and re-enactments, of women who managed to give birth without being aware they were pregnant, and one episode was titled Baby In My Sweatpants.
The women’s stories were often similar: the surprise-Mom was using birth control, she didn’t gain weight, she’d had other children, but she still Didn’t Know. One morning she experiences agonizing stomach cramps, which she blames on either food poisoning or the flu. Then she retreats, most often to the bathroom at McDonalds, where she takes, in the words of one surprise-Mom, “a wicked dump”, followed by a wave of relief: “I mean, I just felt so much better.” Then the toilet starts to wail.
The surprise-Mom is shocked but ultimately delighted and she then informs the surprise-Dad, who says something like, “I didn’t see that coming!” and then welcomes the new addition. My concern is this: someday, that surprise-baby will grow up and most likely watch his or her episode, the way a person might page through a wedding album or graduation photos. Will that now-grown baby be proud to learn that they were not only an accident, but possibly a bad batch of McNuggets?
In the coming year I’d like to see the following new shows: I Sued My Parents For Mental Anguish, I Was A Toilet Baby, and I Still Wear Those Sweatpants. There’s an actual upcoming show called Sex Sent Me to the ER, which includes the story of a 400-pound male virgin who, while having first-time sex with his 100-pound girlfriend, accidentally slams her head through the wall. “My first reaction,” the guy recalls, “was that I killed her. I thought, Jen is dead.” Happily, Jen only has a concussion, and a TV deal.
An early clip from Sex Sent Me to the ER also features a threeway gone wrong, with the two women screaming at each other, as the man, lying on a gurney in a hospital gown, yells, “Shut up! I’m the one with the fractured penis!”
