Freak Like Me (And Peter's Mom)

One of the most wonderful things that The Missus and I have discovered about our no-longer-so-little bundle o'joy is that he has... wait for it... double jointed elbows! Oh yeah, baby! Daddy has double jointed elbows, and he lived a zillion years before he met someone else with double jointed elbows. When he met her he married her. Mommy lived almost a zillion years, having never met anyone else with double jointed elbows, and she married the first person she met who had that same freakish mutation. Daddy + Mommy = Peter the double jointed toddler.

We found this out when Peter strutted around, dancing with no shirt on. He looked like a 16-month-old Mick Jagger. Anyway, he'd stick out his arms, facing upward, with his arms bending back farther than a mere mortal's arms. When I saw this I knew this... is... my... son. The planets aligned, constellations pointed at our boy, and um... the sun rose in the East. Um... Yeah.

But the point can not be glossed over: Peter has joined the ranks of an elite group of people, his dad, his mom, Jesus (You think a miracle man like The Son Of God couldn't bend his arm back a little when extended? He could raise the dead!), Abraham Lincoln (Look at him! You know it.), and William Shakespeare (Have you seen his signature?).

Years from now I will teach Peter the tricks of the trade for double jointed young men, specifically, sauntering up to a desk full of ladies, leaning on that desk with the arm at a regular straightness, and then bend it back to full extension while screaming in fake pain, thus eliciting the screams of disgust and fear that only teenage or adolescent girls can emit. Just thinking of my own memories of pulling that same horrible invitation-to-a-freak-out makes me think: gooooood tiiiimes. Oh Peter, what a future you have!