the second test

shannon and i found out that we were having a baby just before going on a trip to see our families in various southern locals - chatty, asheville, and lynchburg. the timing was fantastic - we got to tell my sister and her fiance and both sets of parents in one swoop.

on our way from chattanooga to asheville shan called the ob-gyn to make her first appointment. they asked if she had taken two pregnancy tests. she had only taken one and they wouldn't give her appointment until she had taken two. we were like "well, these things are supposed to be 97% accurate, but whatever." so we pulled off to an ingle's grocery store about thirty minutes from my parents house in madison county, nc.

while madison county is not the most backwards place in the world, it's not the most forwards either. think big pick up trucks, windy roads, and one high school to serve a population spread out over 450 square miles of mountainous terrain.

we walked into ingle's in search of a pregnancy test. we wandered around the pharmacy section, nonchalantly looking for what urbandictionary.com defines as "the magic wand that can make a man dissappear." i think "dissappear" is the same thing as "disappear."

we kept wandering, walking past the deodorant, tylenol, and cotton balls numerous times. after about five minutes we decided their magic wands must have been hidden somewhere, cause we saw no sign of them. we realized we were going to get to let someone else share in this moment.

i tend to approach such "biological" purchases with confidence, while shannon tends to avoid them, electing instead to go pick up some bread or hold a place in the checkout line.

so i walked up to an ingle's worker who was walking by. at this moment shannon, knowing that i was about to discuss reproductive health with a forty year old stranger, turned the other direction and hid in the diaper aisle.

the conversation went as follows:

me: hey where are the pregnancy tests?

ingle's worker: oh, they're locked up in that cabinet over there with the condoms.

okay, brief interruption. maybe madison county is a bit more backwoods than previously suggested. clearly there is a correlation, and (duh) a causal effect, between access to birth control and the need for pregnancy tests. spend a second imagining what the management meeting must have looked like at ingle's when they made the decision to lock up the condoms and the pregnancy test. i'm sure it involved the phrases "damn teenagers," "customer loyalty," "we ain't social services," and at least three dirty jokes.

back to the conversation:

me: well i need a pregnancy test.

ingle's worker: alright i'll get the key.

as he walks off to get the key, he calls out over his shoulder: hoping for that negative huh?!

another time out. it was a priori obvious to the ingle's worker that anyone taking a pregnancy test would be hoping for a single line rather than the double line. and it was obvious to him that this is the sort of thing a complete stranger would enjoy talking about.

when confronted with the bizarre conventional wisdom of another culture, typically the head nod helps the moment pass. but this was my child we were talking about!! i want that baby!! i love that baby!!

i responded modestly: no . . . actually we're hoping for a positive.

he got the key. i got test. we got out of there.

thirty minutes later we were at my parents house, shan quickly took the test, just to be sure, then let my very surprised and very happy parents know the good news.