Determining sex

We had a baby shower today at work, and I was part of the organizing committee. As a part of my duties I picked up a few decorations. Boy, have times changed!! When I was having babies, back in the 80’s, it was extremely unusual to know the sex of the baby before it was born. This was first generation ultrasound so you could barely tell it was a baby when they took a peek. To find out the sex they had to have that thing that I can’t spell (not even well enough for Spell Check to get), the thing where they stick a needle through your belly button and extract fluid. This usually meant you were having some major league problems with your pregnancy to begin with. Not a fun time for anyone.

Your other option for determining the sex was the local witch doctor, or countless grandmas and aunts. Their methods involved all manner objects being suspended over your belly, from a sewing needle, to a pencil, or a lock of the father’s hair. The sex was pronounced depending on weather the object moved up and down or side to side, or rotated in a clockwise or counterclockwise manner. There was also the “What are you craving test”, salty items for boys and sweet items for girls. And, of course if you were carrying the baby high it was a boy, while girls you carried low. Or was it the other way around? There were a million ways to tell if your were having a boy or girl.

The most telling factor about all this homespun knowledge and wisdom is that when you went to buy shower decorations, they were all in unisex color schemes. You would have had to look really hard for pink or blue. In fact you would pretty much have had to make your own or special order them. Now days it’s the complete opposite, almost all the shower decorations are either pink, or blue, and unisex colors are a bit more hard to find. They’re still out there, but not in the same kind of variety.

I can’t imagine not wanting to know the sex. I hear people talk about not wanting to know, but 9 times out of 10 they end up asking. They always say the same thing, “I want to be surprised.” I figure you can have your surprise now or later, it’s not like you knew at the moment of conception what you were creating. Of course that day is probably not far off. I wonder how they will do it. Will there be some pill or gel you use that will block all the boy sperm so you get a girl, or all the girl sperm so you get a boy? It would kind of be like the club houses we built as a kid and put up the “No boys allowed!!” signs. Now there’s a packaging concept!

IQ and the Navy Chief

I took an IQ test the other day. It was one of those your Facebook buddies post. It was only ten questions, all really easy. I’m apparently quite brilliant. Who knew? My IQ, according to this test, is 147.

So there are a few things I wonder about, like how do you get 147 out of 10 questions? Exactly what is the math involved in that calculation? Not to mention how can you measure IQ from only 10 questions? I seem to remember an IQ test I took years ago that included a lot of questions.

Heck, the military entrance test I took was hundreds of questions and took most of the day. That was in the days before desktop computers. You where picked up at oh-dark-thirty in the morning by your recruiter, those ever helpful individuals, and driven downtown to the federal building. You spent the next 6 hours at a desk in a big room with about 50 other people taking a series of tests. At the end of the tests you got to sit around in another room and wait for them to be scored and evaluated. Then you were called into an office with a representative of the military branch you were interested in, to talk about the results and your future.

This was 1977 and I was interested in the Navy. I wanted to work in military PR, or be an air traffic controller. I’m called into an office with a Chief that has so many service bars down his sleeve it looks like a piano keyboard. He’s an old guy (probably about my age now) who came up through the Navy when it was a man’s world. Women were for dating on shore, or nursing you when you were wounded. He was clearly “apprehensive” about letting women into any areas that were non-traditional. Can we say understatement? He was not a happy camper.

This guy makes me nervous! We sit down and he tells me I’ve scored a 96. That makes me even more nervous because I’m thinking this could be really good or really, really bad. I answered about 300 questions and if this score means I only got 96 right; I’m done. So, I ask him, “Is that good?” It about kills him to tell me its 96 out of a possible 100. I feel a lot better, but still nervous, because there are no positive vibes coming off this guy at all. I ask him what that score qualifies me to do, and he almost chokes when he tells me anything not combat related. He quickly suggests I look into becoming a boiler tech. I couldn’t help it, I laughed. Someone had told me the week before that if you completely wrecked your test you could still be a boiler tech.

He mentioned that I had scored a 99 on vocabulary and that was the highest score he’d ever seen. He wanted to know how I did it. This question was more and accusation then real interest. What do you say to a question like that? I just looked him in the eye and said, “I read.” He seemed to think there was something fishy with that answer, but didn’t say anything about it.

I told him what I was interested in and he was very happy to inform me that there were only 500 positions in all of the military for the PR field and that they didn’t guarantee those positions. Once he established I was 5’ 4¼” tall he got a gleam in his eyes and told me I was too short to be an air traffic controller. To farther discourage me, he quickly pointed out that I would have to have a pelvic exam. I couldn’t help it, I laughed again. It was so clear he thought this information would completely discourage me. It was funny just hearing him say it, since it was so clear he wasn’t at all comfortable with the term. But, he was willing to bear anything to uphold the traditions of his Navy.

What the Chief couldn’t do to discourage me, a new boyfriend did. I ended up not going into the Navy or any other branch of the military. The boyfriend didn’t last for long, and I went on with my life. I still crack a smile when I think of the Chief.