In the Beginning

Getting pregnant. This is the first hurdle to leap on the road to having a baby (well the first is talking your wife into strange yet wondrous things in the bedroom). 

In the beginning we thought that if we "do it" we will make a baby. After marching to that beat for more than a year and a half we came to realize that sex doesn't always lead to babies. Curse those who preached pre-marital abstinence to avoid unwanted pregnancies. 

Needless to say, we tried and tried but in my mind I thought that Kristyn's womb was a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase. We then decided to take drastic measures which includes, in part, my early morning deposit at the fertility clinic...

It was a morning like any other, the sun was shining, there was an April chill in the air and I was stepping out before church to "get my wife pregnant" in the clinical way. I climbed into the car and began to back out of the driveway with a heavy weight on my shoulders and millions of eager sperm swimming in my loins. I pointed the nose of the car toward my destiny, which was to become a father by any means necessary. Oh, for to have a child I would scale Everest; I would fight a small bear; I would watch a What Not To Wear marathon. Needless to say I would do almost anything to add another mouth to the Hancock table and that includes "doing my duty" in a place of business. By place of business I mean the fertility clinic at the University of Utah, and by "doing my duty" I mean filling a cup with baby paste!

I think that you all know where I am going with this. I don't like to beat around the bush, I always choose the direct route. So there I am, sitting in a waiting room at 7:30am with the knowledge that soon a young attractive woman will call my name and hand me a small cup on our way back to the "sample giving room". This room has other names in Vegas and on the streets of Bangkok. 

There I am, all alone in a nicely appointed room with a cup, a task to do and very little self confidence in my ability to perform said task. I think that I should mention here that this was not my first rodeo, meaning, this was not the first time that I have been forced to give a sample of my manliness. Months before I had to be tested for virility and such in a place not much different from the one where the magic happened. Still, I was a bundle of nerves. Lucky for me the clinic had a fresh supply of not - so- fresh or current gentlemen's magazines for just this type of occasion. Now most of you know me and and right now I want to say more about these 1980's mags but for the sake of decency and fear of my wife's wrath, I cannot. Like many of you I have always thought that one day I would become an actor and as an actor I would be asked to do a sex scene at some point in my career. I have alway fought with my answer. Should I or should I not bare it all for the sake of an Oscar? Where am I going with this? At the time, in my nervous approach to clinically knocking my wife up, I was wondering what it must be like to perform in front of a camera with the director barking orders and my make-up person touching up my love handles. Then and there I was forced to go to my happy place. A place beyond human interaction, a place were I could be alone with my task...and a cup to fill.

I thought that the worst was over, but then I had to deposit my sample through a small revolving door and walk out past everyone in the waiting room filled with men and women that knew exactly what I had just done. Even more, I then rushed back to church where I had to greet people for our 9:15 service. This greeting includes passing out bulletins and yes...shaking hands. If they only knew!