Alex and Annie: A Bad Jokes Spinoff

Epilogue (Alex): More Abundant Than Laughter

Never wanted to be married. 

But then came Annie.

Never thought I'd even consider marriage. 

But I wanted it all with Annie.

Never thought I'd be married with children.

But I'd wanted children to love with Annie.

Now, because we'd decided to have children all those years ago, I was sitting down with my sixteen-year-old son, my first born, the night before his first date.

"Dad?" he asked. Probably wondering why I'd been sitting on the edge of his bed for the last ten minutes without saying a word. Moments from his life flashing through my mind. His birth. His first steps. His first day of school. Riding his first bike. Getting his license. And now, a new first.

"George, I wanted to talk with you before you had your first date tomorrow."

He paled a bit. "Dad, if this is a birds and the bees talk again, I'm still scarred from the first one. All I can say is we had sex ed in school and that was way more helpful than all the stuff you talked about happening in the animal kingdom."

I rubbed my jaw, remembering the blank looks I'd gotten from George when I'd sat him down in front of the Powerpoint presentation I'd put together and walked him through everything he needed to know about sex. Annie had interrupted, horrified, when she heard me talking about female sharks needing thicker skin than the males since the males bit into them --

"I swear, by the time Mom stepped in, I was so confused by your presentation I thought if I did it, I could get a girl pregnant with a litter of wild hyenas, Dad. Your talk made no sense."

"Maybe certain facts could have been clarified a bit more," I said defensively, "but the the basic, underlying concepts were there, son." 

I would stand by that Powerpoint. It really was excellent, extremely detailed and thorough and broke things down simply enough so they could be understood by a new teen.

"Dad, I don't have tusks so I'm not sure what the male warthog had to do with anything."

"Let's agree to disagree on how helpful it was," I said. Children were notorious for not appreciating the lengths we went to for them. "But I came to talk to you about something else."

His relief was obvious.

"George, do you think your mother and I are happy?"

He blinked at me, as if it had never occurred to him before to question that. "Well, I guess, yeah."

"What tells you that?"

"Dad, come on. Do we have to do this?" 

I think he was flashing back to the time he used his first set of lock picks from Santa one night and let himself into the master bedroom when Annie was on all fours and I was slamming into -- Focus, Alex. Got a motherfucking deadbolt on the bedroom door the next day after that fiasco. Annie blushed for a solid week and left it to me to have a discussion with George about knocking on closed doors and never, ever, ever using those fucking lock picks again on any closed bedroom doors. Or bathroom doors.

"No, George. It has nothing to do with that. I'm asking you to think about something you've taken for granted all your life. Why do you think your mom and I are happy?"

Is there anyone better at the long-suffering sigh than a teenager? George could have given a master class with the sound that came out of him.

"Well, you make each other laugh. You guys always talk, you're always doing stuff together. You hold hands and kiss and...ugh. Is there a point to this, Dad?"