Telling your own parents that they are going to be grandparents for the first time is always an exciting, and also somehow daunting exercise. For any father of a girl, no matter how old, it is his final irrefutable proof that his little girl is actually having (dare we say it?) SEX. After all, nothing like the existence of a baby on the way, a little "bun in the oven", to confirm that thought in his mind. If you are lucky, the aged parent's fond thoughts of being a grandfather can obscure any murderous thoughts he might have towards the "guy who got his daughter knocked up".
For the Sweetpea and myself, the whole difficult revelation to the family was compounded by the fact that the whole family was living about 11 300 kilometers away. How best to do it? A phone call didn't seem momentous enough for the news we had to convey - after all, they were not only getting a first grandchild, but first and second grandchildren all in one swoop! We felt as though our extreme commitment to the propagation of the human race should be celebrated with a more portentous announcement. And so we came up with a plan: we would make a Powerpoint presentation, that would masquerade as a cheesy, please-forward-to-all-your-friends type of slideshow, and only at the end, would the truth be revealed. So here it is:
Of course, at no stage had either of us considered that, growing up in an age where pregnancy tests are not so freely available and a woman had to go to her doctor for a blood test to confirm she was pregnant, none of the prospective grandparents would actually know that they were looking at a positive pregnancy test. In fact, my mom commented later that, although she got the message, she still had no idea what "that small, white plastic thing" was. Could have been a big hitch in our brilliant scheme! Luckily, they had our siblings on hand to explain things to them.
My mother, in her excitement, forwarded the presentation on to everyone on her extensive emailing list (friends, acquaintances, distant relations, people she had once emailed about the phone bill, etc.) - if you have already seen a copy of the above, my apologies!
How did your parents find out? And were they as thrilled (and shocked!) as ours? Let me know!
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