Pulling the goalie

We watched Marley and Me the other day. Well, more to the point, we watched ¾ of Marley and Me the other day. Once they moved and Marley started to seem to have trouble with the stairs we decided we didn’t want to watch anymore. I actually liked (and probably related to) the story a lot more than I expected to. I thought it was just going to be a cute dog story and didn’t realize how much it was about life. Anyway, one really funny comment from the move stuck out. When they decide that they might want kids, they say – rather than “try” for a baby, what if we stop “trying not to” have a baby. He tells his boss that, who asks – “Look, are you having sex?” (well, yes.) “Did you pull the goalie?” (yup) “Then you’re trying!”

I had to laugh – because, of course, when we first started “trying,” we weren’t “trying.” We just weren’t preventing. We’d let nature take its course. We hadn’t been married very long and knew we wanted kids. Ideally we thought we might wait longer, but we knew it could take awhile, so we thought – let’s see what happens. Yeah, right. The second we “pulled the goalie,” we started thinking about it and wondering. I started getting disappointed when I got my period. It was no time before we were wondering about times of the month and temperatures and all that… I didn’t go in for temperatures right away (that would be trying!), but I was doing a vague home spun method of the reverse of the rhythm – I couldn’t help but do that! I mean, I knew how long my cycles were. I knew when my last period was. And about halfway through – well, duh.

I was talking to another friend several months ago who was thinking about kids. He told me that they weren’t trying, but they’d stopped trying not to. I want to call him now and quote the goalie line!