Joseph Chesterton Powell came into the light on January 10th, 2006, and he came with a roar. He and his mother are healthy and beautiful, and for that I thank the good Lord.

A few days later, I happened to read John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, possibly for the first time (I can’t answer for high school). If you’re ever going to read it, wait until your wife has just had a baby. Wow.

No, I won’t talk about it. That would ruin it. Just go get married, have a baby, and read it yourself. In that order.

I will say that to catch a new human being as he is forcibly ejected from a nice girl I dated in college is one of those sore temptations to a paradigm shift. Who needs to spin straw into gold when you can make new people?

A bumper sticker I’ve seen reads, “I Make Milk. What’s Your Superpower?” It could just as easily read, “I Make Babies.” Then I could have one too.

You’re not listening. I told you. My wife and I can make new people.

Are you getting creeped out yet? Feeling like you’re in a Ray Bradbury story? You thought I just sit around scribbling blogs, but no. I have powers of which you can only dream…

What? You can too?

Yes, procreation will probably never be considered a superpower because too many people can do it. In younger days (pre-23) I didn’t give it much thought myself.

But what if only one couple in a hundred could make babies? Even if everyone else could turn invisible, swing around skyscrapers, and understand warranties, what would they have to say when their neighbors walked out the front door with a brand new human they made themselves?

Keep the cape. I’ll make people.

Well, help, anyway.

(Wasn’t that a quick birth blog? So much shorter than the Lore of Cariysa.)