I have a friend. Let’s call him Kabir. Why? In the grand tradition of the Internet’s Elders iykyk.
About a dozen years ago, Kabir fathered a child. Now that would be a fairly unremarkable event to all outside of (and many within) the delivery suite where His Wife underwent a Dickensian length labour to bring their loudly wailing daughter into the world. The daughter who made Her Mother fart, shart and poop while making her way through Her Mother’s birth canal. Also the daughter who was then promptly labelled Baby X, X being Kabir’s last name, of course, after the cleanup.
It was all very unexciting and on-brand, anthropologically speaking. Our species has been procreating for 300,000 years, after all. And we’ve been identifying newborns through some form of their paternal lineage for almost 1,000 years now.
One remarkable thing did happen that day, though. The stars aligned, the planets turned and unbe knownst to us all, another creature entered the premises just as Baby X opened her eyes for the first time. In the weeks to come, this creature would anoint itself Girl Dad Kabir.
