{"id":278,"date":"2014-09-30T15:38:07","date_gmt":"2014-09-30T15:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/?p=278"},"modified":"2016-09-01T15:51:33","modified_gmt":"2016-09-01T15:51:33","slug":"how-many-chillun-you-got","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/2014\/09\/how-many-chillun-you-got\/","title":{"rendered":"How Many Chillun You Got?"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Cannibalized by Popular Request. This appears in one of my older blogs, and is dated April 22nd, 2007. Still makes me laugh. Oboy oboy!)<\/em> <\/small><\/p>\n

\n

How many chillun you got?<\/strong>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

That\u2019s the important thing. That\u2019s what all primitive people really want to know about you.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"savages\"They get to the point where they\u2019ve figured out that you\u2019re either male or female (even though they can\u2019t see either a penis gourd or pendulous dugs), and they know your approximate age (somewhere between adolescence and total decrepitude). Now they\u2019re happily puffing away on your Philip Morris Commanders (king-size, unfiltered, good for jungle bugs) and they\u2019re ready to move into the small-talk stage of your acquaintanceship.<\/p>\n

And here it is. \u201cHey you! You got chillun? How many chillun?\u201d<\/p>\n

Go ahead and tell them. Anything you like. One kid, six kids, sixteen kids. It\u2019s not like the little savages are going to write down your children\u2019s birthdays so they can send them something nice (just imagine!). No, they\u2019re just being innocently nosy. It\u2019s something they ask of all strangers, and no one\u2019s ever smacked them down for this rudeness so they keep on asking.<\/p>\n

\"1961-philip-morris-cigarettes-ad-tasty-newcomer\"Sometimes the questions get detailed\u2014”You have a boy? How old? Is he warrior? You have girl\u2014how much you sell her for?\u201d It is always best to be prepared for this. Along with the Philip Morris Commanders in the left side pocket of your photo-vest, bring a fact sheet about your kids. Maybe even some fuzzy snapshots.<\/p>\n

My own prepared script goes basically like this. \u201cOh yes I have four children. Two girls, two boys. Between five and fifteen. Evenly spaced. Their names are Mary, Joan, John, and Robert. They live with their other parent, as I am usually away on business. The boys play baseball [a game formerly very popular in America] and the girls do ballet [this is a kind of theater-dance some people do in my country]. Who is oldest? Oh, that would be John. Then Mary. Then\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Even a savage has limited attention for this sort of thing, and by this point my new friend is probably waving and nodding and inviting me into his hut to look at the shrunken heads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Cannibalized by Popular Request. This appears in one of my older blogs, and is dated April 22nd, 2007. Still makes me laugh. Oboy oboy!) How many chillun you got? That\u2019s the important thing. That\u2019s what all primitive people really want to know about you. They get to the point where they\u2019ve figured out that you\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":283,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cocoa-marsh"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/savages.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6KTdR-4u","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":567,"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions\/567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}