(mis)conception of my bad ass

I figured we might as well start at the beginning if we are to fully understand what it means to me to be hitting the midlife point...

In the beginning, there was a country boy who was a bad ass and a city girl who enjoyed the wild side. My parents came from different backgrounds and worlds. The country boy had a large family who all worked from an early age (12) to forge a living out of blood, sweat and tears. The city girl had only two siblings, the first colour TV on her block and spent hours carefully coiffing her foot tall beehive. An unlikely coupling considering the first time my mother saw my tattooed, blond pompadoured, James Dean incarnation of a father driving around with three women in his convertible she said to herself, "What a pig!" A month later her friend asked her to double date and she accepted only if she could be set up with 'the pig'. Now I know why I change my mind so much.

Skipping forward slightly, they eventually married and wanted to start a family. At some point my father solidified his bad ass ness by riding a motorcycle. Within the first year of marriage my father was hit by a drunk driver while riding his motorcycle late one night. His leg was almost completely severed. He lost a lot of blood. He woke up with a screw in his leg covered by a full length leg cast, in the the psych ward and with a newlywed bride wondering what was next.

What was next was the funny part, my conception. It occurred while my father had that full length leg cast on, only months after the accident. I don't want to know details but I'm sure the week long Octoberfest bender they went on certainly helped things along. I always knew I had beer for blood. The pregnancy went normally and I didn't really waste any time coming into the world, dubbing me the easy one (an overall recurring theme). At the time my father had graduated to a shorter leg cast from the knee down. The nurses joked about putting a cast on my tiny leg as a rouse, citing that since that was how I was conceived, that's how I came out. Just as bad ass as my father.

To date I do not have any tattoos, have never owned a convertible, have not driven a motorcycle or have broken a limb requiring a cast. Not so bad ass.