If you can’t laugh, you’ll cry.

We were scheduled for a genetic counseling session and arrived to meet a counselor that looked exactly like Jessie Eisenberg. I don’t know Jessie Eisenberg personally, but this counselor had all the mannerisms of Jessie’s character, Columbus from Zombieland.

If that wasn’t disconcerting enough, once we got into the conversation about this genetic scrambling Toby and I both had the same question but I was too afraid to ask; If we do have this, does this mean we’ve passed on some horrible hidden illness to our son? Is he going to hit puberty and sprout a face out of his left arm?

Thankfully, my husband asked. When the genetic counselor assured us that (since Robbie is obviously healthy) the worst we could have done was pass on the same problem (making it harder for him to have kids) I promptly burst into tears of relief.

If we have this disorder, the treatment is to either get a sperm donor or do in vitro fertilization to check for chromosome abnormalities and then put the good eggs back.  We’re not especially interested in either of these options, but you might as well have fun with it.

As we were about to get on the elevator to leave, I said to Toby “If we have this disorder, I’m totally going to play an April Fool’s joke on your dad.”

“What?”

“I’m going to try to keep a strait face while we tell your dad we need a little help and could he please contribute.”

“Have I ever told you you’re really sick?” he asked, and the full elevator started chuckling.

But the more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t stop laughing. I waited until the doors opened and we were a few feet away from the crowd and burst out with “your son could be your own brother!”