It’s true. I have a photo to prove it. It was taken moments after she was born. Those surgery lights are great when it comes to photography and the shot turned out brilliantly.
There she is lying on the table where they take them to wipe all the blood off and cut the cord and there growing out of her back just above her arse is a brown fury tail about a foot long. A wildlife expert might identify the tail as being very similar to that of a baby leopard, and they’d be right. In terms of size and angle the leopard’s tail was the best one for photo shopping onto the picture of my daughter. I even left some of the spots on it to make it look kind of freaky.
I haven’t shown my daughter the photo yet. I’m saving it. Saving it for the day she comes to me asking for money. Not 10 bucks for magazine or 25 bucks to go to the movies. I’m talking about the big, pocket burning requests that come with the teenage years. “Dad I need X hundred dollars for a new top.’ ‘Dad, I want a nose job like Jenny from next door.’ ‘Dad, I need a car’. That’s when the Photoshop pic will come into play.
It will work something like this.
Me - “Honey, I’m sorry. You deserve that new top/ nose job/ car, but I just can’t afford it. Your operation cleaned me and your mother out.’
Frankie - ‘What operation?’
M - …….. uncomfortable silence…….. ‘I didn’t really want to have to tell you this, but I guess you are old enough to know. You were born with a tail.’
F - ‘A tail! What kind of tail?’
M - ‘A long brown one, with little dots on it. A bit like a baby leopard’s tail actually.’
….. stunned silence. ‘Here’s a photo I took. ‘
F - ‘I don’t remember…. I mean.. where is it. I don’t have a tail.’
M - ‘No. You wouldn’t remember. We had it removed days after you were born. We paid to fly in a vet from a South African Wildlife Park to perform the operation.’
F - ‘A vet?’
M - ‘We had to. None of the doctors knew how to deal with tails. None of them were prepared to operate on a …….’
F- ‘A what?’
M – ‘……a…….. a freak. They said it would ruin their careers. So as you can imagine it was expensive. The vet insisted flying first class and it costs us all the money we had set aside to be able to give you the things you would want in the future like that new top/ nose job/ car.
Impressed? Well I am considering making this service available to parents around the globe. Send me a picture of your kid as a newborn and my Photoshop experts will work their magic. You don’t have to go with animal parts. We can keep it human. How about a third ear on their forehead? Or invent your own freaky feature. My staff at ‘Make Kids Cost Less’ are standing by.
