Fact-checking my parents By Clay Coppedge
M
y parents and I were going through boxes of old family upon a time, a National Baby Week. The idea came from the Genphotographs several years ago when we came across a eral Federation of Women’s Clubs in either 1914 or 1915 as “a camlarge glossy photo that a photographer for the Birmingpaign to press on the public the need for improved child-rearing, ham Post-Herald took either the day I was born, or maybe the day education, etc.” But National Baby Week was celebrated the first after, of me and my parents in the hospital room. week of July, not the third week of April. My dad was a reporter for the paper and in the picture he’s “inSo my parents were right – they lied to me. terviewing” me, his face covered by a surgical mask, but he has his At some point, National Baby Week ceased to be a thing. I found reporter’s notebook and pencil poised to take down any quotes I a 1984 J.C. Penney TV commercial on YouTube that championed might want to share with his readers. I’m next to my mom, taking the importance of saving 20 percent during National Baby Week on in the proceedings with that curious wide-eyed gaze so common to “baby things, including diapers, toddler tops, shorts and dresses, infants. According to sources close to the situation – my parents – I night wear, underwear and sleepers, strollers and car seats.” Savings didn’t have much to say. were even greater on Penney’s “best-selling baby furniture.” But I later found out that my parents weren’t always the most But if I wasn’t the first baby born during National Baby Week – reliable sources about such matters. and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t – why was “Reporter Becomes Father” a When I was a kid, maybe 10 years old, my otherwise reliable story at all, much less one that warranted an accompanying photo? parents told me the picture ran in the paper to recognize me as “the “Slow news day,” dad explained. “We just ran the picture and a first baby born during Nacutline. Sorry to break it tional Baby Week.” I was a to you like this, but to the baby among babies, they newspaper your birth was said, my arrival celebrated just filler material.” in the hometown paper Not that I don’t hold as if I were heir to a kingany grudges my parents, dom. None of the other even though I’ve fact squalling baby boomers checked them on othof the day could say they er statements, like my were the first baby born mom’s belief that if your during National Baby left palm itches it means Week! you’re about to come And neither could I, as into some money. (False.) it turned out. An itchy foot means you “It was a natural phowill soon “walk on new to-op,” dad told me when ground.” (Also false.) An I first asked about the itchy back foretold “either picture many years ago. a whippin’ or a huggin’.” “I was handsome, your Actually, that one turned mother was – and is – out to be true, because beautiful. And you were mom always hugged me just cute as you could be whenever I complained of – right up until the moan itchy back. ment I bent over to get a Bob Coppedge, right, “interviews” his newborn son, Clay, for the Birmingham Post-Herald Besides, I’m not withgood look at you and you while proud mama Nancy looks on. out fault in this regard. peed in my face!” My daughter and I were watching a Michael Jackson video one So when I saw the picture many years later and retold the story time when she was a little girl, and his “moon walk” dazzled her I grew up with about how dad was “interviewing” me because I to no end. I thought she knew I was kidding when I said, “Yeah, was the first baby born during National Baby Week, friends said I sure had a hard time teaching him how to do that.” But she took it was a good story and congratulated me for making up such an it as further evidence of her father’s wonderfulness. Her friends at entertaining but a ridiculous narrative. By this time I’d followed my school did some fact-checking of their own and reported back to dad’s footsteps into the newspaper business, leading him to suggest her that I was full of it. Just kidding, I said, but she held it against I should try my hand at fiction. me for at least a few weeks. Mom wasn’t any more supportive. “You were born on a WednesBut I’m through fact-checking my parents because the one true day,” she pointed out. “If National Baby Week started on Sunday, thing they always told me was how much they loved me, even if I that means no babies were born for three days until you came wasn’t the first baby born during National Baby Week, and that one along.” never needed any verification. “Besides,” dad added, piling on now, “I don’t think there’s such a Former Alabama resident Clay Coppedge is a Texas-based thing as National Baby Week.” writer and author of four books and a memoir. So I fact-checked my parents and confirmed that there was, once 34 JULY 2018
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