(This originally ran January 6, 2019 in The Times and The News-Star.)

Maybe it’s the New Year that has me thinking of babies.

One I used to write about before he could read was my son. One day when he was 3, he saw me limp with a bad back to a hot bath. I sat down to soak it and at the bathroom door he said, “OK, well, I’ll be right in here, so yell if you need to throw up or something.” Then he walked off in his tiny tenny shoes and a T-shirt that I suppose had a Snoopy or a Cleveland Indian on it.

Because time is the great mystery, he’ll be 30 Wednesday and is looking for a new job. He has a degree in communications but is very good at helping guys with bad backs, too.

Speaking of bad, when I was an uncle for the first time — the fall of 1977 — I called the hospital to check on Sissy, my big sister. They had no one registered by her name. Yes they did, I said, because she was in there having a baby. Even I knew that.

No she wasn’t, they said.

I called two more times before I realized I’d been asking for her under her maiden name. Which was not what she was registered under since she was married and registered under that name. People tend to do that when they get married.

Now and then — and this is one of those times — we check in with our old friend Don Walker, one of the best news reporters I have ever been privileged to work with and to know. He was a stud when at The Times in Shreveport and still is, although now he works in south Florida as the communications guru for a county that has a lot of golf courses and beaches. And the occasional hurricane.

But even Don was brought down to his knees by the baby beat. The smaller they are, the harder they make you fall.

In the 1980s in Shreveport, when both Don and I were “promising young men,” the hospital would give new mothers and fathers steak dinners with champagne the night before baby went home. One year, though, they decided instead to start sending new mothers home with infant seats.

“They even hired a firefighter to show moms and dads how to hook the seats and baby snuggly into their vehicles before they drove away from the hospital,” Don said. “The paper sent me to do a story on this program, and after interviewing the firefighter and some new parents I asked who at the hospital could give me a comment or two.”

The firefighter told him to “Call Ellen Dee,” or at least that’s what Don thought he’d said, and then firefighter gave him the phone number to call.

Later that day he called the hospital and a woman answered.

“Ellen Dee, please,” I said.

“This is Ellen Dee,” the woman responded, or at least, again, that’s what Don thought he’d heard. He was delighted; back before cell phones, a reporter rarely caught a fish on the first call.

So Don told her his name and said, “Thank you, Ms. Dee,” and explained he was calling about the hospital’s infant seat program.

 

The woman stopped him abruptly and said, “Who are you calling for?”

This confused my man. He’d clearly asked for Ellen Dee, and the lady said Ellen Dee is who she was. Confused but undaunted, my guy persisted.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I was calling for Ellen Dee.”

The woman then said, “This is Ellen Dee.”

Don chalked it up to a miscommunication and went through the exact same thing again. But after he again thanked “Ms. Dee” and before he could spit out the words “infant seat program,” she interrupted him again.

“Who are you trying to reach?” she said.

“Well, you’re Ellen Dee, right?” said Don.

“This is Ellen Dee.”

Within another second or two of this “Who’s On First?” parody it suddenly sank in on Don that Ellen Dee was “L & D,” as in “Labor and Delivery.”

He hung up. Had to.

But then later, when a new shift was on the clock in L&D, he called back and pretended the other conversations had never happened. It was a tough road to get there, but in the actual story he finally wrote — with no help from Ms. Dee — Don, as usual, delivered.

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