SURRY, Va. — A bundle of joy was born on the Jamestown-Scotland Ferry Friday night.

The mother, Anna Howard, arrived at the ferry dock just before 11 p.m., when the ferry took off, Anna knew she wasn’t going to make it to the hospital. She had her baby halfway across the river in her van.

Officials say that deck-hand worker on the ferry boat called ‘Williamsburg’, Bill Bailey, helped the mother deliver the baby.

Luckily enough, Bailey is a retired Newport News firefighter, now a part-time Hampton firefighter and full-time deck-hand worker for the ferry. He used his training to help deliver the baby.

Full story here.

Someone recently asked me about this blog and in trying to describe it as a weird news blog. Apparently that was confusing, and I was asked to rephrase or give more detail. I was struggling to do this and eventually I just blurted out, “I don’t know, I’ve been writing about public births a lot recently.” My interrogator got the point, the bartender very quickly gave me my bill and then asked me to the leave, and the night kept moving along. I’ll say this, I’ll stop writing about them if you losers stop having them.

Seriously, guys, I don’t think it takes all that much coordination to get to a hospital. You should DEFINITELY have the foresight to at least get the ferry stop out of the way before hand. There’s gonna be a square baby coming out of a round hole! You don’t want that happening on a boat! I don’t understand how anybody would think that waiting to cross on the ferry until labor had started was a good idea.

Come on people. Are births less dangerous than I think? Births are definitely a little gross (everybody get off your high horse, yes they’re miracles but also really gross), and you can’t expect all of these random employees to just know how to deliver a baby: all around not a great combo for rolling the dice on where you pop your little mouth-breather out. I feel like people have been getting too lucky. I’m not wishing anyone harm, but all of these public births of late have been too encouraging. We’ve had all-star butchers, pediatricians mid-flight, police officers stepping up, even a Target parking lot delivered a baby, and now a retired fireman just so happens to be the ferry's deckhand: folks are getting too comfortable having their babies wherever the fuck they please. Next thing you know, employers are going to be handing out birthing pamphlets with the W2’s. Clean it up, my friends.

P.S. I mean literally clean it up. If you have a baby in public I think you are responsible for clean up. That's it. No if's, and's, or but's.