From part three:
Lois lowered her head. For a long moment she was very quiet, but her heartbeat became very rapid. She almost looked like she was going to cry again. Finally, she swallowed and looked him in the eyes. "Clark, you're a dad."
Clark's jaw dropped. What? Had he heard correctly? He stared at Lois in disbelief, unsure whether he should be more shocked at the fact that she knew his identity, or at the news she had just given him. "Lois?"
All Clark could do was stare at her. His mind suddenly seemed incapable of any coherent thought. It was as if his brain, unable to process the onslaught of new and unexpected information, froze over. The only thought that managed to sink into his consciousness was that someone needed his help. Latching onto that thought like a life-saving rope, he nodded dumbly and followed Lois into STAR Labs.
As you can see, Clark is having problems processing the information that he is a dad. But...
"I just got the oddest feeling," his mother explained, "and you haven't really been in touch, lately. Tell me, has anything interesting happened?"
Clark opened his mouth, and suddenly, the events of last night and this morning sank into his consciousness like an anchor. The dream-like feeling evaporated all at once, leaving him with one life-changing reality. "Oh my God," he uttered as the realization dawned.
"Clark?" Martha's voice became worried. "What is it?"
Yes, what?
"I'M A FATHER!" Clark shouted, attracting stares from all over the newsroom. Even Perry's office door swung open at the sudden, loud exclaimation. Martha's questioning voice could be heard from the reciever, but there was no reply from the reporter who had passed out cold.
When I was young - and that was a while ago - we Swedes used to joke about the Norwegians and about how stupid they are. (They are not, of course.) Well, one joke went like this: How do you make a Norwegian laugh until Easter? Answer: Tell him a joke at Christmas. Ah, because he will not have understood the joke until New Year's Eve at the earliest, and quite possibly not until Valentine's Day if we are unlucky, and then when he finally has figured it out, he will laugh until Easter. I always felt self-conscious when I heard this joke, because I think I'm so slow at processing things. So it was such a relief to find that Clark may be even slower than I am at getting things to sink in. The idea that Lois tells Clark he's a father, and a night and half a day later he realizes what she said, and he shouts out his shock and joy at the discovery of his fatherhood in the Daily Planet bullpen and crashes to the floor in a dead faint, that is - oh, Mary....
Ann
