Reflections of a Highbrow Hillbilly

What are you having?

Normal question or boneheaded intrusive question?  Well, that all depends on whether you are ordering a meal or having a baby.  

I was ordering lunch the other day (of course I was at the downtown chic-fil-a AGAIN...lately I see some pretty interesting things while trying to do something as simple as ordering daily sustenance) when a person in front of me that was a cross between a girl and a woman turned to the side to look out the window.  I thought to myself, wow wonder when she is due?  She had a considerable sized tummy on her and was holding her back the way a woman does when she has a bun in the oven that is pulling on ligaments and straining her back and making her just overall uncomfortable.  She looked like breathing was no easy task at the moment either.  Having been both pregnant and asked 5 million questions about said pregnancy as well as having the S H I T embarrassed out of myself for asking a boneheaded intrusive question, I knew better than to ask her when she was due.  However, the middle aged woman in line behind me did not know better.  Not only did she say something but she reached out her hand to touch the girl.  Leave it to a nosey, poorly educated, dumb ass to take it over the limit.  I learned A LONG time ago that unless you see a friggin baby CROWNING, you simply DO NOT ask questions!  Folks, there is always that outside chance that she is not pregnant, she is just as fat as a pig!  Thoughts are free, keep your pie hole shut, look at the ground and if you absolutely have to be jovial and say something, for God’s sake just comment on what a lovely day we are having, YES even if you are standing in the eye of a damn hurricane or its 20 below outside!

When this girl turned to the side, therefore exposing her swollen belly the lady behind me stepped out of line, reached her hand out (OMG I still have trouble believing that happens) and placed it on the tummy of the girl and said, “Oh honey what are you having?”  I stiffened my back, clinched my teeth together and just waited, knowing this could go either way.  The girl looked at this woman in utter amazement!  Her eyes were wide, her mouth was open and she was obviously SO embarrassed.  She did not know what to say or do.  ( Holy Shit where is my magic wand..I need to make her disappear and turn this old woman into a newt) There were about 4 or 5 people in line that were looking at this poor girl like she was E. F Hutton!  I was so embarrassed for her that I was struggling for something to say or for a hole to open up in the floor and suck me down into it!  She looked at our faces for what seemed like an eternity, it was like everything switched to slow motion.  Her eyes welled up with big ole crazy tears, she dropped her arms and shoulders then took off!  It happened so fast I must have made that Chester Cheetos sound when I shook my head, she turned on her heels and was outta there!  Fine by me, that just meant I was one person closer to the front.  I see strange shit all the time, bummer for the chubby girl but time to move on, I am starving!  The woman actually looked at the man beside me and said, “Do you think what I said made her leave?”  He just shrugged his shoulders, so she looked at me.  I wanted to call her an insensitive idiot and tell her to shut up until it was her turn to order but I decided to refrain from that.  In a very sarcastic voice I said, “Come on now are you serious?”  “Unless you are completely new, you are aware that you should NEVER ask someone if they are pregnant unless you can see a head hanging out!”  “But I suppose now you know she wasn’t pregnant right?”  To which she replied, “Well I guess, but she sure looked pregnant to me.”  There was no comment immediately available for that level of logic.

The last straw

I will never, and I repeat never ask anyone if they are pregnant.  I don’t care if I am giving her a ride to the hospital while she is screaming her head off with contraction pain starting to deliver in my car, I am not going to do it and here is why!  I was at a party years back and although I had been somewhat over served by a handsome and heavy handed bartender, I still did not exercise good judgment when I asked someone that incredibly piss poor etiquette, none of my business and totally all up in your grill question of, “So you have been married forever, when are you all going to have a baby?”  I think I was the last straw, the one that broke the proverbial camels back!  She looked at me and said, “I can’t have children, I was born without reproductive organs.”  She offered no other words, nothing to make me more comfortable or to make me feel like less of an asshole!  She just left it hanging out there with me looking at her as if to say, “well aside from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”  She then looked at me like I was the biggest

And trust me I felt like one!  She walked away and so did I.  I don’t know where she went but I went straight to the bar, ordered another scotch and water and tried to drown in it!  I thought about it for a while and really, I was not trying to offend her, I really didn't care whether she had children or not so why did I ask?  Why does anyone ask?  It just seems like the thing to do right?  Boy I picked a good one to bug!  How the hell could I have known she was born without plumbing?  It’s not as if it were flashing on her forehead like the ticker at the bottom of the TV screen.  Hell at the time, I thought all married people were asked that once they got hitched, adding more people to the world is the next logical step right?  We crossed paths several more times that night and one of them made me feel compelled to stick my foot in my mouth again.  I said, “I am so sorry if I offended you, I really meant no harm I was just wondering when you were going to have kids, and I had no idea you couldn’t”  “I hope I was not insensitive, I am very sorry.”  She broke a tiny smile. (whew, something from her to make me feel better….thank GOD)  she then said, “No I am sorry, I should have been a bit nicer about it, you were not doing anything that anyone else hasn’t done it’s just that I am SO tired of that question and I guess you were the last straw.”  “I should not have been so hard on you and then just walked away so I am sorry.”  Great, so I offended her and now she is going to try to make ME feel better.  Yep, I am an incorrigible asshole or is that she is just really nice?  She told me that she and several of the women in her family were born without reproductive organs and that some had opted for adoption but others had not and they were very sad not to have any children yet.  She again said, “I am sorry to have been rude to you, after all, it is not something you would just know unless I told you.”  I said, “Hey, I appreciate your apology but you do not owe me one, I actually should thank you because you just taught me a valuable lesson.”  I have seen her a handful of times over the years and have no idea if she has ever adopted children or not.  You bet your ass I am not going to ask either. 

The lesson I learned was that it is none of my or any one's business when a couple is going to have children, what is taking them so long or why they have not started!  Just because the answer was not obvious did not give me a right to ask.  We do not know the circumstances around such a decision and the question can often times be a very painful one.  Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing wrong with choosing NOT to have children.  Society just refuses to get that one!  Lord knows I got what was coming to me because when I got marred the barrage of questions started and continued until I was about to pop with twins.  Then it continued with what are you having and how many?  Another thing, I had so many women AND men walk up and attempt to touch my stomach or ask me if they could.  What is that all about???  I finally snapped one day and said, “Hell no you can’t touch my stomach, can I touch your bald spot???”  “NO” I started looking like Mr. Miagi doing the wax on wax off stance to idiots trying to touch me.  I still don’t know why people want to touch a pregnant woman’s belly.  For God’s sake we are carrying ordinary babies not the Messiah and we are not Buddha’s!

I will end with a funny that happened to me when I was pregnant.  It is also proof that I don’t notice pregnant people unless they fall on me and I preferred to not be noticed when I was pregnant.  Not noticing me as a pregnant person was next to impossible because I was such a little troll.  I was miserable, in pain and hated being pregnant every single second!  I was lucky enough to only gain weight in my tummy but this also made moving around a bit of a challenge because my belly was HUGE.  I went on bed rest the last 9 weeks and when I left the house it was with help to a wheel chair.  Troll City man, it was horrible.  When I hear someone say “Oh I looovvvved being pregnant.”  It makes me want to snap their neck!  I love my twins more than anything in this world but I hated being pregnant with them.  They were parasites that tried to kill me and almost did.  That Duggar woman that has had something like 18 babies, wow...I don't think she will be happy until her uterus falls out while shopping for groceries to feed her army but she says she loves being pregnant. 

                                   OMG can you imagine?  Gratuitous use of the uterus!

Anyway....we were at the hospital for our tour of the Maternity ward.  Big snooze fest and not something I enjoyed at all.  Honestly I was scared to death and cannot remember much about it at all except that it was sterile, cold and everyone in there was rushing around or breathing heavy with pained looks on their faces.  All the dads looked beat tired and the moms looked worse!  YIKES, are we in Hotel California???  Get me out of here!! The entire time I was in the hospital when I had my twins my husband would ask me, “do you remember seeing this?”  “Do you remember seeing that?”  I have often wished he could have been the pregnant one, he would have done it with much more grace and dignity than I did.  Anyway, after the tour we went to the cafeteria for one of my favorite meals.  This hospital has the best cafeteria food, seriously it is the bomb!  They have the best grilled cheese and French fries in the world and believe me, when I was pregnant I was there enough to know!  My husband wheeled me over to the sneeze guard at the buffet so I could look at all the food I was not going to order.  I already knew what I wanted.  I was peering in looking at all the food and I heard a female voice beside me say something to me.  It took a minute to register that she was talking to me.  My husband said, “Honey, she asked you a question.”  I looked up from my wheelchair at her and she said, “what are you having?”  I then looked at her like she had a snake on her head and said, “a grilled cheese and French fries WHY?”  She and my husband started laughing and she pointed to my belly and said, “No I mean”  I said, “Oh, I am hungry and that was not on my radar, twins a boy and a girl.”  She had a hard time believing it was not on my radar when you could have set up a canasta board on my stomach but she let it go.  I went on to ignore her and waited impatiently for my grilled cheese and fries, we ate it and went home and one month later I was back there having twins and more grilled cheese and fries.  Good times!

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