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FRESH
YARN PRESENTS:
A
Less Than Blessed Event
By
Kathlene McGovern
 "So
tell me, is it a boy or a girl?" he asked, leaning across the
bar I was tending and peering at my belly. A seemingly innocuous
inquiry from a curious stranger; a simple thirst for knowledge,
if you will, fraught with the milk of human kindness; with one slight
exception: I'M NOT PREGNANT!!!!!
Mentally replaying the moment for the five thousandth time, I raise
my face to the firmament and bid the question: What the fuck
is wrong with people?!
Understand, and hear me clearly -- if you're one of those "people
persons", someone who just loves getting to know complete strangers
in the grocery line, likes to chat it up with your seat mate on
the plane and who's always had a "knack" for "connecting"
with people, keep reading because this is for YOU!
KNOCK IT OFF.
This is not the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Jupiter is not aligned
with Mars. We are not the World and That's not What
Friends are For, despite the shrill yodeling of Dionne Warwick,
Michael Jackson and the host of other child-fondling, coke-snorting,
wife-beating, tax-evading hacks featured on those maple sap-ridden
shanties. If you feel the need to reach out and touch someone, don't.
Instead:
MIND YOUR OWN BEESWAX!
There is no room for your overly familiar, glaringly inappropriate,
nosey-assed questions. If the woman is not pregnant it is one of
the most humiliating moments she can experience. If she is
pregnant she's probably sick to death of answering useless, annoying
questions, the replies to which, to be frank, are none of your damned
business. Let me digress momentarily here to suggest that you also
stop touching pregnant women's bellies (yes, you do, you know you
do it) as I haven't had one conversation with any pregnant friends
who've said, "You know what I love? I love when complete strangers
just touch my stomach with no provocation." Not once. Not ever.
AND DON'T GO JUDGING…
If you're reading this thinking, "Well, clearly this bacon
snarfing, Ho-Ho stuffing, Yoo-Hoo drinking fatty is nothing but
a bitter wastrel who should lug her fat ass to the gym," you
are mistaken. I am a respectable 5' 7 1/2" inches, 129 pounds
and had just spent two hours working out at the gym with my trainer
when this event transpired. To toot my own horn, I've been referred
to as "hot" upon more than one occasion. I have sunk to
this moment of shameless self-promotion to warn that this could
happen to you just as easily as it did to me. So unless you're some
kind of heroin chic, hyper-metabolized, bone on bone bulimic, watch
your back (or your front), because you could be next.
This happens to women all the time. A myriad of body types, ages
and personalities. I have a friend who was feeling so good about
a recent 35-pound weight loss that she decided to wear a dress that
hugged her figure just slightly more than usual. Some guy offered
her his seat on the subway. He didn't feel right about someone "in
her condition" standing. She's worn nothing but muumuus since.
At my best friend's wedding, her sister sat in the bride's room
in fervent anticipation of the happy event, until some old wall-eyed
bat asked her when she was "due." Let's just say someone's
wedding cake went untouched.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON'T ASK.
Your presumption is someone else's week of utter despair…YOU
INCONSIDERATE FUCK. (Sorry, just a moment of uncontrollable rage).
Okay, for those of you who can't be stopped, I will give you the
scant few occasions upon which such inquires may be made:
1. If she asks you to hold her three backup EPT's while she goes
into the stall to pee on the stick.
2. If you're being forced to play heinous games at her mind-numbingly
boring baby shower (and then ask the guest of honor only!!!).
3. If her water breaks on your Pradas.
And finally:
4. If you see a head protruding from some body cavity (at which
point the question "When are you due?" is rather moot,
and "Is it a boy or a girl?" will be answered momentarily).
You know what? No -- even then, JUST KEEP YOUR YAPPER SHUT.
And while we're on the subject of shutting your pie hole, let me
make something else clear. If this has happened to your friend,
girlfriend, sister, co-worker, who-the-fuck-ever, do not, DO NOT,
DO NOT say, "Oh, it's no big deal." IT IS A BIG
DEAL. It is a big cellulite-ridden-I-can't-fuckin'-believe-I've-been-eating-a-thousand-calories-a-day-for-the-last-six-weeks-for-this-shit
big a deal. Platitudes such as, "Don't let them take your power
away" and, "You can choose whether or not you let it insult
you" will just make them want to shove the most current Deepak
Chopra release straight up your ass, as well they should. Something
else not good, or more accurately, stupid: Saying to them, as my
friend said to me, "He'd never say that if he knew how
old you are. I mean you look really good for your age."
I hate to repeat myself but, what the fuck is wrong with people?
ZIP IT UP.
But since I know you're not going to, then listen up. Once you've
done it -- once you've crammed your size 10 halfway down your throat,
at least have the good grace to be fucking mortified. Unlike the
moron in my story who tried to extricate himself by further humiliating
me and saying his wife, at eight months along, was smaller than
I. (P.S. What was she bearing, a Keebler Elf?)
Screw it. There's nothing you can do to make things right short
of causing yourself some sort of bodily harm in our presence. Flagellation,
dismemberment; perhaps a ceremonial cutting out of the tongue: Any
small gesture will do.
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