On a recent visit to one of my ancestral homelands, I met up with an old friend who is with child. She was waiting for me on the sidewalk outside the little bakery and, being one day past her due date, I had no trouble spotting her from quite a distance. I'm sure several people using Google Earth also saw her.
But I'm glad I knew in advance that she was expecting. I still remember chatting with a colleague about her children at a Christmas party, motioning to her belly and asking, "And when's the next one due?"
I might as well have said, "I hear you have AIDS! How's that going?" or "What's it really like being a neo-Nazi?"
Her terse reply: "I'm not sure we will have another child."
Things have become even more complicated now that men are starting to give birth.
Last spring I was mildly chastised by an acquaintance in Vancouver who asked why I hadn't mentioned anything about her pregnancy when I saw her the previous day at a conference. To be honest, I just didn't notice. But even if I had, what's a guy to say? Over a drink, she and two other women agreed that none of them would blurt out, "So, you're having a baby!" if they weren't really sure.
As my Grade 12 chemistry teacher probably still says, "When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me."
Image: http://www.theflorentine.net/, Issue no. 85
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