FRESH YARN presents: A Less Than Blessed Event... by Kathlene McGovern

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.