Belly Dances

"When are you due?" As usual, I am being questioned about something irrelevant to the problem at hand, this time a scanner which randomly refuses to email the recipient his/her documents after being asked to do so. Nevertheless, because I am at work and wish to maintain a polite facade, I answer the question absentmindedly, "April 10th."

I look up to see her staring at my belly, which, after five months, has finally expanded enough to display to the world that I am, indeed, pregnant, not merely chowing down too many hamburgers.

"Are you carrying more than one in there?"

"No," I say shortly, and get back to what I was doing, subtly trying to get through to her that this is not an appropriate conversation.

She's not socially adept at picking up other people's don't-wanna-talk signals, so she barges on, "Are you sure?"

Am I sure? See, there's these things called doctors and blood tests and the all-knowing ultrasound, which gave ample evidence to all sorts of things, including that there's just one Stanley Hilarius. "Yes," I said, "I'm positive."

"Uh oh," she says, meaning to convey that she thinks I am larger than I should be, and walks away.

Since I actually know, from having seen many a picture of women at the same gestational period as I am, that the amount one shows is not indicative of anything except individual body type, and that, on average, I'm actually on the lower side of the "showing" scale, which suits me just fine. Apparently this type of comment about twins is actually fairly common, it seems, and the only explanation I can think of is that people are surprised that when someone is pregnant, their belly gets larger. You wouldn't think this would surprise people, but obviously it must. What gets me is that, on seeing an obviously pregnant belly, people's brains turn off entirely. I am arguably the only thinking person in a room full of other people now, simply because of this paradox of pregnancy that has only been going on for 300 million years.