Day 8: I Am Not Pregnant.

Apparently, if you're 30 and quit drinking and smoking, people think you're pregnant.

And they ask you about it. 

If I were pregnant, and ready to tell people I was pregnant, I would just tell you I'm pregnant. 

If I were pregnant, and not ready to tell people I was pregnant, I would tell you to take your tactless questions and place them delicately where the sun don't shine.

I'm I right here?  I'm not pregnant, so I don't want to speak for the pregnant lady population, but I think people are overestimating my interest in creating complicated-pregnancy-diversions.  I wouldn't go around writing blogs about quitting smoking and alcohol and posting the links to my facebook account where my entire network of family, friends and co-workers can read about it -- all as a cover for my pregnancy.  That sort of behavior gets you the That-Bitch-Be-Crazy label and if you read yesterday's post, you would see I am shooting for moderate levels of sanity in 2011.

However, I realize I am raising some eyebrows. This became abundantly apparent yesterday when I told my mom about my Thirty Day Trial.

Me: "So I quit smoking."

Mom:  "Really?  That's great, honey."

Me: "Yep.  Been about a week now.  I also quit drinking."

Mom: [Silence]

Me: "You there, Mom?"

Mom: [Silence]

Pause.  It is at this moment that the origins of the phrase "pregnant pause" become clear to me.

Me: "Mom??"

Mom: "Are you trying to tell me something, dear?"

When your mother assumes you are choosing a complicated pregnancy ruse over telling her the news she has been waiting to hear for long enough that she just went ahead and adopted the neighbors' kids as grandchildren -- that's when you know you have some things to clear up.

No problem:  I am not knocked up.

These questions are infinitely better than being asked if you are pregnant when you are doing nothing to warrant suspicion. 

This happened to me:

The week before teachers begin educating the youth of America for yet another academic year, we all come back to school a week early and set up our classrooms, plan lessons, and sit through interminable and brain-cell- deteriorating professional-development meetings.

One day, I walked into one of said meetings, and a colleague stopped me as I was walking to my seat.

Tactless Colleague:  "Congratulations!"

Me: [Confused.]  "On what? No longer having to advise the yearbook?"

Tactless Colleague: "No, silly!  On your big news!"

Me: [Still confused.  Cannot remember good news.  Its been a boring month.] "Um, I, um..."

Pause. Why in the name of all that is holy did this woman not just stop right here?  Why?  Wouldn't you?  Clearly she and I are not on the same page.  Quit while you're ahead, dumbass!

Tactless Colleague: "You're pregnant!"

You don't say?  Well I'll be damned...

Yep, you're right, Tactless Colleague, I am silly.  I didn't even know I was pregnant!

I soooo wish I could tell you I had some really witty rebuttal to her stoopidity, but I was so shocked, I just said:

"Um, nope.  Not pregnant."

However, she was not to be proven wrong. Ooooh no. 

In most cases I applaud this kind of commitment to your stance, but in this case, I feel it could be construed as a tad bit foolhardy, no?

Tactless Colleague:  "Well, I heard it from a few people..."

Me: "I would check your sources."

Do you see what happened there?  Tactless Colleague believes Someone Else was a more credible authority on my uterus than me.  Me.  Owner of said uterus and arbiter of all things entering and exiting therein.

Un-effing-believable.

But would you believe that was the first time someone told me I was pregnant that week?  Yeah.  When I say "first time" I mean: There was also a second time.

And here's what I have decided:  If ONE person congratulates you on your non-existent pregnancy, shame on them.

If TWO people congratulate you on your non-existent pregnancy, you need to lose weight.

When the second person congratulated me on the imaginary fetus, I had no comeback whatsoever.  I stammered.  I flubbed.  I ran to the bathroom and cried about being fat like a teenage girl (in a high school, no less.  What a regression...).

And obviously I thought of the perfect response well after the moment had passed.  Duh.

However, a friend of mine did get to use it.

Friend's Tactless Colleague:  "Congratulations!"

Friend: "On what?"

F.T.C: "On your pregnancy!"

Friend: "Oh, no I'm just fat."

Bahzingah!  We have a winner!