The cycles of small talk..

As I go through another life changing event in my life, I've noticed the common small talk questions that have occurred throughout my life.

When I was in college, anytime I saw someone at family occasions or saw someone I haven't seen for awhile. The same common question I would get is, "How's school going for you? What is your major again?"

Then when I started dating Matt, and people realized he was going to stick around for awhile, I got the common question pretty much from everyone for the next year and half, "When are you guys going to get married?"

Once we got engaged, the questions all focused around preparation of our wedding, I would get the same questions asked to me over and over again:
"When are you getting married?"
"What are your wedding colors?"
"What's going to be you're first dance song?"
"Are you excited to get married?"

And then of course once we actually got married, these two questions came up quite frequently:
"How's married life?"
"When are you going to have kids?"

Which the question "How's married life?" always made me laugh. It's makes me wonder what kind of response people are really looking for when they ask that question. Seriously do they want me to say? "Married life is dreadful, I want a divorce."

And of course the good ole question when are you going to have kids started to annoy the hell out of me after six months of being married. It seems that people think as soon as you get married you should start popping out babies right and left. What ever happened to enjoying married life for awhile before having little kiddies to take care of? Which makes me laugh because literally every time I saw my dad he would ask me that question. At one point he told me "Adoption is always an option if you can't have kids." Which was so silly he even said that because we only were trying for a baby for a couple of months at that point. But according to him since we've been married for two years, it just seemed like forever that we haven't had kids yet.

Now that I'm pregnant I've discovered the next cycle of small talk. This is no way directed to anyone who have ask this question to me already. So I hope you're not offended, it's more like an observation I made this weekend, and it become my inspiration for this blog entry. But anyways, yesterday at a family gathering, I was paraded by the same question over and over again. I almost felt like a broken record.
"When are you due?"
"Are you guys finding out the sex of the baby?"
"When do you get to find out the sex of the baby?"
"How are you feeling right now? Has your morning sickness gone away yet?"
"What do you want a boy or a girl?"
"Do you have any names picked out yet?"

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind answering these questions, it's just funny that these questions seem to be the standard set of questions to ask a pregnant lady. Which I've been guilty of myself asking the same questions to other expected mothers.

I guess it's just funny how human nature is to ask such general questions like these because you really have nothing else exciting to say to that person, or because that is the center of what is going on in their life, that it only seems appropriate to talk about to them.

Regardless I look forward to the other pregnancy small talk questions I'll probably be asked like

"Are you going to continue working after you have the baby?"

"Are you doing to give birth without drugs?"

"What's the baby's room look like?"


I guess I should just get use to the question asking now, because I'm sure once the baby's born, for the next 18 years of their life the questions will no longer be about myself but all about him or her. . .

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