All I could wonder was, “Why is she being so rude?” Hey, I was just making small talk.
Wedding receptions are interesting social events to navigate, especially when you don’t know any of the other guests. We had just witnessed the nuptials of my colleague and were waiting for dinner to be served. Everyone around the table exchanged seemingly innocuous tidbits of their lives as one does: “Whose guest are you—bride or groom?” “How do you know the couple?” “What do you do for work?” Unsurprisingly, the quite obviously pregnant woman seated next to me was peppered with the standard questions like, “Is this your first child?” “Do you know the gender?” “Do you have a name picked out?” And so forth. Yet her responses seemed curt and abrasive. She answered straightforwardly but with none of the pleasant tones one would normally expect when the subject turns to babies. She averted her gaze and seemed almost irritated to have been asked. These were just friendly getting-to-know-you questions. Sheesh! What was her problem?
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://spectrummagazine.org/node/12107