Birds and bees

Once upon a time, very, very long ago, I wondered whether puke caused pregnancy. After all, every time in a movie, anytime the heroine (or of course, the hero's sister) ran to the bathroom basin, inevitably she ended up pregnant. Kids came to life always without any sex scenes, sometimes even without a marriage, but always, always with a throw-up scene to back their existence.

Real life, of course, is not Bollywood. Puking may cause people with deprived childhoods to envy your party life, but they are unlikely to consider your belly anything other than a memorial to beer.

No, what does raise knowing eyebrows is teetotaling.

If you had the good taste to once be a drinker, and then the good sense to detoxify, you know what I mean.

"I am off drinks," say I, and immediately there is hmmm in the background. Eyebrows rise, people go on the verge of uttering congratulations, and there is a general shift in gaze away from my face to two feet below. "Really? Why?"glib questioners ask while staring at the bump in my belly (which, to be fair, is the reason I am off alcohol, though not exactly in the way they imagine).

I suppose this inquisition is my cue to blush and stutter and admit that I'm entering the hallowed realms of motherhood. That would be so satisfactory to the thousands who have lectured me - many within 5 minutes of meeting me for the first time - on my biological clock and its ticking and well, the hallowed realms of motherhood.

Whatever happened to short talk about the weather? Can't we just stick to discussing the pollution and American Idol?

update:
Certain people (interestingly, only men), have been taking this post to mean that I am on the verge of delivering a Mini-Me. So to clarify - NO. This post is actually my [possibly incoherent] raving against people who assume that my non-drinking is a sign of inevitable fertility.