I woke up a little pissed off today, which was a rollover from yesterday, and it’s not because Pontilicious got drunk on cheap farm wine last night or that the house looks like Santa’s workshop collided with Whole Foods smashed with Toys-R-Us or that we are literally in the middle of decorating a 9-foot Christmas tree that is more cooperative than we are. Nope. These little calamities are not what has me wanting to pluck the fingernails slowly from two ladies hands while making them drink Kool-Aid straight from the packet – unflavored and raw.
The two ladies I speak of are complete strangers that we happened to run into while shopping at Big Lots yesterday. Older women in their early to mid-sixties would be my guess. I wasn’t present for the conversation (if you can call it that), which is a really good thing, so I don’t know exactly what words were exchanged between Marge Simpson’s sisters and Pontilicious. It started when they commented on how cute “he” was – referring to Aless.
“Look at his cute cheeks!”
“What beautiful blue eyes he has!”
“He looks like his dad!”
After about 20 seconds of the male references, Pontilicious abruptly corrected them, “She. Her. Girl. “He” is a girl.”
I heard his “corrective measures” two aisles over, and I’m pretty sure the entire west side of the store did, too. Normally, Pontilicious is a social butterfly. He can make friends with someone while standing in a Porta-Potty line. He’s friendly and people like him. Yesterday, however, these women struck a first-time parent nerve. While this might seem like an innocent mistake, as a parent it hurts to hear your child referred to as the incorrect gender – especially when they (ahem, Aless) are wearing polka dots and pink socks.
What makes this particular situation worse is that after correcting them, instead of apologizing and trying to make the insulted parent feel better, they tried to justify why they thought Aless was a boy.
“Well she’s wearing a black coat and blue pants.”
“She doesn’t have much hair.”
“It’s hard to tell with babies sometimes.”
That last reason alone is why you should never commit the cardinal sin of guessing an infant’s gender. It’s also the same reason you should never guess if a woman is pregnant or not. If you are not entirely sure, just STFU and refrain from commenting. Safest route and no one gets hurt.
