As she held her beautiful newborn son, my neighbor asked me if my husband and I were planning to have children. I guess I should have known it was coming. "Well, we certainly hope so," I answered. She looked down and smiled lovingly at her tiny baby. "They bring so much joy. You'll see." Yeah. I'll see. Heh. Or maybe not. "So I've been told," I said, holding back the tears. She asked if we were trying yet and I laughed and nodded my head. "Trying and trying and trying," I said. "You don't know the half of it." She scrunched her nose up, paused for a moment and finally asked, "You're not using those fertility drugs, are you?" At that moment, being the victim of an alien abduction would have made my day. I restrained myself from punching her in the uterus and asked, "You've been reading Oprah magazine, haven't you?" She looked a bit confused and said, "Huh? No. Why?" "Because there was this really bad article about...oh, never mind," I said. "Well, listen, one of my friends - she tried to get pregnant for a long time and couldn't, so she went to the doctor and started using fertility drugs. For years! She never got pregnant and her doctor finally told her to stop, but she kept using them anyway and then she got cancer and died." Okay, um, WHAT THE FUCK WAS HER POINT?! I don't even remember much of what was said after that because I was out-of-my-mind furious with her. Not only was this an ignorant assumption on her part that fertility drugs cause cancer, but, what the fucking fuck? Did she think this was particularly helpful information? Did she think I would LIKE hearing this horrific story? The next time she gets pregnant - and you can bet she will - I think I'll crinkle my nose and ask, "You're not PREGNANT, are you?" Then I'll immediately begin offering up all sorts of pregnancy horror stories. Because she should be informed, don't you think? Good lord, people can be such assholes.
