‘stupid’ or like ‘someone who likes being in the church choir instead of smoking cigarettes in back of the rectory.’ But my gay friends said that word offended them and so I stopped. They said to me, ‘Why is it so important to you to be able to use that word?’ And guess what?”
“What?”
“I realized that it’s
My voice started to break. I was so tired from pretending not to be offended at the party. I was holding back tears. If it’s not socially acceptable to not have a baby—it’s definitely not socially acceptable to cry like one in your refried beans.
Sharon comforted me. “Jen, it’s okay to cry. Wait. Wait. Not yet. Wait until the waiter circles back. You want him to see that you’re upset. He might bring us more chips.”
I decided it didn’t matter that there were no chips left and ate some guacamole with a spoon.
My tears turned to indignant passion. I made a declaration. “Sharon, I think that childfree by choice is the new gay. We’re the new disenfranchised group. People think we’re irresponsible, immoral sluts and that our lifestyle is up for debate.”
Sharon agreed. “That’s genius, Jen. Genius!” She started writing on a napkin. It was so wet it ripped. “Ah, fuck it. I’ll remember what you said. Something, something… the new gay.”
We burst into laughter and then let the tears stream down our faces. Sharon said, “I don’t want to make you more upset but I have something to tell you.”
“What?”
“I saw a BABY ON BOARD decal on a car today. I was trying to pull up beside her but she wasn’t noticing. I had my window rolled down. I was all ready to say, ‘Hey. This isn’t 1985 and nobody gives a fuck.’ ”
Sharon knew this was something that I loved to hate, including those cars that have the decals that indicate Mommy, Daddy, Timmy, Jill, and the family dog. I also can’t stand MY CHILD IS AN HONOR STUDENT bumper stickers.
I’m glad your kid won a spelling bee or gets good grades or that you love being a soccer mom or that you’re proud of your kids. Do you really have to put it in bumper-sticker form? Is any kid going to be on a therapist’s couch years from now saying, “My parents clothed me, fed me, tucked me in at night, and read me bedtime stories, they paid for my college education, but there is a bumper-sticker-size void in my psyche and a decal-size hole in my heart. I wanted everyone who drove by us on the 10 freeway to know that my mom loved me!”
When I was growing up my parents would have been embarrassed to have bumper stickers on their car that announced their love for their kid. Also they hated bumper stickers. “Jennifah, those are so hard to get off and they immediately decrease the value of the cah. Do
Congratulations. You are proud of your Cub Scout. I assume that if you have kids, you’re proud of them, so if you keep talking about how proud of them you are… maybe
UNLIKE THE LOVELY pissed-off Sharon, some friends of mine (and professionals whom I pay to hear me whine) ask me whether I couldn’t just humor the moms like you do with Scientologists to get them to leave you alone. Couldn’t I just tell them, “Sure, maybe I will have kids/consider the dangers of never getting ‘clear’ by not accepting Xenu as my lord and savior,” and then move on?
What if I were gay and someone said to me, “You’ll change your mind”? Would you agree and suggest that I say, “You’re right; I will probably stop being gay once I get this immature loving-the-same-sex thing out of my system”?
Sounds stupid, right? Can’t people with children accept that we childfree people know ourselves? Why should I have to give in just to make them comfortable? The worst part is I tried that tactic. I’ve said, “Yeah, maybe,” and guess what? They don’t stop. The floodgates open and the next thing I know they’ve set a date for my baby shower. I can never, ever win. Except for the fact that my stomach doesn’t look like a deflated balloon. Although it will soon since I keep skipping my Pilates lessons.
It’s time for the bullying from breeders to stop. Are children the only thing you guys can talk about? When you’re not talking about your own pregnancy you’re talking about how everyone else should be pregnant. Did you forget that you used to have interests and hobbies and opinions about things other than my uterus? We childfree ladies are tired of defending our positions on something that doesn’t need defending. It’s not like we’re starting a new chapter of the KKK and telling your kids that instead of dressing up like a regular ghost this Halloween—why not make a cute pointy hat with that white bedsheet?
I’m not trying to be dramatic. Sometimes I really do feel bullied by parents. (Not by all parents. Just the ones who tell me that I should have children after I tell them that I’m too selfish/skinny/tight-vagina’d to do so.)
I know that we’re all grown-ups and no one is pulling my hair (well, some people are but that’s not your business) or calling me fat on Facebook or threatening to beat me up. I was bullied in elementary school. I’m not making light of the word “bullied.” I fell into a puddle on the playground at recess one day and my clothes were soaking wet so I had to go to the school nurse to get cleaned up. She left me alone in her office to undress. On the cot she’d laid out one of those scratchy gray blankets I’m assuming were donated to American elementary schools from war-torn third world countries.
As I was wrapping this afghan-size Brillo pad around my body, my personal bully, Greg, appeared in the doorway. Short, big-eared, gravelly voiced, Greg saw my naked body just moments before it was covered. He said the worst thing that anyone has ever said to me upon seeing me naked (at least out loud). “Ewwww, gross.”
Now, he wasn’t wrong. I probably was gross. I had spotty new pubic hair and little nubs instead of boobs. Never having seen a spray-tan booth and it being the dead of winter in Massachusetts, I was most likely a special shade of practically clear pale. But it’s still not nice when an eleven-year-old girl stands naked in front of her archnemesis and he says, “Ewwww, gross.” And that’s how I feel every time a woman I know or don’t know says to me, “You’ll change your mind,” or, “You’re selfish.” I feel exposed and judged for my totally natural self. And just like Greg—who went on to say, “Ewwww, gross,” about three more times, even after I’d put the blanket around me and shrieked, “Get out of here!”—these women continue to stand in front of me and relentlessly repeat their insulting observations. To their credit, at least they don’t usually end their bullying monologues with, “Jen, you ah wicked retahded.”
It’s not like I don’t understand where Greg was coming from. He had his own insecurities. Maybe he hated being short or having big ears or a shitty father. I have no idea why he zeroed in on me to pick on. It could have been because I came to school dressed up as Mozart one day for no reason, or the time I wanted to interrupt class to read a poem about a lighthouse that ended up sounding really phallic: “A lighthouse grows between two rocks on a cliff, straight and tall, nice and stiff.” That
Maybe I need to cut moms a little slack. Maybe the Eileens and Alis of the world stare at me and think,
Hey, it’s none of your business, but since you asked…
