it’s not about you

A friend of mine mentioned that s/he might stop reading my blog because of the behavior of some of the commenters I’ve had lately (we’ll get to the commenting issue soon enough). I encouraged this person to please keep reading, that things will settle down “once i get back to the more mundane topics, like judah’s fingernail colors, my bus rides, baby clothes and whether i should cut my hair.”

Which is kind of funny considering this story I’m about to tell….

So today, I get on the bus with Judah to go to my prenatal appointment. Now keep in mind I’m 38 weeks pregnant and I look like i’m trying to smuggle a bowling ball somewhere, or that perhaps if you poke me hard enough I’ll pop and start deflating or something. It’s hard to get around,, especially with my symphysis, and I’m trying to get my big fat belly on a bus while navigating a three year old. I’m also having a hard time keeping pants and skirts hiked up and shirts pulled down, just from moving around, you know? Nothing quite fits anymore. Everything slides to to the point of least circumference.

Toward the front of the bus is an empty seat. There’s a plastic Talbot’s bag on it. I ask the woman sitting in the next seat if it’s her bag. She says yes. I ask her, “Do you mind if I sit there?” She looks at me and says, “Not until you pull up your skirt first.”

She refused to move her bag and let me sit down until I had pulled up my skirt to cover my belly where it had come uncovered.

There’s only one word to describe that: “Unfuckingbelievable.”

I told her no. I was so angry. I said I wasn’t going to pull up my skirt and (I think I asked her if she was serious) and that it was none of her business what I wore or how I dress. So she wouldn’t move her bag and let me sit in the empty seat. Now I have one hand holding onto the bus, a bag on my arm, I’m trying to keep my balance, my other hand is holding on to my child’s hand and I am trying to keep her from falling or getting knocked over as well. I’m a little busy to care if my clothes aren’t lined up perfectly. And I have officially HAD IT with mean people.

On either side of her and the empty seat were two women who both heard our exchange (I think the entire front of the bus heard our exchange) and began to get out of their seats to offer them to me. One was elderly and the other had a young boy with her. I waved them both down and told them that I wouldn’t take their seats just because someone was going to be rude to me. I think I said something along the lines of how if I don’t deserve a seat then I guess I don’t deserve a seat.

She said again, “If you pull up your skirt you can sit down.” So I told her again that it was none of her business how i dress and that there’s no way I’m sitting next to her now anyway. So I ended up standing on the bus until this woman got off. Yes, I’m that stubborn.

I wanted to go all Sydney Bristow on her, or give her a Chuck Norris roundhouse-kick-to-the-face, but I can’t lift my legs more than a few inches. I had to lift my legs with my hands just to step up onto the bus, it’s getting so bad. I was not walking around showing off my belly. Even if I was, what is she, the clothes police? No one on the bus would take that seat and sit next to her after that.

So much for my bus riding being a “mundane topic.”

from the New York Times:

As with the pregnancy storyline, motherhood will allow “Alias” to present an ultra-heightened version of the concerns of regular women, and also to have fun with how a family of spooks might handle a newborn. For instance: Jack Bristow, Sydney’s emotionally distant father, may be able to disarm a nuclear weapon, but can he assemble an Ikea crib? Mr. Pinkner said he wasn’t sure: after all, for Jack it will be “the first time in 20 years he’s used a screwdriver for its actual intended purpose.”