People are nice to you when you have a baby bump. All the nice and nurturing things they can imagine about a person, they project onto you.
There is a whole array of safe questions you can ask a pregnant woman that eliminate social anxieties because of the great equalizing force of procreation:
Any cravings? Yes - cigarettes and whiskey. I mean, no, not many.
When are you due? not soon enough! End of Jan.
Homeless people suddenly don't ask for change, but they talk to you more than ever. One woman shouted at me: "It's a boy!" yes, it is.
The macho men at the butcher and the produce stall have dropped the subtly leering tone and totally transformed. I am no longer a judgemental hipster with an inscrutable agenda: I am a mom. They have a mom. They have wives. Mom is something you can understand.
