CONFESSIONS OF A FACEBOOK FAILURE: Year 3 Day 8

Sometimes I lie about being pregnant. I highly recommend the practice. It goes something like this:

Step 1: Wait! Wait it out as long as you can, but at least until your last trimester. You’ll only get the nerve up to do it once, and you want to make it count. My favorite performance to date was 3 days post butterfly release date.

Step 2: Play up the waddle, poke out the watermelon, and wait for an unsuspecting stranger to go in for the highly questionable, uninvited belly rub.

Step 3: When you get a bite (i.e. “Sooooo…how far along are you?”), remain silent, as if in shock and stare blankly for an entire minute. Wait until the discomfort is somehow audible. Bonus points if you can manage a jaw drop.

Step 4: Avoid outward dishonesty (that would be unethical, of course), but emphatically state, “Excuse me!?!” Nothing else.

Step 5: Waddle away. The art of gestational deception has been achieved.

Now before you pass judgement, know that this is not what you think. It is not about finding joy in evil in a moment in your life when the only remaining bliss comes from the sweet, sweet combination of sweat pants, soap operas, and sitting. No, instead I see the practice as sort of a public service announcement for all of the other times folks thought it was a good idea to ask the chunky mother of multiples with a Bjorn strapped to both sides, “Sooooo….how far along are you” …when you weren’t! Unless something is thrashing out of my gut, like a scene out of “Alien”, try slowing down on the small talk, Stranger. That permanent pooch might just be the battle scars of babies birthed long, long ago.

See, I am teaching a valuable lesson to the public that perhaps assumptions and strangers and the checkout line of Walmart are not the wisest of combinations…

…and perhaps finding just a bit of humor in the humorless time of sleepless nights, bowling ball bellies, and an ever-shrinking bladder. Come on…let me have that much.

2 years ago today, I decided to switch out my selfies for shame, in an attempt to change the face of this fiction. So in the spirit of giving, I am gifting y’all once again with a daily dose of self-esteem, in knowing that no matter how bad it gets, mine is probably way worse. I hope you enjoy diving into my daily, dirty little secrets this December.

If you can relate, please LIKE, or SHARE, or FOLLOW, or read some more.

Help me avoid the morning-after-writer’s-remorse that wells from the paranoia of my signature self-shaming, by giving me your virtual nod and smile, and I will promise to divulge deeper despairs in days to come.