Frightening prospect…

Eli­jah and I were on the bus home from Tar­get today and I kept hear­ing snip­pets of con­ver­sa­tions.  This isn’t abnor­mal by any means, it’s one of the rea­sons I like the bus.  It’s my own per­sonal ver­sion of real­ity t.v.  Today. how­ever, I wished I could turn it off.  Two women, age was very hard to deter­mine, were mak­ing com­men­tary about every preg­nant woman they saw on the street.  (oddly enough it was preg­nant woman on parade day)  It started out fairly inno­cent, obnox­ious, but still…“she’s hav­ing a girl you can tell”, “Oh hers hasn’t dropped yet”, then turned a lit­tle ven­omous, “She’s gonna have stretch marks, I’m not gonna have those”, “How did SHE get preg­nant lookin like that?”, then to flat out hate­ful.  Peo­ple judge oth­ers, I’m used to it.  That wasn’t really the part that dis­turbed me.

The con­ver­sa­tion then turned to how THEY were going to get knocked up.  One telling the other that she was just des­per­ate to get preg­nant.  They spoke of a girl they knew and how she man­aged to and how it sur­prised them both.  As it con­tin­ued it became per­fectly clear that preg­nancy for them had lit­tle to noth­ing to do with a baby and more to do with ben­e­fits and spe­cial treatment.

This on top of news of another sin­gle Mom I know of using the sys­tem for every­thing she can had me strug­gling between rage and tears.  I’m a Demo­c­rat.  Some would call me a lib­eral. I believe help should be given to those who need it but things like this just infu­ri­ate me.

They got off on the stop I would expect them too, this time I was the one judg­ing, I was relieved that they didn’t get off near me.  As I hauled my stroller and bag and amaz­ing kiddo off the bus and up to our won­der­ful apart­ment I tried to shove back the anger and just appre­ci­ate what I have, and how glad I am that I am not them.

Tags: city life, money, new mom, parenting, politics, social situations