My other problem is that sometimes I keep quiet so I don't have to tell the truth. I have never quite mastered the middle ground of little white lies.
Example number 1:
Shopgirl: Gosh, you are enormous, you must be due any day now
Stupid me: No actually, I'm not due for another 11 weeks
Shopgirl looks simultaneously horrified and disgusted.
I feel fat, loathsome and cranky at Miss Skinny Hotpants.
Example number 2:
Hairdresser: I'm just going to blow dry your hair now
15 minutes later [keep in mind the pregnancy, 32 degree day and the plastic sheet]
Hairdresser (still blowdrying): How are you doing there?
Me, trying not to faint: mmmmm
I feel like I am a fat, loathsome meatball stewing in my own juices.
* * *
I hate it when I do this. My brain is telling me in the first instance to lie, and in the second instance, begging me to speak up. It is the same obligation of politeness ("if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all") that makes me walk out of the hairdresser with my chest covered in one-inch red hairs, so thick it looks like I am part orangutan. I had to go home to wipe it off before returning to the shops to finish my shopping.
Could I have asked the hairdresser to take the time to de-hair me before I left? Yes, a normal person would have, but apparently I am not normal. I have a problem, and as far as I can tell there is not an AA equivalent.
So today I thought I would try something new. Lie to complete strangers.
I treated my long-unseen, neglected and apparently very swollen feet to a pedicure today. The lady in the chair next to me smiled at my bump, raised her eyebrows and asked me how long I had left.
'A few weeks,' I told her.
Her eyebrows flattened in thought as she calculated how far along I must be and the size of my bump.
'Number 1?', she asked.
'Number 3 actually,' I told her.
Her eyebrows shot right off her head.
I had gone from being the biggest, fattest pregnant woman in history to the one with the neatest bump (and nicest feet) all with a single lie. I felt pretty good until the woman grating my feet asked me when I was due.
Crap. I hadn't thought that far ahead and my brain was still fried from being shot with a heat gun at the hairdressers. I couldn't figure out what my due date would be if I was really 37 weeks. It all came unravelled and I was left sitting there with my mouth hanging open: 'ummmmmm?, I said'.
Mrs Eyebrow smiled smugly to herself. She had totally caught me out in my lie and I was stuck there with my feet encased in creams and lotions, unable to extricate myself in shame.
And so even though Winston Churchill said:
Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and
hurry off as if nothing happened.
If you are going to stumble over a lie, make sure you can make a quick getaway.
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