Ladies, if you want to do your grocery shopping without assorted Casanovas enquiring as to whether they can share your cold cuts or provide the boerewors for your brotchen, do yourself a favour and walk around carrying a jumbo pack of Pampers New Baby nappies.
Though a certain caliber of man finds it perfectly acceptable to hit on you while you are mulling over whether your monthly requires light or heavy flow Tampax, even such low fellows feign coughing fits when you turn around weighed down by these soft, baby bum-sized receptacles that will eventually house more gooey globs of excrement than they’ll know what to do with.
Like the Ghost of Christmas Future, the sight of nappies seems to fast forward all that flirtation to its imagined end and slam home the fact that getting all hot and bothered may leave them hot and bothered when they need to divide their middling salary between hospital bills, child support and the drinks necessitated after mopping up a particularly horrifying episode of “Daddy, I have Diahorrea.”
Incredibly, when carrying diapers, a woman is suddenly free from the whispers of “my size “O81…?” and “daai sterre” which seem to follow her down aisles and up streets like a bad a smell emanating from the idiotic.
Though I’m buying the nappies for a friend’s baby shower and will hardly remember to walk around with them again, I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself as I walk out of Checkers and bump into my favourite car guard who beams at me and says: “Congratulations for the baby!”
As I’ve forgotten that I’m carrying a jumbo sized Shield Against the Shameless, I immediately think that he is implying that my stomach looks like it is home to Andre the Giant and I start to tear up a little because… I’ve been working out!
Perhaps, sensing that he is about to witness some kind of nervous breakdown, the car guard gently kicks at the pack of diapers and I let out such a great, big laugh of relief, he steps back a little and glances sideways to reassure himself that there are people around to help him. Should he need it.
In strangled tones of recently averted humiliation, I tell him that the nappies are not for me and that I am buying them for my friend’s baby shower. He nods faintly, blinks at the words “baby shower” and instead of leaving me to get on with a life unplagued by queries as to when I will be spewing spawn he says: “And you? When are you going to have a baby?”
Though I would like to tell him I will have children when they invent some kind of injection that stops them from crying all night, shitting all day and doing unspeakable things to a figure already in the thickening throes of revolt, I simply smile and tell him “maybe someday.”
This seems to appease him and the amused look he usually gives me when he inevitably hollers “hallo!” and yanks me out of reverie is replaced with satisfaction.
A few minutes later when I’m sitting at my laptop, scrolling through Facebook updates about how perfectly my married and impregnated friends are living their lives, a little targeted advert catches my eye and makes me want to subscribe to a less ironic life.
“Are you fit, fabulous and between the ages of 20 and 34? Donate your eggs today!”
Because, clearly, Facebook, car guards and the good Lord knows I’m not doing anything with them.
– marth__vader on Twitter
