When work colleagues are pregnant they think you want to touch the distended egg sac and feel it move.

No!
I never caressed you when you worked next to me, why would I want to now?

And then, because you are childless and have definite political views and talk about gender issues and deplore homophobia you are suddenly the unnatural one in the group!

there are safer, more humane ways to induce labor you know.

In all the time I've been pregnant, which would be close to 30 months of my life, I don't think a stranger ever touched my belly, and even close friends and family asked first or waited for an invitation.

Maybe I send off a 'don't touch me' vibe irl too.

Merkins are more invasive than Brits in this field, I've found. I guess Aussies probably have a different norm too. No-one ever asked to touch my belly in the UK, never mind try to do so without asking.

I knew what you meant, luvly.

I am waaaaaay too uptight with the kids at restaurants that I didnt take them when they were younger.

Actually, Im pretty strict on them in public as a rule. I dont think other people should have to hear them fighting, bitching, whining or being otherwise annoying.

Im more tolerant of other peoples kids than mine, but I swear squealing kids do my head in. I will walk out rather than put up with a squealing kid.

I pinched Addison under the bicep one day because he thought squealing in public was fun, soon changed that squeal to a squalk and when people looked they didnt know what had happened :) he stopped pretty quickly.

Yeah, squealing gives me the shits too. lol

I can deal with children from four upwards now.
I think I probably could before, but I found them harder to tune out.
Still fret about childer running amok - but now it's omreo worry that they'll come a cropper, rather than keeping my fingers crossed they'll trip up a waiter with a sizzling plate and get what they deserve.

It's the wordless wailing and repetition (usually associated with the Terrible Twos) and the randomn shrieks of those younger that still afflict me. Urgh. SHUT UP!

Mum says she and Dad didn't sit together in Mass for about four years thanks to me and my sister. One of them was always stationed close to the exit in case there was trouble. It was usually with me, squirming and talking and wriggling and crying when I wasn't allowed my own way. I was Godless even then it seems.

But chops to them for not wanting to drown out other people's communion with God.

Keyboard trouble :eyebrow: ?

"more" or "more a"

oreo. They might crush them if they trip.

wow... no talking about money? your not jewish are you...

seriously? price shifts? legal tax loopholes? extra profit sources? ways to save? ways for building credit ratings? heroic stories about how you got the bank manager to do his or her job?

you actually have a social convention against exchanging some of the most useful information any household need in order to make a saving?

i mean, i understand now why so many of my conversations when i lived in canada and the US made people feel uncomfortable, this does explain a lot...

but still seems really really redicules.

wait... so we exchange financial information with each other while avoiding it with others because they behave all uncomfortable... omg we really do have a conspirecy! why didn't i notice that?

I think it's more contextual than that. Rather than a blanket rule.

Also, I don't know, but I suspect that this maybe slightly different in Britain.

@ Monster: have you noticed any difference in the way money is spoken about?

Dude, she's a Brit expat.

There are some conversations that do cross lines though, like bragging on screwing the rest of the population by hiding your mother's assets so she could go on the dole, to reference one "conversation" I sat through. There are folks so fascinated by money that it alters there every human interaction because they're always looking for an angle. Good advice is appreciated but a very rare commodity.

Well translated there, sir!
I struggled to work it out myself.

here's a piece of contextual manners which most people here might not be able to relate to, and that is the required piece conversation that has to happen whenever two middle eastern immigrants from different countries interact in a 3rd country.

where are you from? [insert country]
o, and you? [insert country]
o its ok its just politics!
yea, [insert conflict between countries] is all the politician's fault!
ofcourse, its all the politicans! the people want peace!
I am pro peace too! always protested against the wars!
me too! my [insert far away relative] was in the resistence!
yea we're ok its just the politicans!
so... how much is the taxi fair to go downtown?


And that's why you don't talk to people in "network sales" or pyramid schemes... Ever. Not an Hello, nothing. If they are occuping the space in front of you in the supermarket and won't move to the side, you grunt loudly with a threatening tone.