An officemate has given birth, she’s not part of my immediate group but we’re pleasant to each other, we say hi to each other when we meet in the restroom. Much as I would like to ask her how her delivery went, how the baby is, a traumatic experience is preventing me from doing so. No. Not as dramatic as you think, but still…
A few years ago, the firm I was employed at had a joint project with another consulting firm. The project manager in the counterpart firm was a pregnant woman who I will call Molly, for ease of narration.
The project lasted for several months, and was fairly rigorous, involving extremely late nights, and virtual imprisonment in the office. During the course of the project, I never had a face-to face meeting with Molly again ( her firm sent (cute) male Ozzie engineers, but who were, alas, in their early twenties), mostly communicating through teleconference and email.
When we turned over the project, the client made some sort of big deal over it, arranging a cocktail party to follow the presentation to top executives. During the party, I approached Molly, complimented her on the swift return of her figure, and asked her if the baby is a girl or a boy. She turned extremely pale, chugged down her cocktail, mumbled that she had to go talk to someone, and fled. My boss, who was looking on with a horrified face, took this opportunity to whisper to me that the baby was stillborn, and Molly remains extremely upset over it.
I realize that it wasn’t really my fault, but I still look back on this episode with guilt and embarrassment. Maybe my boss should have circulated an urgent memo to stay away from childbith as a conversation topic. What’s done is done, but this incident looms large in my mind, as a moment in which I really felt ashamed of myself.
What we Filipinos regard as small talk is sometimes intensely personal. One thing that’s really annoying is people who think nothing of commenting on other people’s body size. For every acquiantance who tells me “Ang laki mo na!” (“You’ve become huge!”), I wish I could say “Pumangit ka lalo!” (You’ve gotten uglier!”) or “Mukha ka pa ding tanga” (You still look like a moron”).
Mental note: Must make a list of safe, yet interesting conversation topics. Politics and religion has long been on my no-talk list. Traffic jams and the weather are good for at only five minutes, maybe more if you could segue the weather talk to Global Warming. Stock markets will give you about ten minutes (more if the market is performing well). But after exhausting these topics. what else can strangers who only happen to have to work on the same project have to talk about? Perhaps this is why there is a so much interest in celebrity gossip. It is safer to talk about the shenanigans of Paris, Britney and Lindsay than the company executive who is a regular customer in one of the bars in the Makati red light district*.
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* This is just an example, so don’t email me asking who this is. And this is such a generic example anyway. Which company executive is NOT a regular customer will probably be a better question.
