Seeing people who are not visibily pregnant
Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2023 3:57 am
I'm not sure if this makes any sense for this forum or website, but here it goes:
Up until I was in my mid-thirties, I had a sense of pregnant people in a different way than my peers. I wasn’t aware of this till I was 16 or so, when I congratulated my English teacher on her pregnancy. Thankfully this was at the end of a class and we were alone. She got extremely mad at me, red flushed and basically kicked me out of the empty class room. Looking back, she was about 2 weeks pregnant at the time and since that incident she didn’t trust me anymore I think for some reason.
Only in talking to a close friend at the time did I realize others could not see what I saw. Basically, at the time I compared it to a seeing black guy in a crowd (now probably we’d use different language and use BIPOC). Anyways, for my whole life I would notice people in malls, on the street etc. and notice they were (not visibly) pregnant. Not that it ever warranted mention, as the black guy in the crowd that all of us see doesn’t need to be called out either. We all see him walk by and think nothing of it.
I treated the pregnant women the same. I thought everyone saw this as well. So I never brought it up. Until the incident with my English teacher. Since then I’ve only told one person about this for fear of being called insane or what not. I have a handful of female friends and every time they were pregnant I ended it up mentioning it (phrased as a question) before they did, some to great surprise and usually delight.
In my mid forties the one friend I confided in about all this asked me whether it still “worked”. I hadn’t noticed, but somewhere along the line, I lost the ability. She always wondered if I lost it around the same time my own mum died. Who knows, it’s weird and useless really but mildly interesting. Maybe there are more people who have this.
Kevin
Up until I was in my mid-thirties, I had a sense of pregnant people in a different way than my peers. I wasn’t aware of this till I was 16 or so, when I congratulated my English teacher on her pregnancy. Thankfully this was at the end of a class and we were alone. She got extremely mad at me, red flushed and basically kicked me out of the empty class room. Looking back, she was about 2 weeks pregnant at the time and since that incident she didn’t trust me anymore I think for some reason.
Only in talking to a close friend at the time did I realize others could not see what I saw. Basically, at the time I compared it to a seeing black guy in a crowd (now probably we’d use different language and use BIPOC). Anyways, for my whole life I would notice people in malls, on the street etc. and notice they were (not visibly) pregnant. Not that it ever warranted mention, as the black guy in the crowd that all of us see doesn’t need to be called out either. We all see him walk by and think nothing of it.
I treated the pregnant women the same. I thought everyone saw this as well. So I never brought it up. Until the incident with my English teacher. Since then I’ve only told one person about this for fear of being called insane or what not. I have a handful of female friends and every time they were pregnant I ended it up mentioning it (phrased as a question) before they did, some to great surprise and usually delight.
In my mid forties the one friend I confided in about all this asked me whether it still “worked”. I hadn’t noticed, but somewhere along the line, I lost the ability. She always wondered if I lost it around the same time my own mum died. Who knows, it’s weird and useless really but mildly interesting. Maybe there are more people who have this.
Kevin