There’s More To Me Than My Marital Status

Bloody Facebook. I knew there was a reason I became a reluctant convert. It’s all very well having hilarious banter with my actual friends, who are an international crowd, but there’s the well-documented difficulty of “people from the past.”

I don’t mean a dark, shady past like everyone on Days of our Lives reveals just before almost dying in a dramatic way. I mean an ordinary-to-moderately-weird past involving a small town with some basically nice, well-intentioned folk whose reality I no longer inhabit.

And here comes the Facebook reacquaintance ritual. Let me share a recent one with you.

me: Hello Mrs X, it’s nice to hear from you.
Mrs X: Hello dear! Gosh, by the looks of your pictures you’re all grown up.
me: Yes, I am. How are you?
Mrs X: Oh just super, Mr X is retired. Daughter 1 got married last summer and Daughter 2 is engaged. Are you married?
me: No. What are Daughter 1 and Daughter 2 doing these days?
Mrs X: Well, Daughter 2 is busy planning her wedding and Daughter 1 is….

I won’t bore you with the extended banality.

After living in five countries, having a medium-fabulous career and dodging border guards’ bullets no less that TWICE, hearing from people from ye olde home town who want to know if I’m married is irritating. Because that is the only interesting thing anyone could EVER do, right? Nevermind starting the first stitch ‘n’ bitch in Moscow, bribing my way onto a midnight train to Minsk and getting drunk with a (anonymous famous) Glaswegian rock star*.

Listen. Weddings, I can just about muster enthusiasm for, if they happen to be the weddings of people I know and love and find interesting. If they don’t involve loads of pretentious crap. If there is free wine. Otherwise, irrelevant. Babies, I adore. Might even make one, which will grow up knowing it has a mother who has climbed the highest mountain in three countries, swum in five oceans and MET MARGARET ATWOOD.

But for goodness sake. Am I married? Does your imagination extend no further?

*not telling

Contact the author here: miriam@morningquickie.com