My first experience at complete immersion in another culture, after a few months, I began to see, among the crowds, a person who looked just like by brother say, y’know, only Asian! It was very odd!
I’m terrible at it, but I have friends who are pretty good at identifying other Asian’s ethnicity. It seems more like life exposure and being well traveled could possibly be the reason to me.
Or just plain nutty. I had a patient whose daughter was with her as she was being seen. Patient was about 50ish and daughter was about 25 and pregnant. As they were leaving I wished the daughter good luck with the rest of her pregnancy (they’d been talking about it) and the patient said “Cross your fingers that she has a preemie, they’re just so cute!”
Holy shit.
I want to ask my co-worker why her tummy is so big. She looks like she’s nine months pregnant. She’s not heavy anywhere except her abdomen. Her butt isn’t big.
She drinks a lot of beer, but it’s usually men who have a “beer belly”. I have other friends who like beer, and they don’t have tummies anywhere near that large.
Could be ascites due to cirrhosis of the liver, maybe. My brother-in-law had that right before his liver shut down due to his drinking, and he’d been supplementing his heavy-ish social drinking with chugging vodka when no one was around. (Fortunately it started working again after months of hospitalization, but he’s basically on disability for life.)
“Why do you smoke? You live in the USA in 2013. What is your excuse? Do you even have a post-hoc rationalization for yourself or do you just shove those things in your mouth and light up on autopilot?”
I have other rude questions which are, perhaps, ruder, but that’s the one I want to ask most often.
That would work at home but one assumes that she has had to, at some point, answer the call away from home.
Same story with my non-drinking wife- well, let’s say the 7-months pregnant look, anyway. Enough to noticeably overhang her beltline and cause shirts to ride up, even though she’s otherwise very well proportioned. The inexorable weight gain that seems to be her genetic destiny just all goes to her belly area. Just happens to some people, I guess.
For me, I’d like to be able to ask a couple of friends about their finances. Like, are they more loaded than I think, or are they deeply in debt? Because, while they have well-paying high-tech jobs, it doesn’t seem that they could comfortably support stay-at-home spouses in very nice houses with multiple kids getting their entire primary educations in expensive private schools. Do programmer jobs pay THAT well?
This. When I found out an aquaintance who works as a nurse smoked I felt like asking, “I know you’re the one with at least some medical background, if not a medical degree of some kind, but I seem to recall that smoking is bad for your health. Am I wrong? Did they change that? Do they teach something else where you went to nursing school?”
One of my professors always has a most mysterious object under his shirt.
It doesn’t really appear to be a colostomy bag since it’s not in the right spot.
It is just below his ribs.
It’s way too huge to be a cell phone in his pocket or something.
The weird thing is that it changes shape. Some days it looks more like a rectangle, other days it looks more like an irregularly shaped lump.
I really want to know what is up but of course I’d never ask.
I know a woman who had a baby last year, via double-donor IVF - donor egg, donor sperm. I’d love to ask her, ‘Why didn’t you adopt?’ I totally understand that adoption wouldn’t be the right option for a lot of people, because they want the blood tie, but she obviously doesn’t feel that way. And yes, adoption is a lot of hassle and expense and an emotional rollercoaster, but so are multiple rounds of IVF. So why go through pregnancy and labour and an emergency C-section? I’m sure she had reasons - this is a smart lady - but I’m not close enough to her to ask her what they were.
Now I do too! I bet if you posted this as a separate thread, the Teeming Millions could figure it out.
There’s no one spot for a colostomy. If your colostomy is planned, they will (should) have the patient meet with an ostomy nurse to determine the optimal placement of the stoma based on your body shape and clothing preferences, but in an emergency, it gets put where the surgeon can put it. He bases that decision on where he’s got to cut out intestine and how much give there is to the connective tissue that holds the intestines in place. Intestines are not loose like unlinked sausages; you can’t move the stoma too far without causing circulation issues.
So it’s very likely that it is indeed a colostomy or ileostomy, based on the “changes shape” comment. Otherwise, I’d be voting for an insulin pump, but those don’t change shape.
My neighbour’s very religious brother just house sat for him while he was away. His girlfriend came over, and I know they’ve never stayed together before. I really, really, really, really want to ask SO DIDYA DO THE NASTY??!!11!one!!1
And then they will say yes, because, well, duh. And then I’ll ask: “But… :eek: doesn’t that mean you will go to hell?”
Why oh why is not acceptable to say such things? Stoopid social conventions.
Ah, thanks for the information, WhyNot.
I feel kind of bad for trying so intensely to figure this out since whatever it is, it’s probably pretty personal or else it wouldn’t be under his shirt.
Still, sometimes you just have to wonder these things. :o
How do blind people know when they are done cleaning after taking a dump?
How do people with no arms clean up at all after a dumper?
What would have made this one rude was the setting.
I worked for a while in a company which was clearly both extra-careful about accesibility and usability of its installations and open to hiring people others would discard on sight. There was the twitchy guy from Accounting, several people who used walking aids…
The last day before Christmas vacation, the four biggest Cs in the company walked all through home office shaking hands. One of them had a “thalidomide-style” right arm, no long bones in sight but only a little hand protruding from his shoulder. I offered my left hand; he gave me a very curious look and shook; others noticed it and started offering their lefts as well.
I still want to ask him whether it really is so rare for people to realize that shaking right-to-left is just not going to fit well.
Could be genetic. I look like this, especially after eating a lot of carbs. Bloating plus heredity. My whole dad’s side follows this pattern.
I want to ask my mother why she left Dad to go back to the boyfriend she had before Dad, whom she broke up with because he was an asshole. Did she not think he wouldn’t continue to be an asshole?
And I want to ask my friend, whose family has a history of psychological problems, why she had a kid who was diagnosed with Asperger’s, then had another one who has OCD.
And I want to ask my other friend, whose new baby everyone thinks is so cute, why the thing’s head is so freakin’ huge (seriously, like this but without the veins). But eventually she admitted the baby needed surgery on her skull.
After listening to the umpteenth sob story about my friend and her ex, in which she has ignored everything I told her last time, did everything she said she wouldn’t do, and asks me once again what she should do about it: "WHY ARE YOU STILL LETTING THIS COCKSUCKER LIVE IN YOUR HEAD RENT FREE?!! DON’T FUCKING TALK TO HIM! EVER AGAIN! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!"
Wow, that felt better just typing it.
WAG: You get an infant, know the mom wasn’t drinking/smoking/using drugs, have a good idea of the genetics, and know no one will be changing their mind and petitioning to get the baby back or trying to be part of your kid’s life later.
Though that still leaves the “why did you need an egg” question open. Are you infertile, do you hate your genes, etc…
