False Assumptions: It's a Girl! Er...It's a Belly

I overheard someone at a kid's birthday party a few years ago make the dreaded mistake of asking a stranger the question, "When are you due?"

The woman to whom the question was directed was wearing what appeared to be a maternity shirt. It had an empire waist and tied in the back, and from beneath the fabric draped over the woman's midsection one could clearly discern a sizeable, rounded bulge.

Upon hearing the question, this woman replied, "I'm not pregnant."

The other woman hesitated for a moment and then, believing this woman to be kidding, said, "No really, when are you due?"

Needless to say, the woman with the shirt and the bulge repeated her reply in a manner that made it very clear that she was neither pregnant nor kidding.

Ouch.

Sometimes assumptions can really hurt, and that's why we've all been cautioned never to assume because why? [Repeat after me] When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.

William Safire warned us about assumptions. Never assume the obvious is true , he said, and, We must never assume that which is incapable of proof.

But what about things that are capable of proof? What happens when we make assumptions about situations before we have proof? What happens when a doctor, for example, or even a team of medical professionals assumes a particular diagnosis - a potentially tragic, life-changing diagnosis - before they have definitive, scientific proof? And when this doctor or team of medical professionals shares these assumptions with a patient and her family, how, then, can they possibly refrain from making even more assumptions about what will happen next?

My friend Lisa and her family have been through a few very rough days this week. She's currently in the hospital undergoing a battery of tests, and from what I've read on her blog, Midwestern Mommy, the experience has been traumatic to say the least. Lisa is a sweet, beautiful, kind soul...please go offer her some words of support.

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[cue dancing monkey transition]

And now...let's talk about sex.

The sex is unavoidable.

It's there, on your street corner. It's the billboard, the condom wrapper, the outfit that just walked by. It's the ad on the side of the bus, the lyrics bellowing from a passing car. It's in your living room, screaming at you from television and computer screens, teasing you from magazine and book covers, daring you to look. See. Desire. Act.

[Is it getting hot in here?] Read more...