Are you done?

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Nov 11, 2004

Valerie at the Barefoot and Pregnant blog recounts the reception accorded her newborn in church just before Sunday Mass:

I was waiting for my oldest daughter to come out of the bathroom, and, as usual, I was holding baby Cate. A young woman comes up to me, dribbling all the usual, casual, "oh, you have a new baby" kind of stuff, and she acted like she knew me. ...

She asked: Is this five now?

Me: No, six. (smiling graciously, while averting eyes to the bathroom door looking for daughter)

Her: Six! Are you done?

It's instructive to ponder the unspoken assumptions at the back of this particular specimen of rudeness. You don't rebuke a stranger for some fault unless you have reason to think he has sinned against a code of right and wrong so primitive and universal that he can't deny his culpability -- as when a man shoulders a cripple aside to grab the last seat on a bus. You have to feel pretty secure in your own rightness.

In this case, how did Valerie let down the team? Hint: It has nothing to do with concupiscence.