A brief encounter

I had one of those encounters yesterday with another mum. We met in the pharmacist's where I was getting Tixylix Night Cough and she was collecting a prescription. Like me she has two children, one of whom is in the same class as Rosie. And she's a really, truly lovely person.

So we chatted, not having seen each other since I left mothers and toddlers two years ago. We did the usual: "Gosh she's grown" (me to her daughter) and "hello" (to her son, of whom, more later). And she, as everyone does, looked at my two and said: "Goodness, aren't they tall!" followed quickly by "gosh, they're really tall."

The school nurse did that recently too at Hannah's medical check up. The conversation went a little like this:

Nurse: "We're not worried about Hannah's height or weight."

Me: "No." (Thinks: "Who's 'we'?")

Nurse: "We're not worried about Hannah's height or weight."

Me: "No." ("Where is this conversation going?")

Nurse: "We're not worried about Hannah's height or weight."

Me: "No." Winning smile. ("Haven't we established this fact, like, twice already?" See, I get into a school, sit on a teeny chair and start thinking like a teenager.)

So she's tall. Whatever.

Anyway, back to the pharmacist's where I've abandoned the Tixy and Brian's paying for it while Hannah and Rosie try not to talk to the son, who as his mother admitted is "Very Busy".

Usually when a boy is described as "Busy" it means he's a complete and utter tearaway. This one was currently climbing the pharmacist's shelves, like Spiderman up a skyscraper, to retrieve a packet of children's vitamins.

"X. Stop it!" said his mother, then seeing what he'd climbed up to fetch, realised that, bright spark that he is, he'd got what she wanted anyway. X resumed his habitual expression of wide-eyed innocence.

"He's very intelligent," said I. (Thinking: "He's got the eyes of a psychopath.")

"Oh, yes, he's Very Busy," said his mum.

"So," she continued, "how are you finding it, with working and the children at school, all the juggling?"

"I don't work," I reminded her with a smile.

There was a pause, during which a blank look was directed my way. Her face composed itself into an interested expression while her brain went to work on the odd sequence of words. First it examined them carefully, then it translated them into Welsh to see if they looked any better that way, or perhaps made any more sense, then it rejected them as complete and utter nonsense.

After an infinitesimal pause she carried on chatting as if nothing untoward had been said and we parted on the usual friendly terms. As I said, she's an utterly lovely person, but one of those who cannot comprehend that there are people - other mums - 'out there' who don't work.

I went home feeling slightly jittery, as if I'd committed a terrible social faux pas.

Next time, perhaps, I'll just nod sagely and say: "Oh, you know..." and she'll roll her eyes and nod and sigh and say: "Oh, yes..." then we'll carry on to talk about tummy bugs exactly as we did yesterday.