Shine a light in my eyes why don’t you?

Is it just me or is everyone in my graduating class getting engaged and/or married and/or having babies? It seems like Facebook is now awash with photos and status updates featuring two thirds of my friends walking down aisles or serving tea to their in laws or squirting babies out of their private parts. Either that or they’re carrying somebody who has 50% their genetic material.

I guess 25 and 3/4 years old is a good time to start settling down. I’ve got great grand aunts who are asking about when they’re going to get invited to my wedding and if they can help my mom look for anyone for me. *scowls* I’ve got older colleagues asking me if I’m married as they know “good men who are praying for a spouse”. Needless to say that one got me politely declining and then running to the toilet to giggle hysterically. It’s not that I’m not thinking about it, I am. We both are (this is me telling you, boyfriend, that we are thinking about it), but there are quite a few things to clamp down on (e.g. finances, due to my current student status). That however is too long a story to tell people who are inquiring about my marital status so I just smile sweetly and say I’m seeing someone.

There must be a never ending ordered list of questions that people can ask you depending on the stage of your life.

1. When you’re 3: What is your ambition?
2. When you’re 7: Which school are you going to?
3. When you’re 12: What did you get for your UPSR?
4. When you’re 15: What did you get for your PMR? and in tandem with that,
What education stream will you be going into? i.e. Science, Arts, Humanities.
5. When you’re 17: What did you get for your SPM? in tandem with
What are you planning to do with your life?
6. When you’re 18-21: What college /  university are you in? What degree are you pursuing?

(Note: If you don’t have an impressive answer to give to question 6, prepare to come up with a template of socially acceptable answers i.e. I’m planning to travel the world / work at the UN for experience/ work in my dad’s business – because “I’m not quite sure what to do yet” simply will not cut it)

7. After a degree: What’s next for you / Where are you attached / What do you do? becomes the social norm. This continues for about 2-3 years and for females,
8. Around age 24: When are you getting married ? (Note, it’s not: are you seeing someone, are you thinking about getting married? No, it’s a point blank, only-one-answer-suffices question)

From ages 24 onwards until marriage comes along these two questions: When are you getting married? and What are you doing now? will crop up at various dinner parties and social functions.

Once you do get engaged, all everyone will be interested in is:
9a. When’s the big day? (when all they’re really interested in is question 9b)
9b. Am I invited?

10. After marriage, you would think that they would give it a rest but they then start, not even 24 hours after the wedding night is over, demanding ‘When are you going to have babies?’ Forget that you may still be in the midst of enjoying wedding bliss, forget that the sperm might still be traveling to the egg, no, it’s when are the babies (plural!) going to emerge.

Once you’ve popped one out, either by demand or neccesity, the questions cease for awhile when they see your pucat muka, your panda eyes and your hair sticking out in 2012 different directions. They pat your hand and tell you with an all-knowing tone of voice that this is pretty much your life for the next twenty years.

About two years after the first baby, they start to get a little bored and then begin again with question 10. Again and again and once you’ve had two, they ask about the third. After which, they begin to ask

Q11. Why won’t your husband leave you alone?

Tags: babies, difficult questions, life, marriage, reality