Not what you think.

Whilst I have endured several public semi-stranger uninvited belly rubs with more equanimity that I thought I would, given that not only did I not spill any blood, and I do believe that I actually smiled, I can’t say I enjoyed my first belly poke.

Yes, a poke, right in my protuberant midsection. Not even a particularly gentle one, either.

As for the individual with the temerity to do such a thing, no it wasn’t family, or a friend, or even an acquaintance.

It was the adult (and therefore presumably capable of actually behaving like an adult and resisting the impulse to just reach out and touch whatever grabs his temporary attention) son of a rather elderly patient. I was trying to discuss details around his mother’s discharge home the next day, but clearly he found his proximity to a gestating abdomen too distracting to concentrate on the matter to hand and poked me in the guts.

With an accompanying  ’So what have you been doing, then?’.

My reply?

‘What do you think I’ve been doing?’

Two can play at the game of the emphasised ‘you’, buster. Although, admittedly the answer to his question would have been better phrased as ‘Almost certainly NOT what you think I’ve been doing’.