People always ask if I have kids. I used to reply “Just a dog.” A lot of people liked that.
Now that my wife and I are expecting, when asked the same question, I reply, “One on the way!” to which is almost always followed by, “Oh – is this your first?”
I think “one on the way” succinctly answers their question. If I had more than one, wouldn’t I reply ,”A two year old and one on the way” or “Yes. I have n many children”?
If this were a short order kitchen and I asked “Do you have any omelets?” I hope my chef would reply “One [omelet] on the way!”
I do appreciate the follow up and the interest in me and my life, but to me it seems that “Is this your first” is a redundant question. I just answered your question and now you’re rephrasing your question and asking it again and you will hear a variation of the same response.
In the Mr. Show parody of Goodfellas, there’s a character who only says things one time. I feel like that character. I don’t like repeating myself and I feel that my original answer provided enough inference to solve the inquiry: yes, I don’t have any children now, but I will have one shortly.
I suppose I could respond, “Yes – we are expecting our first child later this year.” I could also respond, “Not yet, but we have one on the way.” I feel this might be over accommodating though. I could get really snarky and say, “Ask me again in a couple of months” but there’s no point in that because they’d most likely ask a clarifying question.
It can be argued that I did not answer their original question. Some may not consider having a child until the child has exited the womb, and if that is their logic, then I did not answer their question.
At this point though, you’re probably thinking that I’m not going through some sort of Spanish Inquisition and I should merely deal with answering the question twice. I think that’s a fair criticism, but I also think that there’s a failure on the inquirer’s part to listen to my response. I only have a couple more months of hearing this and I feel too obstinate to change my reply at this point. I’m more focused on nursery preparation than anything else. Hopefully the next time there’s one on the way, I’ll have another response at my disposal.
https://youtu.be/yMzSYyjNb74