I was asked this question one summer when I worked at a camp. My response was that I wasn't old enough to have any "chil'ens," even though I realized that I was only a year or two years younger than the parents of the seven-year-olds.
Recently, I've begun to receive similar question all the more frequently. Perhaps it that every Wednesday morning I can be seen leaving Wal-Mart with one or maybe 2 carts full of diapers, wipes, bouncers, bassinets, playpens, strollers, you name it. On my 2-cart days I especially draw a lot of looks. "How many kids do you have?" people will ask. "Are you stocking up for a year?" "Do you have twins?" "Triplets?"
It really would be the perfect opportunity to respond with some snarky comment, but instead I use it as a time to talk up the ministry I work with, the Gabriel Project Life Center.
A priest that I used to work with, however, took advantage of a similar opportunity to have some fun. He retold this story at lunch one day to 4 nuns and me:
"When I was the president of the high school, we always kept extra uniform parts on hand in case the kids arrived to school for any reason without their uniforms. One day Shoe Carnival was having a great sale, so I went and bought about 30 pair of shoes to keep on hand at the school. As I was loading them into my car, there was this teenage boy watching. Now, I was dressed as I am now, wearing my collar, black shirt, black pants--certainly identifiable as a priest. The boy watched for a bit until he finally asked 'who are all those shoes for?'
'They're for my kids,' I said.
He chewed on this for a minute...'How many kids do you have?' he asked.
'I have 136' (the number of kids at the school).
...he thought for a minute...and finally asked 'Are you a pimp?'
At this point in the lunch, I exploded into laughter, while 3 of the 4 nuns tentatively smiled, and the 4th, who had yet to crack a smile, said "I do not know what that word means," to which I laughed even harder. The priest, caught off guard, didn't have a particularly great explanation to offer to the nun, completedly dodged the bullet and finally offered "Allison can probably explain it better than I can."
Now, I'm not sure what sort of image I had given to this priest or these nuns to make them think that I would be any sort of expert on the subject, and I really had no intention of diving into an explanation. After some hesitation on my part, the nun conceded with "I can use my imagination." Whew!
