Marriage

The husband and I met in 2001, in England. At that point, I’d never been to Australia, but had met enough Aussies on the road that I was somewhat familiar with Australian vernacular. Much of the time, Aussies align themselves with the Brits, so, many words in their collective vocabulary will be the same as their English counterparts.

For example, both Australians and Brits call a flashlight a torch, whereas in North America the word “torch” is exclusively used for some sort of flaming piece of wood that you might brandish if you were exploring a cave in the 1800s.

We’ve all been on the receiving end of nosy questions from perfect strangers. Right? Personally, my life is a mostly-open book - I mean, I write a blog about me and my family that is read by actual dozens of people, so obviously I’m not averse to sharing. But, even I have wondered what is going through other people’s heads when they inquire about some intimate detail.

In the age of the overshare, there are still some things you just shouldn’t ask other people - particularly, strangers. We’ll start things off with the basic stats: “How much do you weigh?” “How old are you?” “Have you ever had plastic surgery?” Fact-seeking inquiries all, yet questions about our physical properties are considered rude by most people over the age of 12.

When I was about 10 years old, this kind-of-epic event occurred in our family. My parents went away for around four days, and my grandmother flew in from Toronto to watch me and my two hellion siblings for that half-week, as we lived in New York state at the time. She cared for us well, and we all survived, despite the fact that she almost drove our enormous, 80’s, maroon station-wagon off of the road on a couple of occasions.