Dave Barry posted this story on his blog in 2005. It’s a good — and all too typical — one.
So I took my daughter to soccer practice this evening, and another dad and I were talking to one of the moms, whom we both know and whom we have both seen roughly once a week for the past six months. After we talked for about 10 minutes, a second mom showed up, and immediately said to the mom we’d been talking to: “YOU HAD YOUR BABY!” And then they hugged, and the new mom got out baby pictures. And the other dad and I looked at each other and realized that not only had we failed to notice that she’d had a baby, but we had been at most only dimly aware that she had been pregnant. We apologized, and she assured us that it was no big deal. Women are accustomed to the cluelessness of guys in these matters.
The thing is, if she had shown up carrying a cool new cell phone, we would have noticed that.