Why did I get into a discussion about abortion with my officemate today? I know that he disagrees with me and that these discussions just get me aggravated, so I've made a conscious decision that, even though we pretty frequently comment on or discuss whatever's in the news, I will not start a conversation with him on anything involving abortion, because it just will not end well. Today, out of nowhere, he brought up Dr. Tiller's murder. I ended the conversation after his third "ewwww." (Which, interestingly, was in response to what I thought was a relatively innocuous comment that didn't really have much to do with abortion.)

"Ewwwww?"

Is he twelve, Hil?

That last "ewwww," where I ended the conversation, was in response to a comment that I'd made, kind of on a tangent we'd gone off on (possible trigger warning here for the rest of this paragraph, I guess), that when a baby is stillborn, a lot of parents want to have the baby cleaned up and wrapped in a blanket so that they can hold and look at him or her, and say their goodbyes. I'd had no idea that would inspire that sort of reaction.

Sounds similar to some people's aversion to open casket funerals.

But it's true. Some parents want and/or need that closure. And to go "ewwww," seems not only immature but utterly disrespectful. What an ass.

I don't have any problem with the practice, but corpses are visceral for many people, so that's not something I judge him harshly on.

I don't like open-casket funerals, but wouldn't say "ewwww" to a mention of one. This seems different to me, since it's pretty much the only time the parents will get to see that baby.

On a totally different note, a few days ago, my mother kept giving me all kinds of hypothetical questions about what I'd do if my husband wanted meat for dinner. She didn't think that "then he can cook it himself" was a good enough answer. She told me that the wife of the rabbi at our synagogue is vegetarian, but the rabbi isn't, and the rabbi was mostly OK with it, but really felt like Friday night dinners should have meat, so they compromised on having meat for Friday night dinners, but everything in the house would be vegetarian for all other meals. She asked if I'd be OK with that, and I said I wasn't sure. Then she gave me a ton of other scenarios, and apparently my answer to all of them was wrong.

Do I really need to have proxy arguments with my hypothetical husband before I even meet him?

Seriously, Hil? WTF?

Do I really need to have proxy arguments with my hypothetical husband before I even meet him?

Yes. Because anyone you'd marry wouldn't have that argument, because he'd find "cook it himself" to be a perfectly sensible solution, JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER VEG/NON-VEG MIXED MARRIAGE I KNOW. So you have to have these arguments with your mother, or else you'll never have the opportunity to have them at all.