Inappropriate Questions: A Rant

Or, boys on dates are not the only ones who ask inappropriate questions about my family. (Ed.: I went looking through my blog archives to link here to one of my favorite dating stories, but I apparently have deprived you blog readers of this anecdote. So, I will give it to you here. Once, on a first date, a guy was very taken aback by the size of my family—which is fair—and one of his first responses was to ask me if I ever told my parents to stop having children. His follow-up question was whether I thought my parents were irresponsible for having so many children. Charming.)

Anyhow, back to the scheduled programming.

Yes, my parents have a lot of children. Yes, that's unusual. I don't know what part of that entitles people to ask whether I think my parents are "done" having kids. Quite frankly, I'm not privy to information about my parents' family planning, and I hardly think it's a question that you would ask anyone else, so I'd rather not be asked it in front of a Shabbos table full of guests I just met.

And, yes, my youngest sibling is significantly younger than I am. But if you're curious about our relationship, you might not want to phrase your question as, "Does he even know who you are?" (Especially, because I might actually be sensitive to that.)