Awkward Questions

You all know the ones - for singles the most common one is "why are you still single?"  (although people often try to phrase it in a 'nice' way, like "you're such a great girl, why hasn't some man snapped you up yet?")  For married people, there are ones like "when are you going to have kids?", or "when are you going to stop having kids?", or "when are your kids going to start behaving better?"

I heard a new one this weekend at a single adult conference.  The sad part is, the questioner was only recently married herself, so she should have been fully aware of the awkwardness of her question.  The funny part was, none of the participants in the conversation seemed to find it awkward (maybe this is a sign that I'm a little bit odd, but I'm not admitting to anything).  The newly married woman was talking to a man and a woman who were obviously dating, and she asked them, "so, are you guys going to get engaged soon?"  Seriously?  Who asks that?  I mean, maybe your parents, but a new or casual acquaintance?  Didn't she realize that is a very personal, and possibly dangerous question? 

What if the answer was no, we're actually going to break up at the end of the night?  Or what if one of them answered yes and the other one answered no?  What if they'd never talked about it, or thought about it?  I'm sure her question was a motivator in some way.  Maybe they talked about it after she walked away and were engaged by the end of the conference. Or maybe they talked about it and broke up by the end of the conference.  If I had been one of the couple, it might have motivated me to say something rude to her, along the lines of "mind your own business".   Which is probably about as polite as my standard answer to "why are you still single?"  If I knew the answer to that question, I wouldn't still be single, would I?

As a side note, I enjoyed the conference, (thanks for going with me CJ).  Of all the people I met, only two or three asked me what I do for work, and only one of those was visibly intimidated by my job.  The two most memorable moments were getting very seriously hit on, in part because I don't wear much makeup (good thing I've managed to resist all of my mother's efforts to get me to 'at least wear some lipstick'), and hiking with some other single ladies over 35 on Cougar Mountain.  That's right, cougars on Cougar Mountain.  Sadly, there was no prey in sight.  The only single males we saw were under the age of 12, well below the age cut off for a cougar companion.