cringe-worthy moments

It was sunny when I woke up, which was quite fortunate as we all know how crazy it is to get a car park at the hospital and I'd planned to walk there for my appointment with the gynaecologist . Of course I hadn't really thought through the fact that it's year 11 study leave and living in the town that you work in makes it impossible to ever skive off work and just go shopping, let alone go to the hospital! On the way there I walked past a few parents who I recognised from parents' evenings and although my reason for being off work was fully legitimate, such is the constant guilt that I felt I needed to shout cheerily across the street to them, "Hello Mrs Doe......yes I teach Johnny but I'm not in school today because I'm off to have a camera stuck up my vagina....... yes yes, jolly inconvenient I know...... yes I'm sure it's not as painful as having children Mrs Doe but teaching Johnny is quite painful enough, well must be going now".

At the hospital he receptionist laughed at my attempt to pronounce colopscopy and left me to wait amongst all the bulbously pregnant women waiting for scans. I resisted to the urge to shout at them, "Don't do it! They'll grow up to make my life hell! but then I thought that was a bit harsh when the poor things were waiting to push those sods out in a few short weeks.

I was taken in to the gynaecologist's office by the world's nicest nurse - I wanted to slap her for calming me so effectively when I knew it was going to get worse in a few short moments - and those moments definitely were short when I realised that I knew the consultant! Well I had met him, a few times through his wife but I banked on the fact that he had no idea who I was and that he wasn't going to home and say' "well dear, you'd never guess whose vagina I was up to my elbows in today".

It was over relatively quickly but I thought I deserved Starbucks to recover from the mental trauma of it all. I thought I was being clever by taking my coffee upstairs to hide out but it seems I wasn't the only one to think that'd be a good idea because there, canoodling on the sofa with her (much older) boyfriend was a 16 year old student! She was on study leave so not technically doing anything wrong but there wasn't much study going on there!

So the moral dilemma - what do you do when you know full well that guy is total dick (let's face it most men barely scrape above just being a little bit of a dick at the best of times but they can't help that fatal flaw of the species) who is playing upon this girl's most potent and powerful insecurities to get what he wants? Who knows if pretending I didn't recognise her was the right thing to do or not but I just sat down and had my coffee and then left. This girl is stunning, she could have played the lead in Slumdog Millionaire or any other Bollywood film but being beautiful doesn't stop you from making silly mistakes because you think someone is offering you the love and affection you so desire. Part of me wanted to shout at her and tell that he was the scum of the earth, that he would never speak to her older brother about dowries and give her expensive jewelry for Eid or marry her to take her away from her shrew of a mother, that to him she was a vampish plaything for him to brag about to his mates when she finally conceded her virginity to him and that he would send to his uncles in Kashmir for a 'proper' wife from the village rather than making an 'honest' woman of her. But the other part of me wanted her to have to have the right to defy the emotional abuse of her mother, to give 2 fingers up to the abusive control of her older brother and to be able to exert her right as an independent young woman to act as she pleased with who she wanted in a country that promotes the freedom of the individual. Unfortunately I know that at some point, her heart will be broken and that is the failing of feminism, we may fight for equality and the right to not be judged against hypocritical standards that say it's ok for men to behave in a certain way and not for women, but when it comes down to it, it is our own hearts who betray us time and again.