No good deed goes unpunished -

One of the great myths about being pregnant is that it inspires endless gallantry in others: you join a queue at the bus stop and smiling strangers usher you to the front. You emerge from the supermarket carrying heavy bags and burly gentlemen insist on relieving you of your burden.

This kid glove treatment may once have been standard practice, but not any more. Not in New York, at least. Over the past eight months, I have repeatedly found myself heaving suitcases from overhead bins and carting strollers down subway stairs, while my fellow citizens look on idly from the sidelines - their languid expressions seeming to say: "You made your bed, now lie in it."

For a while, I refused to submit to the indignity of asking for assistance in such situations. An unpleasant sort of martyrish pride, combined with a sense that I am fundamentally too butch to be making fluttery-lashed impositions on the kindness of strangers, led me to suffer in resentful silence.

It was the very well, I'll do it myself then stance. What I was hoping for, was someone to insist, over my robust protestations, that I needed to sit down and take the weight off my feet. But no one ever did.

On the way back to New York from England some weeks ago, a man sitting behind me in the plane refused to let me push my seat back because, he said, it would restrict his leg-room. The sensible thing would have been to tell him to stuff it and push back my seat anyway, but I'm afraid to say that I opted for playing the tragically wronged pregnant woman - sighing heavily and wriggling with theatrical discomfort for the rest of the journey.

At the root of this very English sort of behaviour is an idea that, even if you don't win the actual battle, you can gain the moral high ground. The offender gets his leg-room, but you get to make him feel really sheepish about it.

This is rubbish, of course. The man in question did not look remotely guilty about his boorish manners (every time I swivelled round to give him a pop-eyed glare, he was snoring blissfully). And even if I had managed to prick his conscience, what good would his guilt have done me?

That incident was the turning point. As I limped off the plane with a crick in my neck and incipient thrombosis, I decided that it was time to stop being silly and start behaving as a true New York female would in such circumstances - demanding help and preferential treatment in the most aggressive way possible.

In the weeks since then, I have metamorphosed into a truly monstrous person - a sort of rabid Humpty Dumpty who bellows at people to vacate their seats for me in the subway and commands men to help me carry my packages. If anyone ever shows the least sign of unwillingness to comply with these demands, I shriek, "but I AM PREGNANT".

It was in this uncompromising frame of mind that I stood on a street corner two nights ago, trying to hail a cab. When a woman came and stood 20 yards in front of me, to hail a cab for herself, I had no hesitation in freaking out.

"Hey! Lady!" I screeched in my most indelicate New York manner. "Hey! You! I've been waiting here for like half an hour. You can't just come and stand in front of me." The woman turned. "Oh, I didn't see you," she said.

At that moment, what appeared to be an unlicensed gipsy cab drew up in front of her. She leant into the window and began negotiating.

"But I AM PREGNANT!" The woman shrugged. "Too bad," she said and proceeded to jump into the back seat.

At this point, the driver leant out of the window. "Maybe I can take both of you," he suggested.

I paused, momentarily dumbstruck by this civilised solution to the problem, and then I climbed in. It turned out that both the woman and I wanted to get to 14th Street. In the time-honoured manner of impatient city-dwellers, both of us were soon pelting the driver with curt instructions about the best route to take and which side of the road we wished to be let off at.

"Take the West Side Highway," the woman barked at one point. The driver protested mildly that the traffic was bad on the Highway. "Excuuuuse me," she said. "I'm telling you: take the Highway!" The driver silently complied.

He was a rather weary-looking man of Middle Eastern origin, with a mobile phone clamped to his ear. For most of the journey, he was engaged in a noisy argument with someone about the price of diesel oil.

When he finally got off the phone, he yawned loudly and apologised, explaining that he was very tired because he owned a petrol station in New Jersey and had to get up at 3.45 every morning, six days a week, to start work.

He turned and looked at her, mystified. "I am not a cab driver," he says. "I am just giving you a ride."

"Well," the driver said. "I am on my way home. I see two women trying to get a cab in rush hour. One of them is pregnant. And I think, I should help."

"Wait a minute" the woman said, "you're telling me you're doing this to be nice?" The man shrugged. "Yes."

The woman and I exchanged incredulous glances. But sure enough, 15 minutes later, the driver dropped us off at 14th Street and refused to take any payment.

"No, no money," he insisted. "Just be careful of the traffic. And good luck with the baby."

Startled and somewhat humbled by this unexpected encounter with altruism, I stuttered an inadequate thank you and got out. "What a lovely man," I said to the woman as we watched him drive away. She shook her head cynically.

"Don't believe it. He was probably hoping to kidnap us for the white slave trade, and lost his nerve at the last minute."

With that, she strode away into the balmy evening. So shine good deeds in the naughty city.

When we lived in Westchester, about 20 years ago, my wife would walk into town with a stroller and several of our kids. From time to time women would drive by in their Cadillacs, lean out of the window, and scold her for having too many children.

Yes, everyone used to admire motherhood and apple pie, but that was before the countercultural revolution turned the world on its head.

I've been to New York City quite a few times and I am well aware of the rude behavior, but I saw the same thing happen to a pregnant lady in Disney World. You'd think that people would be more polite in this family surrounding but they weren't. We were all on a bus being transfered to our hotels and this pregnant lady gets on. She was pretty far along in her pregnancy and I was shocked to see no man or woman give up there seat for this lady....I looked around at these people for a minute and I couldn't let her stand, so I stood and gave this poor lady my seat. My hubby was jammed into another corner with our son on his lap, so he got up and told me to sit down with our son. This poor lady was very grateful for that seat....I am still a little surprised that people can actually behave that way!

What I was hoping for, was someone to insist, over my robust protestations, that I needed to sit down and take the weight off my feet.

She should move to Texas and stay out of NY.

BTW, where is the 'father' in all of this? I fussed over my wife when she was pregnant. I fussed over my daughter when she was pregnant. I've fussed over my friends and co-workers when they were pregnant and barfing in my car. Where is dad or uncle or grandad or ANY significant male figure?

/john

Zoe Heller sounds like a whiny, nasty writer who was told by her editor to fill in some space with an article against America.

He was a rather weary-looking man of Middle Eastern origin

Anti-American and pro Middle East too. It’s a nice story, I wonder if there is any truth in it.

I love New York. :)

Being pregnant doesn't make you a martyr. It certainly doesn't entitle you to anything. I would advise Ms. Heller that no one was impressed by her sighing and hand wringing, and even fewer people were impressed by her demanding protestations of entitlement. In short-- lady, we ain't buying it. Bed. Made. Lie. Considering the fact that the child she is/was going to bear will be in all liklihood one of the selfsame kids who sit every morning in the front seats of a rush-hour bus, never even *dreaming* to move their overly-entitled rear ends to make room for elderly passengers(and I see this drama played out on the bus *every morning* on my way to the train), I'm calling the whole bus/subway "not moving so you can sit down thing" even. She can stand, just like the rest of us.

She gets zero sympathy here.

rolls eyes

oh the eeeeviiil man who wouldn't give up his leg room. How the h-ll does she know that *he* doesn't have some kind of disability that would make doing so painful for him?
Oh, sorry I forgot! She's a pregnant woman! The first to give birth! No-one matters but her!

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