I was driving around Connecticut on a recent splendidly sunny Sunday. With no place to be and open to exploring, I spied a cute vintage shop and wandered inside. Stacked around me were sweet worn things in abundance. The shopkeeper, a woman in her 40s or early 50s, let out a warm greeting. She asked me if I was looking for anything in particular as I handled some dopy ceramic black-and-white poodle salt and pepper shakers. ​“Not really,” I responded. ​“I just like old stuff.” Then, without taking a breath, she asked, ​“Do you have kids?” My posture stiffened. I looked down at the shaker show dogs’ blank eyes. ​“No,” I said as calmly as I could, reeling at her presumptuousness. Though I felt like barking back: ​“How much money do you have in your 401(k)?” or ​“When’s the last time you had a colonoscopy?” 

Thoughts whirled in my head like leaves in eddies of wind. On one level, I knew she was trying to be friendly — she wanted to forge a connection. But that didn’t prevent me from thinking and feeling a host of things. I wondered if she asked men that question and also contemplated how my ​“No” immediately excluded me from her ​“mommy” club. As those words bounced off her tongue, did she take into account the millions of women like me, who, after careful consideration, decided not to have children? And did I owe her, this unknown person, an explanation? Did she ever think about women who have fertility issues — or those who want but can’t have kids for other reasons? What about women who have lost children? The ​“Do you have kids?” question is more than charged — it’s explosive — especially when unexpectedly asked by a total stranger. 

After I placed the dumb poodles back on their shelf and scurried out of the shop, which, in the matter of a single shopkeeper’s question, lost all of its appeal, my internal reaction shifted to humor. In the future, I need a better response than ​“No.” Maybe I should have replied: ​“I don’t have children, but I do have a fancy chicken named Amelia Egghart. She’s a great flyer.” Or ​“I had a toddler but left him at Costco a couple of years ago. I think he might be in the frozen food section.”