Questions of the not too brilliant variety

I am trying to think of a way to write this post that does not sound irritable. I'm not coming up with anything, so forgive me if it does.

OK- every time I meet someone and they ask me what I do/where I work, and I tell them that I work with (mentally) disabled students, they say, "That must be really challenging." Or they say, "That must be challenging, but rewarding." It's just recently started to get on my nerves. Why is that everyone's first reaction? Is it because they've never met any disabled people and for some reason think they're all "challenging?" I think teenagers are challenging but I don't say, "wow, your job must be really challenging," every time I meet a high school teacher.

When people ask me "Is that really challenging?" I've started responding, "Yes, but not because of the students." People who work in this field do it because they enjoy it. So my personal advice would be: don't respond in this way when you meet someone. If they work with people with disabilities they probably love it, and it's more likely that they find YOU challenging.

Does anyone else work in a "challenging" field and get this response all the time? What do you think? Feel free to comment and disagree with me.

But while I'm on the subject of annoying questions, I've remembered the thoughts I meant to blog a couple weeks ago. On July 4th, I taught some line dance at a party for the ladies from the mum and toddlers group at church. Why do married people ask single people if they have a fiancé, a boyfriend, any romance, as soon as they meet them? When you think about it, it's actually very, very odd. Single people don't ask each other personal questions like that the moment they are introduced. (Unless they're trying to get a date of course.) Now, I'm really fine with being single right now. I'm not hung up about it, I'm not embarrassed about it, I'm not jealous. But it was really annoying having young mums asking me all evening if I had a boyfriend or any prospects. After awhile, I was tempted to yell, "HAHA!!! I'm free to travel the world and do what I want to do without having to worry about anyone but myself! You're not! So there! Ha!"

Of course, I didn't say that. I smiled and said, no, no boyfriend.... nope, no one has swept me off my feet ... no, no one is trying to either...

Yeah, way to make someone feel lousy. Though I wonder if maybe, subconsciously, that was the point. Maybe marriage and kids has not made them as happy as they thought they would, and maybe they're the ones who are jealous of me. Hmm...