When babies are born August

I have a favorite little supermarket a block away from my apartment. It's open 7 days a week until midnight, and every time I go, the same lady is working. She looks about 7 months pregnant, and mans the place all by herself. She's always exceedingly nice to me, and I think, a little excited that an American frequents her store. She makes a pleasant comment about every item I put on the counter, and insists on speaking to me in German, even though I've told her several times that Americans don't speak German. "But you look German!" she always responds.

Yesterday I tried to ask her about her pregnancy, pointing to her tummy and saying heaven knows what in Bosnglish, but halfway through the broken sentence I realized I was breaking a cardinal rule: sometimes people who are a little heavyset look pregnant but actually are not, and, though I was almost certain that she was, I felt the color draining from my face as I tried to backpeddle out of the situation. But it was too late. She was already smilingly waiting for me to continue.

I understood that there was no way I could abruptly just shut my mouth and walk out of there, though I desperately wanted to, or at least find a hole to crawl into and die in, so I continued, bracing myself. In Bosnian, the rest of my pitiful sentence could be translated to, "Um, when babies are born....August...?" She knew what I meant, and to my great relief, a big grin broke out, "Da! Da, Avgust!" I smiled back. "My birthday...August!" "Super!"

She now thinks the world of me, I'm sure, but as I walked back to my apartment, I was feeling a little weak-kneed. Next time I try to make Bosnian small talk I'm going to stick with topics like music and football.