A Simple Exchange of Niceties

’’A Simple Exchange of Niceties’’ is an essay written in 2007 by Joanne Fedler. In the short story we follow a young woman during her pregnancy, and the very special relationship she has to a bench. The narrator of the story is the young woman, whose name is not given in the text. We see the whole story through her point of view and hear her thoughts and opinions, and you have the feeling that she’s sitting beside you telling her story for example: ‘’I know you’re not supposed to smoke when you’re pregnant, but fuck it’’, it’s like she’s defending herself to the listener, in this case us. There’s used a modern language, the girl swears a lot and the text is very readable in general, no difficult words or anything. There are also many dialogs, because we meet a lot different people through the short story, who the girl talks with.
The young woman in the short story is pregnant, but at first it’s not that big of a deal for her, because she’s going to get an abortion. She got pregnant with a guy named Damien, I guess she didn’t knew him very well, because she says: ‘’we haven’t spoken much, so I couldn’t have known he didn’t want kids. Not with a trashy whore like me’’, and it’s not even like she’s upset about the fact that he didn’t want kids with her. It’s like she understands him, like she’s used to being dumbed, or not being cared about. And that’s why she likes the bench ’just left on the duck pond with generous slats’ so much. It ‘’makes you feel like if people matter, you know, ordinary people just like you, who haven’t achieved much in life, despite all of your teenage dreams about Paris and art school’’, and that’s important to her. Not being judged, because she has a very low self-esteem, and she doesn’t have high thoughts of her self. Maybe she failed many times in life, and that’s why she doesn’t have the courage to go to