An Elderly Man’s Perception Of Me

A couple of months back, I decided to try exercising outdoors before work to see if it would improve my productivity through the day since many self-help books said it would.
Shortly after I started, I began saying hello to a man in his 60s who had the job of keeping the plants in the neighbourhood watered and trimmed because we saw each other every single day. After a few weeks of hellos, the man initiated conversation and after that would make small talk with me about impersonal matters once in a while. This went on harmlessly for a few months, until one day, out of nowhere, he suddenly said (not in English)—
“Girl, let me tell you this, as a friend, because I care about you. You are married aren’t you?”
I said I was even though legally, I’m not. Same-sex marriage isn’t a thing where I live and I wasn’t interested in telling him—an acquaintance—about the female partner I was committed to and living with in the block just metres away from his place of work.
He then said…
“Just go see a fertility doctor.”
My eyes got big.

“Trust me. Just do it. I have a friend who was just like you. I told her to go to a fertility doctor and years on, she and her husband are thanking me non-stop, saying it’s the best advice anyone’s ever given her. She’s so happy now.”
“Really?”
My mind swirled about the alphabets W, T and F. I hadn’t told him anything personal, ever, and certainly had never mentioned wanting children or fertility problems when making small talk.
“Yes. I’m not kidding. Just do it. Don’t be shy about it, just fix the problem. There is no shame in having fertility problems. You and your husband will come to me in a few years thanking me for it, I kid you not. That friend of mine is still thanking me for it today. She says going to a fertility doctor is the best thing she’s ever done.”
“Ah.”
Because every woman in their thirties with the leisure of walking around during office hours without a kid in tow is most likely a depressed, infertile housewife who will never be happy until she has a baby of her own?
Because a baby is the only thing that will save me from my apparently shitty, empty life of solitary day-time exercise?
He laughed, in a friendly way. “Don’t forget to invite me to your celebration when it happens! I look forward to hearing you tell me about it!”
“Okay, I will,” I told him. “Thank you!”
I quit the whole exercise before work routine the very next day and took to exercising only in the evenings, with my wife, only after that man left the area.
Just to be clear, I presently have two online businesses, a wife, an adorable-furry-six-inch-tall-will-always-be-my baby and a whole apartment to look after so I do not, in any way, believe having a biological child to care for and worry about on top of all the things I am already caring for and worrying about will make me any happier than I am now.
I decided then my work day would be most productive when I wasn’t having to deal with the opinions of other people first thing in the morning, and that was that.