People love to guess whether our unborn baby will be a boy or a girl. Here are my theories why people can’t resist:

1. It’s a light conversation about a sensitive subject. Pregnancy is a very complicated subject in society today. For the first two-and-a-half decades of my life, the discussion about pregnancy with my peers has always been laced with qualifiers: teenage pregnancy, unplanned pregnancy, or baby momma drama. Every adult passed through this chapter of life, so there’s some residual anxiety that creeps in when the topic of pregnancy comes up. For people who are all grown up, there’s a whole new angle that’s even more emotionally charged: fertility. If you want to avoid the cloud of complication that surrounds the birds and the bees, just make a pick: boy or girl. And why not…

2. You have a 1 in 2 chance of being correct. These are pretty good odds. You don’t need to do research, there’s no spread to decipher, no overbearing predictions from sports writers or political analysts to influence your opinion.

3. You get a lot of credit for your hunches without having to explain them. I’ve had a dozen people tell me that they “just know” that the baby is going to be a girl or a boy. And none of these all-knowing people have any explanation for why they know what they know. You’ll lose your credibility if you place a bet on a sports game if you can’t explain why you believe your team will win. But in the baby game, not having an explanation adds to your mystique, as if your prediction is divine wisdom that is beyond explanation.

4. If you guess right, you can quit gambling and brag for the next five years. You can’t do this with a sporting event. Nobody cares if you guessed the winner of the 2003 Super Bowl. For you winners out there, know that you really only have five years to boast of your supreme prediction. Because by then the baby is off to Kindergarten and has a personality. If the kid’s a brat, nobody cares if you knew the brat would be a boy or a girl.

I don’t know if I believe what I’ve just written. Honestly, you only have about a year to brag about your pick, because if you gloat any longer people will just think you’re a moron.

5. If you guess wrong, nobody’s going to make fun of you. A new mom is too excited about the new life in her home to point out that you were wrong about the big prediction. Not even the most callous dad is going to give you a hard time. Again, if you bet on the Dallas Mavericks* going into the playoffs last year, people are still making fun of you. Guess a baby wrong, and you’re immediately forgiven.

So I’ve audited dozens of these guessing games over the past month, and I always get hooked in at the end: What do you think? I pause and then sincerely explain what’s on my heart: “I don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl. As long as it’s a ninja, that’s all that really matters.”

* The Dallas Mavericks were the most winning team in the NBA last season, yet they were knocked out of the playoffs by the Golden State Warriors, a team that barely made the playoffs.