The Pickup Artist?

I don't make the world's most attractive pregnant woman. I'm not one of those ladies who radiate sheer femininity, with Carpenters' instrumentals faintly audible in their circle of aura. I bloat, I sweat and I usually have a slightly greenish hue from nausea....you are NOT going to see me in the buff on the cover of Vogue. Have I painted a clear enough picture?

I was nine months along with my first son. I may even have been overdue at that point. It was April and we were having an unseasonable heat wave with temps in the nineties and oppressive humidity. There I was, walking (waddling) down the hardware aisle of K-Mart when a man said "I like your shirt". I ignored him, thinking maybe he would go away. I mean, it's not really a suggestive statement in itself, but still a strange comment for a man to make to a hugely pregnant woman who's minding her own business, looking for a hammer to hang pictures in her baby's nursery. He repeated himself so, out of politeness, I turned to look at him, said "thank you" and turned away. But I guess "thank you" is code for encouragement in the Land of Letch. He proceeded to tell me how nicely the shirt fit me in all the right places. Ok, if I wasn't ALREADY nauseous....

The worst part was that I couldn't even consider it a compliment because any man who could have found me attractive at that precise moment must have had something seriously wrong with him. All he evoked in me was (to quote Diane Chambers from Cheers) "the urge to flee....and then be defleaed". I did the former (and not the latter) and never did get a hammer.