One Dress, Four Reactions

This morning was weird.

Jolted awake by my alarm, I was ripped out of an intensely emotional dream about an ex-boyfriend. Confused and slightly embarrassed that he invaded my subconscious, I decided to laze around instead of getting ready. This, of course, resulted in me running obscenely behind schedule.

For the pattern-spotters/detectives of the world, it is hugely obvious when I've gotten ready in a rush. Almost guaranteed, I will be wearing one of two go-to dresses, my hair will be in a ponytail, and my eyeliner won't extend all the way to the edge of my eyelid. Like clockwork, people. Still, I never leave the house looking entirely unpresentable. This morning followed suit.

After run-walking out of the house and crowding on to the Metro, today was business as usual. However, when I got on the train, a woman leapt up and offered me her seat. Slightly puzzled, I let her know I was fine standing. I couldn't figure out why a middle-aged woman would give a healthy-looking 23 year-old her seat. Those things are valuable! Like, REALLY valuable. Like, regular citizens become pumas when they think someone in a seat is planning to get off the train.

And then it dawned on me: she totally thought I was pregnant.

While I certainly don't have abs of steel or even a particularly flat stomach (OREOS!), I don't look pregnant enough to be offered a seat worth its weight in gold. Rather, I was wearing a short cream trapeze dress with a giant bow. Think about that description for a minute--it totally sounds like a maternity item, yah? Compounding the issue, I have relatively thin legs. In a similar situation, I would probably make the same mistake. I spent the rest of the ride cursing my wardrobe choice/wishing I had a faux-wedding ring. The only thing worse than being mistook for pregnant is being mistook for pregnant and single! Judgement city.

Anyway, the major outcome is that I decided that the aforementioned dress should no longer be a go-to item in my wardrobe unless my cabbage patch is growing a Pammy.

...but, the plot thickens!

At work I stopped by the office of the crankiest woman in the entire world. She's said one nice thing to me ever, and it hardly counts because it was in an email. Yet this morning, she sees me and straight away hits me with: "You look especially lovely today." Um--what? Slightly bolstered, I thanked her. I'm certain she doesn't think I'm pregnant, so I figured the universe was rebalancing itself.

Flash forward three hours. I see another colleague, who tells me that she loves my dress. Flash forward another two hours. I'm leaving work and a man on the street tells me that I look really nice. I don't live in a movie--why was a cute stranger talking to me?

So confounded--I can't decide whether to burn or champion the dress! Wish I could have Gallup run a poll for me or something...