Standing Offer

Today on the El a woman offered me her seat. I'll admit, I was kind of taken aback. I mean, I AM pregnant but I didn't think it was that obvious. I still fit into (some of) my pants for the love of monekys! I personally don't think that I even look that pregnant. Of course the cut of my sweater under an ill-advised wool coat (60's today) did give me a pronounced belleh so I can see her point. However, I am working on the same train/bus seat principle as last time, no taking seats until I am ridiculously huge unless it has been some sort of unreasonably crappy day, so I said a polite "No thank you" and smiled. BUT. Then I started thinking about it and wondered if maybe she thought I said no because I am not really knocked up and she just inadvertently called me fat and I started to feel bad on her behalf. I know some people totally flip out about this kind of stuff and I didn't want her to worry. So of course I just willed whatever abdominal muscles I have left at this point to stop whatever they were doing and let my gut hang out over my low rise jeans in all it's jiggly glory. I was determined to look pregnant enough to assure this chick that she HAD been correct and was not some sort of evil train bodysnarker. And though I was sweating my ass off (seriously, 60's) in my cardigan and coat, I didn't want to remove either because I just didn't want the random lady to feel bad about herself for trying to be polite. Apparently, I feel there is such a sincere lack of good feeling in this world that I am hesitant to discourage even maybe misguided attempts at kindness.