This probably plays to my paranoia more than anything, but sometimes I can’t tell if someone is pregnant or if they are just faking it. I remember watching some sitcom as a child, and it was a Christmas episode.

The father returns home, holding a pillow, and looking visibly distraught. When his family asks what happened, he explained that he had bought all the Christmas gifts for everyone at the mall, and when he was leaving he saw a pregnant woman standing by a car that had a flat tire. And in the Christmas spirit, he decides to stop and get out to help her. As he approached the tire to see how flat it was, the “pregnant” lady hits him with a pillow that she had under her shirt to look pregnant. Then she jumps into his car and drives off. Meanwhile, someone pops up from the pregnant lady’s car and drives off that car. Leaving the sitcom father holding a pillow in the mall parking lot without a car and without the family’s Christmas gifts.

That stuck with me for some reason. The sense to do good, but then have something bad happening to you. Chivalry but at a cost.

So, I was at Target the other day, looking in the grocery section at family microwave meals. Is a prime rib meal really that good? While, I was in my mental dilemma of dinner options, from the corner of my eye, I notice a lady in black approaching me. She looked pregnant, but she was wearing a work shirt for a local day spa. She looked at me, and I started to wonder if my mouth was ajar as I imagined the taste of microwaved brisket.

But no, she looked at me because I was taller than her and she needed some help. She asked me if I could get some of the liquid egg cartons that were on the top shelf of this open fridge display. I ask, if she wanetd the small version or if she wanted the large one. She said the large one, which required me to really tippy-toe reach up and expose my back to her.

And that’s when it happened. My mind went back to that Christmas episode and the fake pregnant lady. Was I this lady’s mark? As my back turned was she going to hit me and then roll me for my wallet?

I got her the first carton of eggs. And was not mugged. Bullet dodged as my mind thought. Then the pregnant lady asked for more, she wanted 3 of the large liquid egg cartons. So, I turned around again and this time I felt like this might be it.

I might get mugged in a Target grocery section by a 5 foot tall non-pregnant lady.

But alas, nothing of my imagination happened. I was fine. But I still leered at the pregnant lady trying to understand if she was pregnant, and then trying to understand how hungry she must be to be utilizing three large liquid egg cartons. Also, since she was pregnant, I wondered how she worked at the spa and if she was a massage therapist and if the pregnancy belly would get in the way of it all.