Hope you choke on your Bugaboo, BET§Y.

Hey Jakey,

Went to see B at the doctor's office this week. I love B. She's Dr. K's physician's assistant, and I'm seeing her for the next couple of weeks while Dr. K is on vacation. She always seems genuinely glad to see me, and is all hugs and light and warm interest in my well-being. Someone that I would love to know better. I always gush about her when I get home, and daddy always suggests that I ask her if she wants go out for coffee or something sometime.

Huh?

I couldn't possibly! How awkward would that be? No, not that she's been all up in my hoo-ha or knows how much I weigh and all manner of sordid details about me, but *my* misinterpretation of her intentions. It would be like high school (and college, and real life...) all over again.

I would breathlessly and nervously ask her if she'd like to meet up at the coffee shop, maybe bring the kids and go for a walk in the park...

...and the Cone of Silence would descend.

You know the one. Or hopefully you won't, because you'll be popular and loved in school and everyone will want to be near you. But I'm speaking of the mental sound of squealing tires, the tortured skrrrrrch of needle against record, when two people suddenly realize that one of them has misinterpreted the other's kind behavior.

When younger, if a boy was nice to me, he must've been in love with me. Must've! Why else go through the difficult process of getting to know me, and once that task if completed, actually sticking around and being pleasant? I'd agonize for days (sometimes weeks, sometimes months, in the case of someone who shall remain unnamed... YEARS), then decide, yes, I shall be the one who will take this to another level. Coffee? Dinner? A movie, perhaps?

Screech. Skrrrrrrch. Squeal. Crash! Thus begins the shortened, perfunctory conversations, the unreturned phone calls, the "sorry, I'm busy that night/day/week/semester." The silence.

I've been through it a million times, B! You won't lure me into this horrible scenario, no ma'am! We're friends at the doctor's office, and I'll leave it at that, SHE-DEVIL!

What-ev!

So, while waiting in the waiting room, some gal walks in the door, pushing the above $1000 Bugaboo stroller. She's uber-tall, slender, with short-sassy-expensive hair, dressed elegant-sloppy in jeans, mohair and Beatle boots. In short, I hate her. Her name was Bet§y. Oh, of course.

She's fussing with her equally beautiful toddler girl, we're all waiting, waiting, because the office is really hoppin' that day. Finally, I can stand it no longer.

"Nice Bugaboo," I mutter.

"Ah, thank you!" She turns to her daughter and wags her head. "Daddy spent his bonus check on this, didn't he?" She turns back to me, really the entire waiting room, as she has an audience now. "We debated for a long time about this stroller, but finally decided, why not! We didn't take it outside for two whole months, didn't want to get it dirty or anything."

Y'know, no one buys a Bugaboo because they're stylish, well-made, an investment. Although they are all of those things. One buys a Bugaboo to elicit the raw, unmasked envy of other, lesser mothers that was on display in that doctor's waiting room that morning.

I thought I wanted a Bugaboo, but if having one makes people around me feel as awful about themselves as I did for that brief moment, it ain't worth it. I thought it would be, until I was actually within touching distance of one of the damn things.

Okay, this is way too much naked navel-gazing about a single visit to the doctor, but it's 3:30 in the morning, and that's what insomnicac preggos do. Gaze at their barely-existent navel.

Love you, be good.