Ma'am Ogled

Welcome to the next installment of "Who Stared at Me on My Way Home." I really am starting to feel a little boost in my self-esteem, no matter how silly, from the visual attention I am garnering on my increasingly frequent jaunts around my neighborhood. I was talking on the phone to my friend Steve and told him that I was getting stared at much more than usual today, so we had a brief discussion about possible causes. He first asked me if I remembered to wear pants. I looked down. "Yes, I am wearing pants. That can't be it." Hmmmm. Maybe it was the fact that I was on the phone: perhaps that made it more permissible to stare openly due to the presumption that I would be preoccupied and therefore not notice as much? I finally decided on the fact that the shirt I'm wearing today has shrunk and a very thin strip of unclothed tummy skin was exposed between the bottom of the shirt and the top of my jeans. No navel was brazenly displayed or anything, but that must be it--people in this neighborhood are desperate for that inch of skin. I even had one solicitous young man earnestly warn me in between not-so-covert downward glances that I needed to walk extra carefully because of all the construction on the street. He actually stopped me to tell me this, and then said, "You have a nice day, ma'am." Ma'am! I find it fascinating that you can have exposed abdominal flesh and still constitute a ma'am at the same time. Maybe my tummy looks old and respectable. My tummy exudes ma'amness. I am ma'am, hear me roar!