Come on, vogue.

It happened. It happened to me.

I've heard about it happening to other people. It's the stuff old wives' tales are made of - it happens to a friend of a friend of a friend's parent's cousin's daughter. You hear the story second, third or fourth hand. Sometimes a perpetrator gives their account, fraught with embarrassment and never-ending, life-long guilt. I just never imagined I would be a victim.

But I am.

Recently, all gussied up for work in my somewhat form-fitting, black empire-waist dress purchased at the Gap, one of my co-worker's approached me, reached out and rubbed my tummy.

Don't adjust your computer screens, people. Yes, rubbed my tummy.

"What's this?" she asked innocently.

Lunch? A tumor the size of a small grapefruit? The shape of the bloody pulp I planned to beat her into once I collected my wits?

Nope. It was definitely just my stomach (and not a baby bump, as the immediately mortified co-worker assumed).

I'm going to bypass a pointless rant about people and personal boundaries because those things don't coexist in 2008. Ask any pregnant woman (a woman who is actually pregnant, not me) and she'll tell you her body is a foreign country - trespassed upon by visitors both known and unknown. If I had a dime for every time someone did touch my belly back when I really was pregnant, my daughter would have no problem affording Harvard.

Instead, I'm going right to the nut and bolts (er, buttons and seams) of the matter. On the rack, the dress looked great. The price was right and I needed something stylish, yet acceptable for both work and evenings. It looked easy to throw on and dress up or down with shoes or accessories. Nice, right? You can't seem to go wrong at the Gap - it's the epitome of casual middle-class American fashion and had yet to fail me.

Until now. But, honestly, I don't really blame Gap for my false pregnancy. No, I blame John Rex Whinfield and James Tenant Dickson. As the grandfathers of modern-day polyester, these two have a lot of sins (and their fair share of fashion faux pas) to pay for in the afterlife. Add my embarrassing situation to their list. My sweet little dress of polyester blend, so adorable on the hanger, clung to my middle like Danny Bonaduce to reality TV.

I don't care what other women say - the pooch (that inexplicable bulge above the pelvis and below the gut) is there from birth; some of us are just better at hiding it under clothes or erasing it with an airbrush tool than others. Personally, I also can blame mine on my daughter's big head. She wouldn't come out of me the normal way, and one C-section later, that pooch is like any other dog with a bone. It isn't going anywhere. (But, hopefully, that big-headed daughter will put the size of her huge noggin to good use and really end up at Harvard.)

So, here's my formula for one of life's most embarrassing moments: Polyester + Pooch = Never wearing that frakin' dress again.

I try my very to best fashion forward, I do. I shop like the best of my gender, looking for bargains and paging through the latest fashion mags on how I can be a little more hip. I own more pairs of black shoes than I can feasibly count. I lust for anything in patent leather be it shoe, purse or belt. Platinum is my favorite color. They know my name at Marshall's and I ought to own stock at the Red Dot Boutique (Target, people, Target).

But, apparently, my biggest accessory is my mid-section. Fortunately, that's at no cost to anyone or anything but my ego. Hey, if you've got it, flaunt it. I wonder if mu-mus will be in for Spring 2009?