Freeway Mayhem and Footlong Subs.

Today, I violated one of the unspoken rules of womanhood-- a rule so vital to the female way of life that one is born with an innate understanding of it. As women, we're all ingrained with code that guides our actions, which is how we know that it's dastardly to wear white to a friend's wedding or unwise to eat a burrito before expecting a goodnight kiss. And we all know that to violate these tenets will result in almost certain disaster. Well, I'm here to affirm for you ladies that that this is true. Indeed, this particular mistake ended in a consequence most foul-- and most hilarious.

I was driving home today in the middle of heavy traffic, and I had the misfortune of being stuck behind an obnoxiously large truck with an obnoxiously large tailpipe and those horrible, gaudy -- need I say obnoxious-- mud-flaps with naked ladies on them, and that's when I made The Ultimate Female Mistake.

You know what I'm talking about, ladies. This was the big cheese of mistakes. If mistakes were power couples, this would be the Beyonce and Jay Z of mistakes. If mistakes were really bad movies, this would be The Last Song, only slightly more mortifying.

I made eye contact. I couldn't help myself.

Scarier. Than. This.

I made eye contact with the drivers of the Manly Man Mobile. I turned my head 45 degrees and invited trouble. See, all women of driving age know that to allow our eyes to roam into the car next to us is to start a conversation. It's as if the man next to us interprets this gesture as the equivalent as a lusty nightclub come-on, and we're Megan Fox. Meanwhile, the ladies are sitting there like deer in the headlights, white-knuckling the steering wheel as though our lives depend on it.

It's a tale as old as time. I couldn't roll up my window fast enough to block the onslaught that ensued. See, this is the reason why gorillas avoid eye contact in the jungle. It's because a female gorilla knows that if she makes eye contact with a male gorilla, she's essentially inviting him to make wildly lewd comments about her boobies. Invariably what happens in this scenario is that the female gorilla succeeds in ripping off the male gorillas face, which I think is a good case for the argument that humans should start taking cues from the Animal Kingdom's Book of Etiquette.

"I am not an objeeeeecccct!"

Anyway, I digress.

The point is that the next 15 minutes were filled with humiliation, mingled with horror and a hint of nausea. The loud and overcompensatingly large vehicle paced me for what felt like an eternity. The driver, who was offensively adolescent in every way, spewed fragmented innuendos out the window, though I tried my damnedest to appear as though I was engrossed in a very important phone call. I'm pretty certain I heard the words "wiener" and "dong" come out of someone's mouth.

Kind of like this, only slightly less... regal.

But here's where the story gets weird. At one point I simply could not resist looking back at the boy. In that instant, it was as if my eyes were magnetically attracted to his, and his to mine. I sustained the eye contact. I did not back down. I was filled with righteous indignation. 'I'm a pregnant lady!' I thought. 'I don't have to take crap from anybody but babies!' I'm pretty sure I looked totally deranged, with my crazy lady eyes boring into the kid's skull and my lips pursed in motherly disapproval.

My newfound confidence clearly unnerved the kid, who quickly broke my gaze and fell back. 'Haha!' I thought, 'Victory is mine!' His friend in the passenger seat, however, did not sense the change in power that had just occurred. As the truck faded into my rear-view mirror, I saw the passenger wave something out the window. He was wielding it like a flag of triumph, shaking it violently. It took me a minute to realize what it was, and when I did, I burst into a fit of unbridled hysteria.

It was a sandwich. The boy was waving a sandwich. I guess that's all you *can* wave around before you get your gun license...

(Also, I knew it was a sandwich because a pregnant lady can recognize a Subway wrapper from a mile away. I bet if I had been downwind, I could have told you what kind it was just by the smell.)

Anyway, at this point I was trying not to hit the car in front of me, so I'm not exactly sure what transpired. The next time I looked, the driver was laughing maniacally and the passenger looked cartoonishly distressed. Clearly, he had lost his sandwich. Somewhere a homeless drifter on I-25 is having himself a field day.

On behalf of women everywhere, I laughed like a fool all the way home.

Finally, I turned onto my own street. The quiet little street where old ladies strut around in their Shape Ups, and pesky teenage kids ride their scooters too fast past my driveway. I was more than giddy when I met my husband and daughter in the driveway.

I pulled up and gave the sticky, messy little monster a kiss. (And then I gave my daughter one, too. Ha!) When Doug asked me how my day was, I didn't fill him in on the intellectual breakthroughs or the important conversations that took place. I didn't tell him about the nuances and the witty banter.

"Oh. My. Gosh. Babe, you are not going to believe this! I got tailed by some teenagers AND heard the word 'wiener' today!" I exclaimed.

"I believe it. Every day is an adventure with you," he said.

"Oh, and I saw a dude lose a sandwich on the freeway!"

"All in a day's work, " he said.

We went inside and I wrote this post to you people, and at the end of it I made the resolution to get a Subway sandwich for lunch tomorrow.

The end.