I hope you all had spooky and delightful nights! I'm kind of dull- nothing big happened. I expressed all of my Halloween creativity in Chicago this weekend, when I paraded myself around as Brittany, of Chipettes fame. (That's the Suzer and Shmifty rounding out the trio.) Halfway through the night, I donned a friend's cast off costume, and partied until dawn as Lady Hulk. Pictures of that to follow.
Anyway, I didn't do anything super fun last night. Did you? Jarrodbaby and I went to see Running With Scissors, and then we swung by the parade.
But I wanted to do a slightly delayed Halloween post anyway, inspired by Curly's tale of The Adventures of Writing Implements.
See, I have never been one of those people who liked to use Halloween to glam up or look extra sexy (I know what you're thinking- sexier than I look now? Is that possible? I'm not sure). I don't know why. Maybe I never saw the challenge in it. Here is a chronology of my costume choices from birth until present day.
Years 0-3: Raggedy Ann. This was because my mom had this big Raggedy Ann doll and she made me wear its clothes for years.
Years 4-6: Some sort of fancy lady/respectable profession conglomerate. This usually meant things like Fairy Firefighter, or Princess Veterinarian, or Ballerina Brain Surgeon. The costume ALWAYS had a tutu. I accessorized with Tools of the Trade- stethescopes, Firefighter's helmets, etc. Nobody ever guessed what I was. I was constantly disappointed.
Years 7-13 (and yes, I still dressed up. I like costumes.): Whatever struck my fancy- usually related to something I learned in school. So nerdy, right? I couldn't help it. They always seemed like good choices at the time. As above, nobody could ever figure out who I was. I carefully outfitted myself, too. These costumes included, but were not limited to
Sandra Day O'Connor Clara Barton Joan of Arc et cetera.
My mother, to her credit, was remarkably supportive of my choices. I can only recall one year when my chosen disguise gave her pause. But she bounced right back. And really, how would you react if your child announced she was going as Harriet Tubman for Halloween?
Years 14-18: High School. My friends and I usually dressed in a themed group costume, which was fun. We came really close to winning the Costume Contest the year we adorned ourselves as the Seven Deadly Sins (I was Avarice).
Years 19-24: This was my "punny" phase- sometimes with a sardonic hint. Choice costumes included Shady Doctor Who Gives Fake Botox Injections From Her Garage Office In Mexico, Kris of Kris Kross, and Chalk Outline.
Year 25: That's now. Reread if you missed my costume.
My point in all of this was maybe I'm missing the boat. Other ladies seem to have hypersexed, fancily-adorned, lipstick-smeared costumes that garner quite a bit of attention. Am I expected to keep up? Should I carpe the diem and every Halloween from here on out, clad myself as a Playboy Bunny? Or go as a Catholic School Girl or something? Or maybe I can reinvent my largely unsuccessful and unconveyable costumes of the past but give them an additional twist:
Drunk N Horny Harriet Tubman "Naughty" Sandra Day O'Connor Kinky Raggedy Ann Slutty Princess Veterinarian
No? Yes? Do you think these choices would read well? I'm not sure.
I will start accepting suggestions for next year's costume. Perhaps I can make a project out of it- help Meg unearth her inner scantily clad trampy side.
But not TOO scantily clad. I get cold easily.
** Update update!! **
I have been alerted that the answer to my prayers exists RIGHT HERE!
Okay. So this is Tyra Banks losing her f-ing mind. I love it. It's one of the best things I've ever seen. And I have been to both the Grand Canyon and the rodeo.
See, here is what happens. Watch it first and then read this part.
So Tyra says she is going to let everyone in her audience in on her little beauty secret. She's looking pretty busted, Tyra is, because for some reason she's not wearing any makeup. Or maybe she is and she caught the Ugs or something because she looks like she could use a nap and a facial.
But I digress. In any case, she says she's going to give out her beauty secret. And it is Vaseline. VASELINE. AKA the poor girl's KY (note to young readers- don't actually use petroleum jelly in place of lube, as it can lead to infection. If you want lube and can't afford the proper stuff, send Auntie Meg an e-mail and she will buy you lube from her special fund for Underprivileged Girls.). Women flip the FUCK out. The vaseline jar is crystal-encrusted. Fancy! Tyra states that it is worth one hundred dollars (ha).
This is all still in the realm of the possible to me. I mean, people flip out over free shit. I know I do.
But then Tyra goes all crazy and starts rolling around on the floor, screaming about Vaseline. She falls on her back and starts flailing her limbs about and aiming her crotch at the camera. She yells some more about how everyone gets vaseline (everyone! you and you and you and you and you! you all get vaseline!) and she kind of hits some audience members, you know, in her excitement or whatever, and then she screams some more, and then she's done.
That's her show.
"I SPENT 110 DOLLARS, INCLUDING TAX, BECAUSE I ALREADY HAD THE BEADAZZLER AND ALL, ON THESE GIFTS TO GIVE TO YOU, AUDIENCE, AND YOU WILL TAKE IT AND LOVE IT AND PEE A LITTLE BECAUSE OF IT BECAUSE I AM BATSHIT CRAZY TYRA BANKS AND I HAVE THAT SHOW WITH THE MODELS AND I AM VERY POPULAR AND I CRY A LOT AND YOU'LL DO WHATEVER I SAY BECAUSE I'M TYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYRAAAAAAAA AND HERE IS SOME LUUUUUUUUUUUUUBE!"
I could totally do this. Granted, I'm not a model, yet. But I am a skilled roller from way back. In fact, as a theatre major in college, I spent quite a bit of time rolling around. I rolled on the ground outside, on the floor inside, I rolled vertically against the wall- all of it. I even had to roll while singing, or yelling (like Tyra!) or weeping.
I graduated with top honors, people.
Anyway, I don't have too much more to say about this except that I'm bursting with joy now that it is in my life. I'm trying to figure out a way to make it my Christmas card. See, I'd like to take a still of that part where she's on her back, vagina to the sky, and then, maybe using holograms or something, the faces of my roommate and I can come shooting out of her nether regions dressed as Santa and the Mrs. (To clarify, we will be dressed up. Her Private Square will remain as is.)
The scene: Our heroine has entered a charming, seemingly innocent tea shop on Manhattan's Upper East Side. As she peruses the vast selection, comparing and contrasting the varieties of mint teas available, a man enters the shop.
He is annoying from the get-go. He's about our heroine's height, with small weasely eyes and rodent teeth. He's wearing a button-down blue and white striped shirt with a white polo underneath- collar popped. The heroine guesses his age to be somewhere in his early fifties, but she's notoriously bad at this game, which is how she always ends up dating people old enough to be her father. But she digresses.
ANYway. So this guy walks in, approaches our heroine, and says:
Man: Yeah. So what happened to the old proprietor of this place?
Heroine: Excuse me? Um, he's in the back, maybe...
Man: I mean, what happened here? Did you eat him?
Heroine: What?
Man: You know. You just look like you've just had a good meal. So maybe YOU know where he is.
Heroine: Did you just walk in here and call me fat?
Man: No. I should have said, You look like you are content. Perhaps you had something to do with his disappearance.
Heroine: Ah. So you walked in and called me fat and happy. Who the hell are you?
Man: I own the shop next door.
Heroine: Yeah. I don't really care. You should talk to girls more often so you learn what works and what doesn't.
Man: I talk to girls all the time.
Heroine: Pre-teen ones on the internet don't count.
Man: I talk to real ones. You're the only one who doesn't like it.
Heroine: Stop talking to me. I think I hate you.
Proprietor emerges from the back. He and socially retarded man greet each other.
Man: Hi Chris. Just a small plain coffee.
Proprietor: Sure thing. Anything else?
Heroine: He's also buying me this- small peppermint tea, please.
Man: Ha ha.
Heroine: I'm not joking. You insulted me. The tea is the least you can do.
Man: I'm not buying you tea. Am I?
Heroine: Yes you are. You think I'm joking? You owe me.
Proprietor: Her tea is two dollars.
Heroine, taking tea and leaving: Thanks, guys. Have a good day.
I'm just going to recount for you the events of my evening. I'm not claiming anything in particular about them. I really just want to tell someone what happened.
So, I volunteer a couple of times per week in hospice care. For those of you who are unfamiliar, hospice provides support and services for the terminally ill and their families. As a volunteer, I both visit people in their homes and also work in a hospice residence on the Upper East Side. The residence is provided for people who either have no family to assist in their care or for patients whose condition has gotten to be too overwhelming for their families to handle on their own. I have been working in the residence part of hospice care for about 6 months, and it is in the residence where I first met my now-friend, who I will call Tom.
Tom is an older man who has been dying for quite some time. In addition to several types of cancer, he also has a degenerative muscular disorder that has slowly caused paralysis, from the feet up. When I first met him he still had control over most of his body, but sure enough, he eventually lost the ability to walk, move his legs, sit up, roll over, or feed himself. (I kind of just made him sound like a dog. Sorry about that.)
Tom and I got along famously from the moment we met. Mostly because we both enjoy being flattered. He would tell me I was pretty, I'd tell him he was handsome, and then we'd play bingo. Or we would listen to operas. Or he'd try to teach me chess. When he lost control of his hands, we started doing the crossword puzzle together. We both love crossword puzzles, and we are a good team because he's very Mathy/Sciencey and I'm all Arts and Languages. Then we'd argue a little bit, just to round things out. He liked to tell me that if I ever shut my mouth maybe I'd get a husband. I told him that was pretty funny coming from a man who flirted with anything that moved.
A few weeks ago, he had a stroke. It was sad and somewhat startling, because I came in one day to find my normally robust (considering) and verbose friend propped up, staring vacantly, and babbling nonsensically. He couldn't really answer questions anymore, but he still responded to touch and pleasant voices, so our time together now consisted of me holding his hand and reading him the paper.
He couldn't feed himself, but he could still swallow somewhat, so we'd have dinner dates whenever I was there. These days, dinner for Tom means soup, blended until it was free of any chunks that could choke him. After soup, he had ice cream. His absolute favorite food. Mine too- this is another reason that we are friends.
Last night, I went to the residence and after I greeted everyone, the night nurse told me that Tom's dinner was in the kitchen, if I wanted to get it ready for him. I blended his soup, took his ice cream out of the freezer so it could soften, and I headed on in. He looked even thinner and more shriveled this week than I'd seen him before, which is saying a lot. I tried to feed him his soup, but he made it abundantly clear that he wanted nothing to do with it.
I didn't push it because I feel that if you are dying you pretty much can have whatever you want. So I threw the soup out and got the ice cream instead.
He ate all of the ice cream, every single bit. As he was finishing up, I said "Wow, Tom, you really cleaned up on this ice cream. Good work! I'm impressed." I turned away, not expecting an answer, because I hadn't gotten one in weeks. But out of nowhere, his hand gripped my wrist with surprising strength. I whirled back to look at him, startled, and found him staring directly at me. "Well you know," he said, "it's always good to have a large meal before a long journey."
My heart dropped. He hadn't spoken coherently in forever, and now this. I wanted to scream or cry or do one hundred other things, but all I said was "Oh yeah? I'll remember that."
I left the room, kind of shaken. As I was washing his dishes, I recounted our exchange with the night nurse. Her eyes popped out a bit, but she smiled and said "Sometimes they do the strangest things before they go."
I went back in to Tom's room and got him ready for bed. (He has very specific ways that he likes his pillows and his shades drawn.) I kept talking to him and asking him questions, but he didn't indulge me with any more conversation. Disappointed, I tucked him in and left the room to see to other patients.
Later, after Tom had been asleep for about an hour, the night nurse and I were doing something in the hallway outside of his bedroom, when we heard laughing. We both sat up straight and listened. It was coming from Tom's room. Not only was he giggling up a storm, but he was talking to someone. "You guys," he chuckled, "I just love you guys. Oh, you characters!"
The night nurse opened up the door and we stepped in to the room. My mouth dropped open in shock. Tom was sitting straight up in bed, his arms reaching out. He was wearing the biggest, goofiest grin, and his eyes were clearer than they'd been in weeks. And he was laughing.
I have no idea how he was sitting up- he had trouble sitting up on his own when I first met him a long time ago, and he hasn't been able to hold himself up in months. This was physically inconceivable.
The nurse said "Tom, what's so funny? Tell me the joke. I want to laugh too!"
Tom said, "Oh, it's just my friends. They're just great."
I said, "Who are your friends, Tom?"
The nurse added, "Are they here now? We didn't mean to interrupt."
Tom smiled and said, "Don't worry. You're not interrupting. They're just waiting for me, that's all."
Neither the nurse nor I had anything to say to that right away. We helped him lay back down, readjusted his pillows, and put some lotion on his hands (they looked a little dry). Again, I tried to engage him in conversation, but whatever had given him the strength to chatter away earlier was gone. He was the Tom I'd come to know in the last few weeks- sweet, but silent.
I finished up at the residence and headed home. When I woke up this morning, I realized that I'd left my work beeper in the nurse's office last night (oops) so I called over to ask if anyone had seen it.
"It's pretty busy here," said Beth, the day nurse, when she answered the phone. "We had a death late last night."
I knew who it was. But I asked anyway, "Who died?"
"Tom did. Not too long after you left last night. I'll let you know when the funeral is, Meg. I know you two were close. He didn't have any family, and he always seemed very fond of you."
"It was mutual. I was quite a fan of his too."
"I know. I have to run. Are you going to come pick up your beeper today?"
"Yeah, I'll get it after work."
"Okay. See you later."
"Bye."
Like I said, I'm not making any judgments--spiritual or otherwise--about what happened last night. That's not for me to do and I'm actually not sure where I'd begin. But I do know that last night, for a few moments, it was like having my old friend back. Only then did I realize how much I'd actually missed him.
Bye, Tom. Thanks for being my buddy. Hope you and your friends are having a good time, you dirty old bunch of skirt-chasers. Peace, handsome.
I have just learned that Lab Lover has a girlfriend. He's had her for some time.
Here is what I know about her:
1) She's dating my fake work boyfriend 2) She's tall 3) One time, D--- almost caught them going at it in the lab (kinkaroo!) 4) She's not me 5) She works in another lab on another floor
When we last left our dishonest dame, she was preparing herself for her biggest acting challenge to date: convincing the professionals at St Louis Speech and Hearing Center that she was partially deaf. Which she's not. Nor has she ever been.
So I awoke on the morning of my visit to SLSAHC with butterflies in my stomach but a yak in my heart. Or an elephant. Or something determined and stubborn. A mule? Maybe something bigger.
I awoke with an obese mule in my heart.
See, I had very little knowledge of how to act half-deaf. My character study was based mostly on Marlee Matlin and also on that episode of Punky Brewster and her deaf violin-playing friend who "can't hear but (she) can still feel!" I was a little fucked.
I barely touched my breakfast, which was unusual for me, as I was totally in a chunky phase. My mom sat at the dining room table with me, drinking her coffee and being FAR too attentive and sweet.
"Are you okay, darling?"
"Yeah. I'm fine."
"Are you sure? Can I do anything for you?"
"Ma. I'm fine. Why are you acting weird?"
"I'm not being weird, sweetheart. I'm just trying to be supportive. Are you perhaps a little nervous for your test today?"
"No."
"You should have TOLD me that you were having problems hearing. I feel TERRIBLE that this went on for so long, unattended. I'm so sorry. I feel just awful."
"No big deal. I have to go to the bathroom."
As I was running off, I heard her yell "You hide your disability so well! You're truly brave!"
I. Was. So. Busted.
She knew. She absolutely knew. But my mom subscribed to the Guilt 'Em Till They're Good school of parenting, and as such I was positive she'd sit tight on this little nugget and just work it over and over until I was confessing everything wrong I've ever done in my life (I stole ben's gameboy and i hid his backpack and i didn't pick up the dog poop just left it in the yard and i said fuck at school and...) and that wasn't going to help anyone.
But I was too far in this to back out now, plus I was still really curious as to what was going to happen, plus if I kept this up I would be missing at least 2 hours of school. So you see, there was no turning back.
When we arrived at the center, my mom started filling out paperwork while I looked at the games and entertainment they provide for kids who can't hear. The brightly colored children's books and wooden novelties held no appeal for me, so I watched some sitcom on TV that had been closed-captioned. A while later, a very friendly woman came up and touched me on the shoulder (I guess calling names out loud from behind a window wouldn't really fly with this community), startling me from my overstimulated reverie.
"Are you ready to come with me?" she asked, overenunciating so that I could read her lips should I so choose.
"Yes." With a backward glance at my mom, I allowed myself to be led into The Back. The woman looked down at me and said "Did you enjoy watching television out there?"
"Oh yes. I never knew tv could be so good." I paused for a second. "My mom doesn't accommodate me like that."
"Oh," she tsked, "you poor thing. That's awful."
"Yes," I said, too loudly. "It really is."
My confidence was steadily rising. I could totally handle this broad. Being short made me look a lot younger than I was, and I was pretty good at manipulating women of her demographic: sweet, older ladies who haven't had kids my age around in a while. I thought at the very least, they might give me a hearing aid with which I could amuse myself. I planned on using it to spy on other people's conversations. This was all fascinating and definitely going according to plan.
Then, I met Dorothy.
Dorothy was NOT in my money demographic. She was older than her 20's but younger than grandmas. She was sensibly dressed and not a fan of pleasantries. I could tell right away that she was smart. I could tell that she was used to dealing with kids who had actual hearing problems. And I could tell that she didn't like me.
Dorothy put me into a small room, probably about 9'x9'. She sat in a darkened booth on the outside of the room, not unlike the ones on cop shows. Her voice-crystal clear, brusque, and (I told myself) vaguely bitter- came over a speaker into the room.
"I'm going to say some words, and you repeat them back to me. Do you understand?"
"Yes, I do."
My friends, my feeble little mind was racing at this point. Words? Nobody had said shit about words. What happened to the beeps? I was good at the beeps. This was a whole new game. Should I pretend to only hear the first part of the word? Should I pretend to grasp the SOUND of the word, but not the specificities of it, and reply with a rhyming word? Should I feign misunderstanding the directions?
THINK, MEG! THINK! YOU HAVE TO COME UP WITH SOMETHI-
"EXCUSE ME. Meagan. Did you or did you not hear the directions?"
"What?? Did. I did! I'm sorry. Did we start already?"
"Yes. I will begin again. Please try to pay attention. I will say a word and you repeat it. Now. Baseball."
Seriously. That's what happened. That was the best I could do. I couldn't think of a rhyme for baseball (faceball? mace hall? trace y'all?) so I just screamed the name of another sport. It's official. I am an idiot.
I had displeased Dorothy. I could hear it in her voice. She gave me another shot:
"Pumpkin."
"Bathroom!" <----- WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ME? "Video." "Prairie!" I'm clearly choking.
"Burger."
"HOT DOG!"
Oh. My. God. This was going horribly. I was digging myself deeper and deeper, looking more ridiculous by the minute, and I could see no way out of it. (Other than the obvious Telling The Truth, but fuck you, this ain't no sitcom. I was committed.)
Dorothy let me flop about helplessly for a few more minutes, and then she fetched me from the room and walked me (roughly, I must say) down the hall from The Back to the waiting room, where my mom was reading her Reader's Digest. They sent me into the hallway to get a drink of water, and when I returned, they finished up their conversation, shook hands, and my mom and I left.
"Goodbye, Dorothy!" I called, fake-cheerily.
"Goodbye."
In the car, my mom and I sat in silence. She knew. She had to have known. Was I about to be in enormous trouble? Was she going to make me pay a fine? WHY ISN'T SHE SAYING SOMETHING!?!?!
More silence. She just looked at me.
"What?" I barked crossly.
She smiled, tilted her head, and said "Got that out of your system, then?"
"Oh, yes ma'am. That was awful."
"Good."
"Are you mad?"
"No. Well, I was kind of mad at first because I had to take the morning off of work. But it just got funnier and funnier as you kept doing yourself in."
"Yeah. I'm glad you liked that."
"You're a crazy kid. Want to go out for breakfast before you go back to school? You didn't eat anything at home."
"Yes, please."
We went to the small diner in my neighborhood. Over pancakes, I recounted for my mother my desperate attempts to fool Dorothy, and the futility therein. She laughed until she cried.
Just felt like telling a story from my childhood...
Part I of II
Do you remember how in grade school, you had hearing tests every year? They were kind of annoying, because there was a lot of waiting around in line, but I also found them fascinating. For those of you who went to schools where they didn't care if you could hear or not, these tests went like this: you put on these big Princess Leah headphones, and they played a beep tone at different pitches and decibels. When you heard the beep, you raised your hand. I guess if you could hear a certain amount of beeps, you were fine. If you missed a few, you were Deef or whatever.
When I was in first grade, I watched the kid in front of me, Donald*, take his hearing test. I guess he fucked it up royally because they finished with him pretty quickly, and then led him by the hand to another lady at a desk, who took his name and phone number. She said, very seriously, "Don't worry. We will call your mother and she can take you there now. Don't be scared." But Donald knew better. He saw that he had every reason to be scared. Because clearly, we all decided later that day on the playground, they were taking him to some sort of special hearing-impaired child lab facility where they'd do experiments on him and he'd be different for the rest of his life and never have friends and poop his pants in public every day. Terrifying.
However, I have to admit that I was kind of curious as to what happened to Donald when he was led away. He was back in class the next day, but he wouldn't talk about what happened at the lab. I decided to find out for myself what happens when you fail the hearing test. I had all these visions of writing tell-alls and using the profits to create some sort of almost-deaf-kid safe haven with blackboards and talking computers as far as the eye could see. I'd be a hero! So with more patience than I have ever demonstrated in my life, I waited 364 days until it was time for our hearing tests again. Now that I was in second grade, I was even more confident in my ability to fake being deaf. (A smart kid would have started planning this charade more than 5 minutes in advance- perhaps laying the ground with some classroom interaction consisting of "What? What??? I'm sorry, I can't hear the directions. Wish there was some way to tell if my hearing was impaired or not... oh well," but I was not that kid. Shocking.)
I stood in line and watched as my classmates were called to different little booths (alphabetically by last name) and I waited, trying to finalize important details of my master plan. I decided that there was no way they'd believe I was completely deaf (duh) so I thought it best to concentrate my fake impairment to my left ear. At last, my name was called. I headed to a booth in the far corner of the cafegymatorium with the teacher's assistant who was brought in for this task. (Looking back, I realize that she probably was 22 at the oldest. At the time, though, she was a formidable obstacle.)
I sat down and allowed the giant headphones to be placed on my head. To lure her into a false sense of security, I tried to look as adorable as possible, which to me at the time meant smiling aimlessly while bobbing my head around like babies did on television commercials. The teacher smiled back, but probably mostly out of sympathy for the clearly developmentally delayed child sitting wretchedly on the seat in front of her. Ah, well. I welcomed her pity. I could use it to further my cause.
The test began. I dutifully raised and lowered my hand in cadence with the beeps in my right ear. When it was time for the left, I did nothing. She pressed the button again, and a louder beep sounded. I remained still. She frowned, concerned. I smiled benignly. She pressed the button one more time- this time, loud enough that the beep stabbed me in my brain- and I remained mute, staring straight ahead. Small Teacher was flustered.
"Oh my," she said. "You don't hear any of that?"
"Well, I heard the first ones you did. Then they just sort of stopped coming."
"Okay. Okay, sweetheart. You stay here just one minute for me, okay? I'm going to go get Mrs. Barkley to come visit with you."
"Okay!" Sucker.
Mrs. Barkley came over, checked the headphones to make sure they were working, and then got down to business. Bitch didn't play, either. She played several more tones, the last of which was so ear-splittingly loud that I could hear it in my OTHER ear. Small Teacher winced when Mrs. Barkley did this. I remained strong, though, and didn't react.
Then it happened. I was taken by the hand and led to the desk. The woman called my mom. That night, when I went home, my mom told me that I was going to go to school late the next day, because I had an appointment at
Bum ba BUMMMMMMMM!
The St Louis Center for Speech and Hearing. That night when I went to bed, I realized that I was able to effectively plan part 1 of my mission based on my experience the year prior. Part 2 was undoubtedly going to be more challenging because I was going in blind. This was going to be even more difficult than I'd planned.
Me: i have hives Me: help! Jess: why? Me: i think stress Jess: hm Me: at first i thought they were mosquito bites, then i realized i got another one just sitting here at work, inside. No bugs here. Jess: that's not good
later...
Jess: how did i get two bug bites on my face while sitting at my desk? Me: HIVES Jess: you think? Me: Yes! Jess: how do i know if they're hives or bug bites? Me: a hive is the same thing as a bug bite, essentially. it's a reaction to a released histamine. depending on where you were when they showed up, you can usually discern whether or not they are a reaction to a bug or a reaction to an allergen or stress or whatever. are they all the same color? like red/pink all around? Jess: there are two, both on my left cheek. red/pink, yes. one on my arm too, now! Me: hives! we're hiving! Jess: maybe you gave them to me via IM Jess: we both got hives at the same time. wtf? Me: histamine twins. like the doublemint twins only blotchier and the object of fewer sex dreams.
The love of my work life walked in on my while I was in the potty.
Sort of.
I am working late right now. Working late at my job means that for the bulk of the evening you are alone on the 10th floor, occasionally visited by Clarence, the overly-prying-but-not-at-all-unpleasant janitor who thinks your name is Marge. This is always a welcome interruption, as he has many a whimsical tale that starts "My wife, she real big. I mean, beautiful, but REAL big. I say to her 'Woman, how you get so big? You better get it under control!' because she ain't that old. Too bad about her teeth, though," and so on. Later he asks why your fiance doesn't come wait with you while you're at work. He has long ago stopped believing that you don't have one, so you are forced to tell him that your fiance works nights as the security guard at the horse barn in Central Park. Then you try to change the subject. But I digress.
So, I was in the bathroom just now, having finished my bathroomly duties, and as I reached up to unlock the door, I kind of hooked myself in the hair with my watch. It made a big unpleasant hair situation. Door now unlocked, I turned toward the mirror to fix my luxurious mane. I decided that it was hopeless and as I turned and tugged on the doorknob, it WHOOSHED open because it was being pushed by Lab Lover.
Lab Lover is adorable. He's just as cute as a button. A hairy, Australian, Euro-pants-wearing, nerdy little button. He makes my heart go pitter-pat!
So he opened the door and there I was, mouth hanging open in shock, hair all akimbo. He immediately started blushing horribly which I was somehow able to see despite noticing my own intense blushing. What followed was a really embarrassed, rather shrieky conversation:
Him: Ahh! Oh my god! I'm SO sorry! Me: Ahhh! I'm sorry! I wasn't...I didn't! Him: It's a good thing I work in a hospital! Me: (Still kind of screaming) Oh, yeah?? Him: Right. Because, well, I think I need one now. Me: (laughs too hard) Him: I'm really sorry. I should knock. I should learn to be a knocker! This is why people knock.
At this point, it occurs to me that maybe I can leave the bathroom now. I step away from the door.
Him: Oh no, by all means, I can use the other one. I'm so sorry. Take all the time you need. I mean. Um. Me: NO! Here. Use this one. I have been done for a long time. I was totally just hanging out. (Oh jesus) I mean. Not like hanging out in here. But I was pulling on the door as you opened it because I was leaving- it made me feel really strong. The door opened so easily. Him: I had pushed it. Next time I'll knock. Me: Oh, pshaw.
PSHAW??????
Me: Well, I have to go. Him: Oh, sure. I'll see you later. Me: We're both still blushing really a lot. Him: Ha. Okay!
Name:A Lover and a Fighter Home:New York, NY About Me:"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."
-Oscar Wilde See my profile...
