There is nothing better than a feisty geriatric. My grandmother is 97 years old and still cruising around at 80 year old speed. But what's better is that after nearly 100 years, she's earned the right to say and do pretty much anything she pleases. She could skewer a baby and microwave it and everyone would say "Awww, look at her push the buttons with her little old fingers!" And don't think for a second you can get away with gaining weight around this woman or you'll hear, "You're getting a big butt." and because she's older than dirt, it's perfectly acceptable for her to say that. I mean, what are you going to do? Turn around and look at this adorable little old woman and tell her to "Shut the fuck up before I slap the wrinkles off your face, woman!"? No, you smile and you say, "I know, Mammaw. I've been eating a lot of donuts lately. I'll try harder. Love you!"
Sometimes I just want to be old. Really super old. Not like 70. Seventy is the new 60. Nobody cares if you're 70. You can't get away with shit when you're 70 unless you're on your deathbed and with the life expectancy constantly lengthening that isn't likely. Why, you ask, would I want to step forward in time 70 years? Because I want to get away with shit. I want to say what I want to say without eyerolls or judgement. I want to get hugs for screaming profanities, insulting people and violating social mores!
Speaking of being seventy years old and violating social mores, I'd like to share my "What the fuck?!" moment I experienced yesterday. Allow me to set the scene:
So, I'm on my way to Cincinnati to audition for a commercial I'm likely to get called back for but never hired for...when I get hungry. Since McDonald's is so vegetarian friendly (FALSE), I decide to stop there. I pull up to the speaker and begin to order my balanced meal of a medium fry, a fruit and walnut salad and a medium Diet Coke when I notice that the car in front of me has stopped short of the pay window and the driver (a SEVENTY YEAR OLD WOMAN) has exited her vehicle and is slowly approaching my car. Oddly enough, I become frightened. What is she doing?! Is she going to shoot me?! Mug me?! Scold me for not eating enough protein?! AAAAH! The closer she gets, the more nervous I get. She might be dangerous! As I'm ordering my food, I'm cautiously watching her every move out of the corner of my eye, until she gets right.up.to. my rearview mirror and stops, apparently waiting for me to finish ordering. As soon as I'm done with my order, she leans into the speaker and says, "EXCUSE ME! I FORGOT TO GIVE YOU MY ORDER! I NEED A VANILLA MILKSHAKE!" By now, I'm sure the poor girl taking my order is completely confused because clearly this is not the voice that just ordered the medium fry, fruit and walnut salad and medium Diet Coke. Not only that, but this crazy not-old-enough-to-get-away-with-doing-shit-like-this woman is impeding my progress to procede in line by standing directly in front of my rearview mirror! By this point, I am too flabbergasted by this series of events, I can't even summon the courage to say, "excuse me, ma'am" or "get the fuck out of the way", so I drive slowly past her MOVING her with my rearview mirror. Nothing stands between me and food. Not even old ladies. Let this serve as a PSA: I don't care how old you are, if you get in my way in the McDonald's drive-thru, I will run your ass over.
Now, I'd just like to offer the disclaimer that if this woman had been, say, 107 years old, I would have given her a piggy back ride back to her car and fed her her vanilla milkshake because she would have been on this Earth long enough to earn such luxuries. However, because restaurant drive-thrus have been around for the greater part of the life of a seventy-year-old...this behavior is just unacceptable. It's not cute, it's annoying and I will not tolerate it.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Friday, December 11, 2009
Mannequin
Let the record state that I absolutely HATE shopping. Just thinking about stepping inside a mall makes me want to slit my wrists. I hate the music, I hate the people, I hate the salesmen and women and I hate the overwhelming selection of merchandise. However, I don't mind shopping when I have a $100 gift card. I can suck it up long enough to go on a mini shopping spree on someone else's dime. The only thing I (normally) hate doing worse than shopping is shopping with my two year old. But, like I said, yesterday I had someone else's money to spend and I wasn't about to let them down, so I bundled up my bundle of joy and headed to Macy's. I actually don't hate Macy's as much as, say, Abergoddamnedcrombie, because the music is much more subdued, the salespeople look like they actually eat and I'm not asphyxiated with the smell of bottled teenage libido. I digress.
As we walk into the beautifully decorated Macy's, with their garland and giant Christmas balls (I just wanted to say balls) and pretty, tranquil Christmas music, I am transported into nostalgia. I pretend that I am wealthy and that I live in New York City and I'm shopping at THE Macy's. Even though I'm in Castleton, Indiana and the woman next to me is missing one of her front teeth and is riding a Rascal. I am instantly at peace. Then my fantasy is interrupted by a tiny little voice.
"Mommy, whassat?!"
"What?"
"Dat!" she says as her tiny little finger points to a beheaded male mannequin knealing on the floor decked out in his best winter gear.
"Oh, that's a mannequin."
"What's he do-ning?"
"He's modeling some clothes."
"I like him. He's wearing a chacket (jacket)!"
"I know! He has a nice jacket. C'mon, let's go shop!"
We walk 50 feet and I hear the little voice again.
"Mommy, what she do-ning?"
"What's who doing?"
"The mexican!"
"The Mexican?"
By this point I was horribly embarrassed by my blatantly racist child, until she pointed to an emaciated female mannequin modeling a slutty outfit in the junior's department.
"Oh! You mean the mannequin!"
"Yeah, the mexican! I wanna touch her!"
"Ok, nice touches. We don't want to play mannequin dominoes."
We made our way around the entire store until she had touched nearly every mannequin. She particularly loved the ones with bare midriffs.
"Looka her belly! She has a belly button!"
It was clear that these large, petrified humans were very real to her. Our story takes a sad turn, however, when my sweet little girl had the innocence ripped right out of her little heart as she stopped in her tracks and pointed at some very unfortunate mannequin.
(Sad voice)"Mommy, wha-happen her hand?" she asked when she spotted one who's hand was screwed on all askew. "She needa band-aid?"
And with that, her fantasy was interrupted by a loud nasally voice.
"No, honey, she's not real. Her hand just screws on."
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
I'm Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!
Hello, dear readers! I'm back! Quiet now. Calm down. Ok, more cheering! More! Ok, stop. You may be asking yourself, "Where the hell has this bitch been?" or "How did I survive without her for this long?" I will address these questions in reverse chronological order: I'm not sure how you survived without me, but clearly you did because you're reading this. I hope you feel better. In response to your (very rude) first question, I can't tell you where I've been because I'm now a part of the witness protection program. What? Blogging is a bad idea if you're trying to fly under the radar? Whatever, shut up. For lack of better excuses, suffice it to say that I took some time off to get older. This may be demonstrated by the fact that I will be turning 29 for the second time in four days. That's 31 in old people years, but whatever...this is my blog and I'll be 29 if I want to. In celebration of the second anniversary of my 29th birthday, I have created a timeline of my life for your reading pleasure. Because I'm really good at counting by fives, and exciting things (or not) happen every five years of my life, I will arrange my timeline as such. Shall we? (Cue time travel music)
YEAR 0: I was born on what I would presume was a very cold day in December of 1978. Make that the 11th. It very well could have been unseasonably warm that day, but stories of births are always much more fun when it's cold outside. So, anyway, it was cold. I popped out of my mother's birth canal at approximately 8:50 pm on a Monday (I think) night. I was probably gooey and bloody and screaming and according to records, I weighed exactly 8 pounds and was 21" long. I was a cute baby. My mother claimed to have tried to breastfeed me, but she didn't try hard enough and ended up feeding me sub par 1970's baby formula, which most assuredly contained Mercury and other cancer-causing carcinogens. I will never forgive her for this.
YEAR 5: Now, years 0-4 of my life were spent being cute, but something happened on year 5 and I started to eat more. I was still cute though and had very long (as in Fundamentalist Christian length) blonde hair. Despite the fact that I was a fat child and spent the greater part of the year in a cast because I decided to walk backwards down a hill and broke my ankle (thank you, 1970's baby formula for making me smart), I had a lot of success in kindergarten. I learned to share with others and even experienced my first kiss on the school bus en route to a fieldtrip. His name was Christopher and he had red hair and freckles and was about a foot shorter than me. We were a match made in misfit heaven. Kindergarten is also noteable because of what we'll call "The Worst School Picture Ever". I was in the process of losing my first tooth, but my baby tooth wouldn't get the fuck out of the way and make room for the larger tooth behind it, so I looked like I was wearing Billy Bob teeth. A fat baby with Billy Bob teeth, dressed up like a Fundamentalist Mormon on school picture day. My mother finds great joy in my kindergarten picture. I will never forgive her for this.
YEAR 10: Did I say that kindergarten was the year of "The Worst School Picture Ever"? That was a lie. By 5th grade, I was in full-fledged awkward mode. Not only was I taller than every.single.person.in.my.class., but I was fatter. And I had a bad perm. Also, do you remember those sweet-ass pink plastic framed glasses that were all the rage in the 80's? Yeah, I had those. And remember the Billy Bob teeth I was sporting in my kindergarten picture? I still had those, but by this time they were permanent. I also switched schools in 5th grade to a more hoity-toity school where the children didn't appreciate my kitschy awkwardness as much as those at my other school. Also, my teacher was a man. I had only had women teachers up until this point. I enjoyed my 5th grade teacher, because he cleaned his ears with his car keys in the middle of class. I thought he was an awesome guy, but a few years later he killed his wife and then himself. Not so awesome. Moving on...
YEAR 15: Ah, things are getting a little better on the awkward front. By this time, I had had braces and they were off. I lost weight and my perm grew out. I was actually kind of cute again. But despite the fact that I was cute, I was still a weird child (shocker, huh?). Always one with a desire to be "different", I experimented with odd combinations of clothing usually acquired at Goodwill. This always solicited snickers from snobby girls walking behind me in the hall, but whatever because I got my first boyfriend in 9th grade! We'll call him "Horrible Kisser" to protect his identity. Horrible Kisser invited me over to his house to watch The Last of the Mohicans and make out. He tried to put his hand down my pants, but I put him in an arm bar to foil his advances. He went to school the next day and told everyone that I clamped my legs shut. I will never forgive him for this.
YEAR 20: We'll call this the "Year of Poor Decisions". By 20, I had completed my first year of college, met a guy we'll call "Practice Husband" and became sperminated. Now, let me clarify that I don't consider my son (the product of said spermination) a "poor decision". Well, at least not until he pisses me off or doesn't clean up after himself. But for the most part, I consider him a "sound decision". Practice Husband, on the other hand, was a bit of a poor life decision. For the record, getting married at 20 is generally a bad idea. We hated each other and our marriage ended in violence. I gave him a black eye. Serves him right...I told him about the wire hangers, but he just wouldn't listen. That's not the real reason, but it's much funnier than the real reason...so for the purpose of storytelling, that's the reason. For the record, I HAVE forgiven him and we get along swimmingly now.
YEAR 25: After my divorce and a few years of reckless abandon, I finally started to act like a human around this time. Started to, anyway. I ALMOST fucked my life up royally by marrying a guy I'll call "Complete Douchebag". We were engaged for a whole month before I realized that my life would be over if I married him. Luckily, I got out of that one by the skin of my teeth and quickly moved on to the love of my life, my current husband who we'll call "Captain Awesome". We met on match.com. We're both cute, so we'd make an awesome commercial. We dated for eight months and decided to throw reason and good sense out the window and get married. So far, it's worked out pretty well. And we made another person. She's cute and she's 2 and she asks a lot of questions and has her father's eyebrows.
YEAR 30: Nothing really noteworthy happened this past year, but I finally feel like I'm "coming into my own" as they say. It sounds cliche, but despite the wrinkles slowly creeping up on my face, I feel like I truly am aging like a fine wine. Or 1970's baby formula...(pastey white and lumpy in spots?)
YEAR 0: I was born on what I would presume was a very cold day in December of 1978. Make that the 11th. It very well could have been unseasonably warm that day, but stories of births are always much more fun when it's cold outside. So, anyway, it was cold. I popped out of my mother's birth canal at approximately 8:50 pm on a Monday (I think) night. I was probably gooey and bloody and screaming and according to records, I weighed exactly 8 pounds and was 21" long. I was a cute baby. My mother claimed to have tried to breastfeed me, but she didn't try hard enough and ended up feeding me sub par 1970's baby formula, which most assuredly contained Mercury and other cancer-causing carcinogens. I will never forgive her for this.
YEAR 5: Now, years 0-4 of my life were spent being cute, but something happened on year 5 and I started to eat more. I was still cute though and had very long (as in Fundamentalist Christian length) blonde hair. Despite the fact that I was a fat child and spent the greater part of the year in a cast because I decided to walk backwards down a hill and broke my ankle (thank you, 1970's baby formula for making me smart), I had a lot of success in kindergarten. I learned to share with others and even experienced my first kiss on the school bus en route to a fieldtrip. His name was Christopher and he had red hair and freckles and was about a foot shorter than me. We were a match made in misfit heaven. Kindergarten is also noteable because of what we'll call "The Worst School Picture Ever". I was in the process of losing my first tooth, but my baby tooth wouldn't get the fuck out of the way and make room for the larger tooth behind it, so I looked like I was wearing Billy Bob teeth. A fat baby with Billy Bob teeth, dressed up like a Fundamentalist Mormon on school picture day. My mother finds great joy in my kindergarten picture. I will never forgive her for this.
YEAR 10: Did I say that kindergarten was the year of "The Worst School Picture Ever"? That was a lie. By 5th grade, I was in full-fledged awkward mode. Not only was I taller than every.single.person.in.my.class., but I was fatter. And I had a bad perm. Also, do you remember those sweet-ass pink plastic framed glasses that were all the rage in the 80's? Yeah, I had those. And remember the Billy Bob teeth I was sporting in my kindergarten picture? I still had those, but by this time they were permanent. I also switched schools in 5th grade to a more hoity-toity school where the children didn't appreciate my kitschy awkwardness as much as those at my other school. Also, my teacher was a man. I had only had women teachers up until this point. I enjoyed my 5th grade teacher, because he cleaned his ears with his car keys in the middle of class. I thought he was an awesome guy, but a few years later he killed his wife and then himself. Not so awesome. Moving on...
YEAR 15: Ah, things are getting a little better on the awkward front. By this time, I had had braces and they were off. I lost weight and my perm grew out. I was actually kind of cute again. But despite the fact that I was cute, I was still a weird child (shocker, huh?). Always one with a desire to be "different", I experimented with odd combinations of clothing usually acquired at Goodwill. This always solicited snickers from snobby girls walking behind me in the hall, but whatever because I got my first boyfriend in 9th grade! We'll call him "Horrible Kisser" to protect his identity. Horrible Kisser invited me over to his house to watch The Last of the Mohicans and make out. He tried to put his hand down my pants, but I put him in an arm bar to foil his advances. He went to school the next day and told everyone that I clamped my legs shut. I will never forgive him for this.
YEAR 20: We'll call this the "Year of Poor Decisions". By 20, I had completed my first year of college, met a guy we'll call "Practice Husband" and became sperminated. Now, let me clarify that I don't consider my son (the product of said spermination) a "poor decision". Well, at least not until he pisses me off or doesn't clean up after himself. But for the most part, I consider him a "sound decision". Practice Husband, on the other hand, was a bit of a poor life decision. For the record, getting married at 20 is generally a bad idea. We hated each other and our marriage ended in violence. I gave him a black eye. Serves him right...I told him about the wire hangers, but he just wouldn't listen. That's not the real reason, but it's much funnier than the real reason...so for the purpose of storytelling, that's the reason. For the record, I HAVE forgiven him and we get along swimmingly now.
YEAR 25: After my divorce and a few years of reckless abandon, I finally started to act like a human around this time. Started to, anyway. I ALMOST fucked my life up royally by marrying a guy I'll call "Complete Douchebag". We were engaged for a whole month before I realized that my life would be over if I married him. Luckily, I got out of that one by the skin of my teeth and quickly moved on to the love of my life, my current husband who we'll call "Captain Awesome". We met on match.com. We're both cute, so we'd make an awesome commercial. We dated for eight months and decided to throw reason and good sense out the window and get married. So far, it's worked out pretty well. And we made another person. She's cute and she's 2 and she asks a lot of questions and has her father's eyebrows.
YEAR 30: Nothing really noteworthy happened this past year, but I finally feel like I'm "coming into my own" as they say. It sounds cliche, but despite the wrinkles slowly creeping up on my face, I feel like I truly am aging like a fine wine. Or 1970's baby formula...(pastey white and lumpy in spots?)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
