As A Matter of Fact, I Am NOT Ready for Work; or Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Admins

“Did you have a good weekend? You all ready for work?”

Well, no. As a matter of fact, I’m not.

I would love to tell you that I am. Ready for work, that is. But the truth is, I am woefully unprepared.

I meant to be. I meant to be ready. But there was Margarita Night Friday up in the attic. And then there was the July 4th Barbecue at Amy’s Saturday night. There was the writing, the cooking, the refrigerator detailing, the transporting of the cats to their tap-dancing lessons.

Would you believe I completely forgot to leave time to get worked up about being a productive member of corporate America?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m one punctual and competent SOB; but I’m no good at that “You all read for work?” question. It just doesn’t seem that there’s a good answer to it.

Small talk is not my forte.

I should work on having prepared answers.

“Work? I’m at work?”

“Ready for work? Oh, now, yeah. I can’t remember what they called it, but the doctors said that I can continue with my regular routine as long as I use a hand sanitizer and don't – oh, crap – have you seen my face mask?”

“Yep! All ready for work! Say, could you cover for me for a couple hours this afternoon? The police – well, the less you know the better; but now that they’ve got the court order they’re going to take that sample whether I like it or not.”

It’s so important to have a good attitude, don’t you think?

Happy Monday, everyone.

Why Don’t You Call – Right Now?!

Oh, hi!

I’ve been waiting for you.

Be honest with me – did you ever think you’d find your soul-mate at a bar?

Me, neither.

But on a 1-800 number? Oh, yes.

So why haven’t you called? I’ve been waiting for you, and so have all my drop-dead gorgeous friends, all luscious blondes, red-heads, and brunettes between the ages of 18 and 24. There’s just so much more to us than our beautiful faces, our firm, taut bodies, and our ability to recline seductively while talking on the phone.

What, you say? Why in the world would there be hot chicks on the phone, waiting for me to call?

Because, silly, we’re just like you. We’re lonely, we’re scantily clad, and we’re tired of the run-around at the bar, just like you! It gets so tiring, being continually hit on, having men buy us drinks in the hopes of seeing us again, answering the same tired questions on what cup size we wear, what it would take, money-wise, to see us again, fielding questions regarding who we live with and whether or not he’s armed.

It’s so tedious being beautiful and well built, don’t you think?

I can just tell that we’re going to get along.

So why haven’t you called?

I’m waiting.

Holy Crap! Run For Your Life!!

The drive-in tried to kill me when I was 12.

How, you say?

Well, I did a bit of babysitting in my youth. Of course, one had to do quite a bit of babysitting at that time to make any money, because the going rate was fifty cents an hour, regardless of the number of children.

I once babysat four kids overnight and got less than $8.

But that’s another story.

I sat for my youngest cousin, Chad, here and there; and so it came to pass one weekend that my Aunt Jewel and Uncle Keith decided to go to a drive-in, bringing me along to watch the two-year-old Chad.

You remember drive-ins, don’t you? Rows and rows of speakers on stands, the rows of piled dirt that you parked your front wheels on, aiming yourself toward the screen, the teenagers who arrived in the trunks of their friends cars in an attempt to save the $4 or whatever it was to get in…

I didn’t get out much as a 12-year-old. I was a late bloomer of a gal, someone who could easily be portrayed in the movie of her life as someone who starts out in her brother’s corduroys and granny glasses and ends up, well, giving her brother his pants back.

But we’re going to the drive-in! We’re going to the drive-in!

Jewel and Keith up front, Chad and I in the back, what movie are we going to?

Why, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, of course!

I remember, quite clearly, Chad running ahead of me to the playground, lifting and placing him on the swing. The drive-in screen was visible, just beyond a couple trees, and I pushed Chad absent-mindedly while I watched the movie, watched as the van in the film pulled over and picked up the creepy hitchhiker, the one who went on to play with a knife, the one they kicked out a couple miles down the road.

I couldn’t hear it, of course, but even a fifth grader could tell you that this was not going to end well.

A number of hot dogs, some popcorn, a small keg of pop later, and we were in the back seat of the car again.

Chad lay on the floor and fell asleep.

With nothing else to do, I began to watch the movie.

Projected onto a screen 100 feet wide and 80 feet tall, I watched, through latticed fingers, as the free-wheelin’, van-drivin’ hippies were killed in horrible ways.

I kept my foot on Chad’s back as he slept.

We went back to their home after the movie, somewhere around 1:00 a.m. and I spread my sleeping bag on the floor of the spare room and closed my eyes.

And that was when the real horror began.

I was not accustomed to sleeping there, and every sound, every creak, put in motion the leather-faced freak now occupying precious brain space.

I summoned the dispenser of fear – the alphabet – for hours that night, reciting it in English, French, and Pig Latin.

Ohway ymay odgay.

It was around 6:00 a.m., as the sun was coming up, that I finally started to fall asleep.

And that’s when the garbage truck came down the alley. The sound of the hydraulic lift on the back of the truck – sounding every decibel like a chainsaw – caused my heart to rip through my ribs, whereupon it was propelled upward and hit the ceiling with a wet, percussive slap.

I peed my pants.

And then I died of fear.

You know, every day, I try to learn a little something.

What did I learn that day?

That there’s no way to ignore a screen that size.

And that you should always pack one more pair of underwear than you think you’ll need.

They Didn’t Call My Bluff

I’ve never been a pacifist.

But I’ve known a couple.

Interesting breed, the true pacifist: they truly believe that things can be talked through; and while I believe that talking should be the first thing done, I also believe that some people not only don’t understand it, but that they’ll enjoy the fact that you won’t fight back.

Enter my friend Steve.

Steve and I have been friends for 30 years now. We’ve known each other for so long that, in a fit of brotherly love, we declared, at the ripe and drunken age of 21, that if we were not married by 40, we would marry each other.

Of course, on our 40th birthdays, we modified that to 80. No point in pushing that brotherly love thing.

Steve and I have shared living quarters – platonically – a number of times. The first time was in a two-bedroom apartment in Anoka, Minnesota (self-proclaimed “Halloween Capital of the World”). It took a couple months to discover that not only was Anoka a rough-edged and intolerant little town but that we were the only ones in a complex of eight building actually paying for our apartment – everyone else was Section 8 recipients.

The living room overlooked the parking lot, a vista on to permanently parked cars on cinder blocks and small groups of people gathered around hibachi grills, quaffing one beer after another and crushing them against their foreheads.

And so it was, one afternoon, heading out the door to my second-shift job, that I looked out the living room window and saw Steve being pushed by two men, one vicious poke in the chest at a time, up against the brick apartment building on the other side of the parking lot.

Have I described Steve to you? At 5’10” and perhaps 150 pounds, he is a long-haired hippie-type, a mischievous man who once “punished” me for being crabby by holding me down and making me watch part of “Apocalypse Now” (a movie that disturbs me greatly), a man who has never been in a fight – no, let's be clear. Not a man who has never been in a fight, a man who won’t fight.

Steve is one of those rare individuals who truly believes in the Brotherhood of Man, a man who will give you his coat in cold weather, a man who would give you his last dollar.

In other words, Steve is bait for a certain kind of person.

So when I looked out the window and saw him, his hands up in supplication, his lips moving, talking while being pushed backwards, I knew that the two flannel-clad, “this-face-seats-one”-hatted men who had singled him out were having fun and were looking forward to hurting the hippie.

The next stop would be a fist fight – one that Steve would not take part in, even in self-defense.

I slipped my heels on and flew down the steps, out into the parking lot. Steve’s face changed from one trying to talk his way out of a fight to one of relief.

I was yelling angrily as I approached. “Hey! Hey! Get away from him!”

They stopped and turned.

“What’s it to you? Get outta here,” one of them said.

“What’s it to me? To me?! This guy won’t fight back, but I will. You want a fight? Huh? You want to pick on someone smaller than you? Well here I am.”

“You think I won’t hit a girl?

“Oh, I’m betting you will. Come on, asshole. I’m giving you one shot and then I’m gonna kick your ass from one end of this parking lot to another.”

It was quiet as Steve moved away from the wall.

“You ready?” I challenged. “’Cause your friend here is next.”

These poor guys. I could see that they weren’t very bright. I could see that I, in a skirt and a pair of heels, was confusing them.

“That’s what I thought,” I sneered. “Couple of pusses. Get out of here before I call the cops.”

“Steve,” I said. “Go on now.”

Steve walked, unchallenged, toward the house. “Thanks,” he whispered.

I turned back toward the two. “I’m going in the house,” I said. “If I see you back in this parking lot – ever – I’m calling the cops; and you’ll excuse me for saying so, but neither of you look like you want to talk to the police.”

I turned around, shaking with adrenalin and fear, and walked back to the apartment building; and in a show of foolish bravado specific to someone 24 years old, stubbornly kept my back to them.

When I got to my apartment and looked out the living room window, they were gone.

We laugh about it to this day, Steve and I, wondering what would’ve happened had one of them taken that free shot I had offered.

Because I’ve never been in a fight a day in my life.

Wherein the Court Reporter is Used as a Hammer

Following a tradition hundreds and hundreds of minutes old, I bring to you the iPod Weekend Predictor.

Normally found on Fridays but brought to you now on Thursdays courtesy of a horse-shit economy and a small and wrinkled workweek (ie., I no longer work five days a week but four), the morning's commute lets me know what to expect over the weekend.

Or I could just determine my own fate.

Nah.

Let’s see what the iPod says, shall we?

Saturday Fantastic by Diamond Nights
Get Up (Sex Machine) by James Brown
Pushin’ Too Hard by The Seeds
The Wizard by Black Sabbath
Wind Up by Foo Fighters
Fame by David Bowie
Convenient Parking by Modest Mouse

Hot damn! Good sex, dance music and convenient parking? Wait’ll my husband hears!

He’s going to be so excited.

So! You have time for a quick story?

A number of years ago, I worked as a court reporter in central Wisconsin.

Have you spent any amount of time in court? One develops a sense for who is lying, which lawyers don't know what they're doing, and which judges should’ve left the bench long ago.

In only my second case gone to trial, it quickly became apparent to me that my judge was, if not entirely deaf, nearly so. The defendants, a pair of second generation Poles with a last name sorely lacking in vowels were on trial for animal abuse. Photos of skinny, filthy cows knee-deep in muck abounded, and I learned enough about cow’s stomachs to make me mighty handy should the trivia game ever veer off in that direction.

Both Pole One and Pole Two were thin, dirty individuals – think “Ed Gein (another Wisconsinite)” without the fashion sense. They both seemed to have misplaced their teeth (or at least the front ones) and they both chewed tobacco – but didn’t spit.

My first clue to the judge’s deafness came when the veterinarian took the stand.

“She’s a liar,” Pole One said.

“She can **** my ****,” said Pole Two, “and when she’s done with that she can cook my dinner.”

As a quick aside, I’m not “asterisking” out the words here because they were dirty, but because I suspect they were in Polish. Whatever P2 said, however, it was not a compliment, never mind the fact that it was said during testimony – a big no-no in court.

What the court reporter can hear, the court reporter writes. I pounded furiously on my machine to capture the questions from the attorneys, the testimony of the vet, and the defendants’ remarks.

The second comment came just minutes later, after the vet stated that several of the cows would have to be put down.

“She’s a got-dam liar,” said Pole One.

My hands flew as I struggled to properly identify the speaker and enter his words into the record.

I looked up to see if the judge was catching any of this.

He was not, but a quick look at the jury told me that they were.

I began to cough and would not stop, something most judges know to be a sign for a break.

He called the break.

I cornered him as politely as I could.

“Judge Wapner,” I said (not his real name), “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but both defendants have been talking during testimony, loudly enough that not only have I written it into the record but I believe the jury is hearing it as well.”

“Is that so?” he says.

“Yes,” I said. “The next time they do it, I’ll start coughing, then you ask me to read the record back, and you can catch them at it and reprimand them.”

“Good idea,” he says.

So we go back into the courtroom, and as I settle into my chair, the judge says, “My court reporter informs me that the two defendants have been talking during testimony and that she has written their words into the record.”

I was, of course, writing all this down, and looked up from my machine in time to see P1 and P2 glaring at me.

I looked up at the judge, who beamed benevolently down on me.

He winked.

“If she is forced to continue to write your comments,” he went on, “I shall have you taken out of this courtroom. Do you understand me?”

The defendants, who had grinned at me flirtatiously all morning, now scowled openly.

The trial went on for three days; and at the end of the lunch break on the third day – and you gotta admire the lung power on this guy – Pole Two managed to blow a full marijuana hit in my face – in the courtroom!

I don’t miss being a court reporter.

Welcome to the Offal Buffet!

There have been a proliferation of buffets lately, all-you-can-eat situations that encourage both the thrifty and the gluttonous.

As a representative of both camps, I feel qualified to speak on the subject.

I remember my first buffet line like it was a meal ago – Shakey’s Pizza. Remember Shakey’s? The player piano? The guy who sometimes showed up with a banjo? I’m pretty sure it was a nation-wide chain. The very idea of a chow line of different pizzas, an incredibly pedestrian iceberg lettuce salad and tubs and tubs of what was surely canned pudding – I was floored. Absolutely floored. Of course, I was maybe six at the time and easily floor-able. All that, for the low price of just something-ninety-nine?! Would I like a another plate?

Yes, please!

The new all-you-can-eat joint around here is Cici’s, a carbohydrate hootenanny of pizza, elbow macaroni, cinnamon rolls and the obligatory iceberg lettuce salad.

All for $2.99 a head.

Hard to believe, isn’t it?

And yet prices just keep dropping! Why, just the other day, over at the strip mall, another all-you-can-eat buffet opened up.

Or perhaps I just imagined it.

What if – and bear with me now – what if you openly acknowledged that the baked goods, pre-oven firing, might’ve had a couple of bugs in the flour? What if you freely admitted that the meats could, perhaps, be referred to as “a selection domestically and/or ferally raised and radial-flattened”?

That is, what if it offered only the freshest of woodland creature vs. automotive calamities? What if your advertising campaign played upon the regional food availabilities?

You can’t get the armadillo in Wisconsin, and the loon in South Carolina is bound to be stringy.

Think of the profit margin! Think of the overhead!

Think of only 99 cents per person!

Granted it wouldn’t look like much, but hey!

What do you want for 99 cents a person?

Everyone’s A Winner

We’re all just so gosh-darned special, every single one of us.

Yeah. No, I don’t honestly believe that. While I do believe that we are all individuals (as opposed, I guess, to one large sweaty blob with multiple shoe sizes), just because one draws breath does not necessarily make one “special”.

That’s right. I’ve brought out the quotation marks.

There are many ways to be special.

Clothing, for instance. Want to stand out? TV commercials can show you how to dress like everyone else so that you’re special.

You want to be special? How about being the man in the skirt? There you go – now you’re special. I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll be the only one at the party wearing it.

Or there’s tattoos. Remember when you hardly knew anyone with a tattoo? Maybe a sailor or other armed service representative. And then there were the bikers. They had tattoos, too. Now? They’re so special that you can find a number of them at any gathering: students, day care workers, bus drivers. Roses on the ankle or the breast are not enough anymore. Now there are names tattooed on young necks, tattooed stars on faces, full sleeves of tribal art.

I don’t begrudge people their tattoos, but to me, I’ve always looked at them as permanent identification. Maybe I don’t want to be identified! How am I going to disappear mysteriously – perhaps to the Caribbean – if I can be identified by my tattoo?

Hmm. Maybe I watch too much Crime TV.

The special-ness goes beyond the body, of course. We’ve got people on the bus that are so special that they get their own seats: one for their butts and one for their bags. We’ve got people holding conversations in yoga studios when it has been posted that, in the studio, we practice silence.

Inconsiderate does not equal special. And crabbing about it does not equal actually being a part of the solution.