Don’t Think of It as Censorship. Think of It as Feedback.

I used to have 617 friends.

“Surely, Pearl,” you say. “You are exaggerating.  No one has 617 friends.”

 “I used to have 617 friends,” I respond.  “Now I have 616.  And stop calling me Shirley.”

The truth is that Pearl – good ol’ Pearl! – has jumped the greased  -- nay, lubed – tracks of what passes for social discourse and become, in one fell swoop, out of touch. 

“Don’t look now,” writes #616, “but I had boudoir pics taken!”  But she doesn’t give me time to not look now, and suddenly I am thrust – if that’s not too loaded a word – into the soft-focus snapshots of her fantasy life.

Which apparently includes wearing the equivalent of a spool of thread. 

While posing upside down.

And peering from between her naughty, naughty fingers.

There she is, her own centerfold appearance.

On Facebook. 

Look.  I’m all for fantasy.  And I like a good come-hither look as much as the next gal.  But when you’ve posted pics of yourself in a two-piece take-out container holding a pair of chopsticks – is that what that was? – it’s going to take all the reserve I have not to comment with the first thing that comes to my mind:  What?  Leftovers again?!

There were several of these photos, posted, one after another:  different outfits, different positions, but all with the same moist-eyed, lips-parted expression.

Aren’t I pretty?  Don’t you want me?

Sure you are; and no, I don’t.

I was sorry to see #616 go.  We never shared a meal, laughed ourselves off the furniture, never even had a conversation.

But we will always have the fact that I know what she looks like in braided dental floss.  And I guess that’s something.  

“The Door is A Jar”; or Appliances Usually Don’t Know What They’re Talking About

I’m not sure if my dad is messing with me or not.

It is probably safest to assume that he is.

“So I woke up, what? 2:00, 2:30 in the morning, and I hear a voice I don’t recognize coming from the kitchen.”

I take a drink of my beer, keep a wary eye on his face.

“And I’m thinking to myself, holy cow!  There’s someone in the house!  What do I do?  Should I wake your mother?  Where’s that baseball bat?  Do I have time to go to the bathroom first?”

I snort appreciatively.  My father taps the side of his nose, nods. 

“So I go into the kitchen,” he continues, raising his eyebrows significantly, “and there’s Mumma’s phone on the table.  It’s all lit up, and as I reach for it, the phone says to me, Please say a command.

“Well, I damn-near fell over.  Please say a command, the lousy thing says.”  He shakes his head in disbelief, takes a sip of beer.  ”Pfft.”   

“So what’d you do?”

“What could I do?” he says.  “It wants a command, I’ll give it a command!  I tell it:  Shut up!”

I laugh.  “Your command is shut up?”

He nods, takes another drink.  “But does that satisfy it?  No.  Please say a command, it says again!  Another command from the phone!  So I tell it OK, shut up and drop dead.”

I can’t help myself.  I laugh again.  “Did that work?”

“Nah,” he says, rising with his empty beer can, “but I was done with it.  A phone that wakes me up, makes demands?” 

“So what’d you do?”

He shrugs, drops the can in the recycling, pulls another beer from the fridge.  “What could I do?”  He pops open the can, takes a drink.  “I stuffed it into the kitchen towel drawer.  I figured your mother could have a talk with it in the morning.”

Wherein Pearl Discovers Her Place in the Universe

“Good morning, Acme Grommets and Gravel.”

“Herro.” 

It’s Mary, red-headed sprite and first-tier rabble rouser.

“Herro,” I say.

“I’d like to order both a grommet and a gravel, please.”  She chuckles pleasantly.

“That never gets old for you, does it?”

“No,” she says.

We grin at each over the phone.  Both firmly of the opinion that all weeks should have a goofy start, we get right to business.

“So what’s up, Stinky?”

I’m pretty sure Mary likes it when I call her “Stinky”. 

Mary laughs quietly, as she’s under contract to do.  “I just called to say “You’re Number Two!  You’re Number Two!”

Oooh.  Maybe she doesn’t like it when I call her “Stinky”.

“Hey!  We don’t talk like that!”

We laugh.  Oh, we think we’re so funny.

“Seriously – or,” and here I clench my jaw and speak through unmoving lips, “as the kids say SRSLY, one, what does that mean, and two, how do I get you to stop saying it?”

“Well,” she says, “You have to be Number Two because Jon’s Number One.”

Ahh.

“Mary, did you just figure out speed dial?”

Mary, a woman for whom the Internet travels “through trees”, a woman who received a digital camera as a gift last December, a high-tech gadget she vows to learn and use someday, chuckles.  “What else could I mean?”

“I thought maybe you were making some sort of not-so-veiled comment on how little we’ve seen each other recently.”

“We cleaned a condo together Friday,” she reminds me.

“Oh, yeah,” I say, grinning.

“Pffft,” Mary says.  “I make you Number Two and it’s not enough for you, is it?”

“I won’t rest until I’m Number One.”

Mary laughs.  “Good luck with that,” she says.  “Jon keeps me warm in the winter.”

She’s got a point there.  I concede with a chant that garners me strange looks from cube-mate and nemesis, Female Intern:  “I’m Number Two!  I’m Number Two!”

Mondays:  They’re what you make of them.  

The Virtual Office and Its Impact on the Actual Human

My friend Tara is back and visiting, having moved to Belgium roughly a year ago.

We are waiting for starters at Bar La Grassa. She lifts a glass to her lips, speaks around the rim. “If I have to go to Bruges or Delirium again –” She takes a sip, doesn’t finish the sentence.

Apparently that is what one does when visiting Tara in Belgium: travel to Bruges/drink one’s self dizzy at the Delirium Tremens brewery.

It is inevitable that she will make both trips again.

The move to another country has been hard on her, not because of her shaky yet better-than-the-average-American’s grasp of Dutch but because her job is in her home.

And our little Tara is an extrovert.

“You don’t brush your hair some days, am I right?”

She looks at me with that intensely focused look she’s capable of but says nothing.

“You remember to brush your teeth?”

She sighs. “Why bother? I’m in conference calls around the clock…”

“How about pants? Do you remember to put on your pants?”

She waves me off with one dismissive hand, smiling. “What’s the point? I’m not going to see anyone.”

“Can’t you go to a coffee shop or something? Find some free Wi-Fi?”

She laughs bitterly, shakes her head. “They don’t do that. Not to mention the fact that there’s no free Wi-Fi anywhere but the McDonald’s, and you know how I feel about that.”

I do indeed. Tara believes in conversation, food, and wine, quite possibly in that order.

I am thinking of Tara this afternoon as I walk through the skyways of Minneapolis in search of lunch. There, sitting at a table outside one of many dining establishments, is a woman logging on to her laptop, a phone in her ear, all the while balancing a briefcase on her lap, a puddle of business-ly accoutrements at her feet.

She’s yelling into her phone as I walk by. “So tell me what’s going on with you! I hear you’re in some trouble! Oh, and I’m sitting in a public space, so if you hear anything weird, it’s just background noise. Ignore it.”

I pause for just a moment, fight the urge to lean in and babble something “weird” like “The Vikings stand a good chance this year!” or “Sure it itches, but that’s what the salve is for!”

To her, I – and the others streaming by – are background noise; and to me, she is someone getting set to hear more, from the sounds of the opening gambit, than she perhaps should in a public setting.

Or perhaps she’s had all she can handle of sitting at home in her underwear, the dishes soaking as she makes another call.

I cannot judge this. Unless, of course, she makes another “background noise” statement.

Wait. No, not even then.

The caveman* in my head – the one who advises that I mind my own business – rears up, shakes his massive, shaggy head, and lumbers toward the cave’s opening and into the light.





• See yesterday’s post. Whenever surrounded by large groups of people I wonder about the caveman’s ability to be diplomatic.

Gratitude, or It Wasn't the Heat, It Was the Humility

It’s Saturday, and I am, as so often happens, black-pantsed and white-shirted.

It is the garb of the serving class, and while I joke about the fact that the waist of those black pants fails to cover quite all my ribs and that the white shirt has the come-hither allure of a hospital gown, I nevertheless respect the uniform. One can only be so attractive while schlepping food, don’t you think? Still, I am a better, harder-working person while wearing the ol’ black-and-white. When I am dressed in such a manner, you can expect that I will treat you and your silly demands with respect, that I will laugh at your jokes, and that yes, indeed, I am both working hard and hardly working.

Thank you for asking.

It’s Saturday, and as is my wont, I’ve taken a side job. Standing in the shade of the Doubletree Hotel, we’ve set a lunch buffet out for the 160-or-so bicycle riders we are expecting at any moment…

I don’t expect to be engulfed by emotion; but suddenly, I am.

The Ride2Recovery group has just ridden 35 miles around Lake Minnetonka. Hailing from all parts of the U.S., soldiers recovering from grievous wounds glide into the parking lot. Two- and three-wheeled bikes. Companion dogs. Men on recumbent bikes peddling with their arms. Injuries evident by way of missing limbs or cruel, twisting rows of stitches. Bomb blasts evident by the surprising number of hearing aids.

I am overwhelmed with their toughness, with their bravery.

With their youth.

We stand next to each other, almost at attention, Minh and I. “!@#$,” I whisper. “I might cry.”

“You do, and I’ll punch ya,” she hisses good naturedly.

She’s right, but so am I.  I blink away the tears and smile at the men coming through the line. “Turkey, chicken, beef,” I say, over and over, a response to their questions on the sandwich wraps. “Turkey, chicken, beef.”

They collapse on the grass, under the leafy spread of massive oaks, eat their lunch and talk between themselves.  It is the kind of summer day you remember long after it’s gone: the cool shade, the bright blue sky.

Winter never happened. It has always been summer.

After 10, 15 minutes, Minh and I circulate among the men, offering to bring them more water, offering to take their plates.

A man with a prosthetic leg hands his plate up to me. “Are all the women in Minneapolis as pretty as you?”

I wink at him. “Absolutely,” I say. “Every single one of ‘em.”

His friends laugh.

We make the rounds, over and over. “Thank you, ma’am.” “Thank you.” “Thank you so much.” Every napkin I pick up, every plate I stack, is met with a “thank you”.

And every time, I say the same thing.

“No,” I say, smiling. “No, really. Thank you.”

…and our Hearts are with Her Family at This Time…

And in other news, the body of Office Drudge and Energetic Dancer Pearl was discovered locked in the 47th floor bathroom late Tuesday afternoon.

Reduced to stopping up the sinks for amusement and writing the lyrics to “Me and Bobby McGee” in lipstick on the bathroom mirrors, her prostrate form was found just inside the door.

“That’ll teach her to forget her key card,” a representative from Facilities was overheard muttering.

Coworkers, colleagues, superiors, and free-food hopefuls met this morning over yesterday’s bagels to discuss her many attributes and maximize their coffee breaks in work-appropriate shows of anguish.

“She was a snappy dresser, I’ll give her that much,” intones one member of the shipping department.

“Who uses the 47th floor bathroom anyway?”

“She owed me a lunch,” mutters an associate.

“Speaking of lunch, she ever give you that tired old speech on her stand regarding the word “coworker”?”

“I NEVER ORKED A COW IN MY WHOLE LIFE,” shouts several admins.

Blinded by leftover bagels and unstructured time, the room goes silent.

“Wait a minute,” interjects Little Miss She-Owes-Me-Lunch. “Who dies from being locked in the bathroom?”

“Who said anything about her being dead?”

Confused looks are exchanged.

“She’s not dead?”

“Nah. We just found her stretched out on the floor, singing Janis Joplin songs. Apparently she didn’t know the room locks itself.”

“Poor thing,” says a representative from Accounting. “I heard they found her with lipstick smeared all over her face.”

Blank stares all around.

“You know, to conserve moisture.”

Concurrent comments break the solemnity of the occasion.
“She wasn’t in a desert, ya maroon.”
“Gah.”
“Shaddap.”
“Go back to yer desk…”

The room falls silent.

“So where is she now?”

The room erupts in commentary again.
“At her desk, of course.”
“She went back to the 47th floor bathroom for some alone time!”
“She’s with the plumber – he’s come to fix the sink!!”
“Well I’m not covering for her.”

And with that, the memorial group disbands.

The Phantom Buzz

Look at that title. I’ll bet you’re thinking that I’ve got another what-do-you-mean-we-finished-the-whole-box-of-wine story.

But no. Not this time.

The Phantom Buzz? Just my most recent foray into things that didn't used to be a problem but are, now.

You see, set on “vibrate”, I imagine, several times a day, that I hear my cell phone beckoning me.

And nine times out of ten, I am wrong.

You turn your phone off at work, right? You set it to vibrate?

It all starts so innocently.

The cell phone as gateway drug. Sure, sure. First you’re just checking your phone, maybe using it as a clock or a way to take a picture of yourself working, but in no time there’s invitations, FaceBook events/updates, videos…

Hold on a second. You hear that? Lemme just check my phone real quick...

Nope. Sorry. Thought I heard it buzzing.

Where was I?

Oh, yes: I have been behaviorally conditioned by an inanimate object.

Of course, I don’t know why this should surprise me. More and more, if some electronic gadget isn’t buzzing, it’s lighting up, flashing, spinning, demanding that I stop what I’m doing and do something else…

OK. I have very little "spinning" going on presently, but mark my words, somewhere, something is spinning.

So I rebelled the other day. I turned it off this last weekend; and as a result, I missed two events: Gorilla Yogis (a grassroots yoga organization) practicing yoga at First Avenue (the same First Avenue featured in Prince’s “Purple Rain”) and a Drag Queen Beauty Contest at another location.

Spontaneous free-form yoga in a club where I once saw Motorhead?! Glitzed-out men with tweezed brows in sequined gowns? We will never know what kind of blog posts those would’ve been.

And so there you have it.

Bowing to my technological overlords, I return to the buzzing-beeping-booping sounds coming from my purse.

I know when I’ve been beaten.