Ladies + Swear Words

I love the boys at my work, because they treat me so much like a lady that there is never any doubt in my mind whether or not I am one. In a primarily-male workplace, I love to be the surprising and confusing female, who takes her time to administer lipstick before meetings, wears heels on field trips, and comes to work every day in a darling, tasteful skirt-suit. I don’t think the men at my work ever really notice me as being a woman: they just mostly like working with me because when they’re around me they have to be men. I have always been extremely self-sufficient. I’m successful, I am comfortable in my own skin, and I know how to do most things better than they do. And yet, I love watching how these darling middle-aged men, whom I hear call themselves knuckle-draggers when I am not around, become creative, spontaneous, and nurturing around me. I have not always been the best at being a girl, but I am very much enjoying learning how to be a lady.

The guys in my office are WORSE THAN SAILORS. They have wild, untamed mouths, and they are all freakishly brilliant when it comes to inventing new and shockingly inappropriate ways of saying everything. They swear an awful lot. I grew up a good girl, the kind of good girl where I didn’t get into trouble, never sneaked out of the house to do anything, and made it through high school without experimenting with anything you smoke, snort, drink too much of, or get sick on. When I started working at this job a little less than five years ago, bad language was still inherently attractive because I had never had any occasion to use it. I listened to the men swearing around me and I thought, wouldn’t it be great fun to just….say the f-word in a sentence, when no one would notice?

One day, a gorgeous associate from another office came around to my building, and she entranced everybody, including me. She flipped her hair over one shoulder, winked ferociously at me like we had been best friends forever, and wore my favorite Kate Middleton nude-colored heels. I was in love. She had a mouth, too. I watched her laughing comfortably with the guys, and I heard her incorporate several bad words in sentences exactly where they belonged. When she left, I thought, “My gosh, I believe that she has done it.” I didn’t know what it was specifically, but I knew that when she swore with that pretty mouth and made the boys crazy, it made her exciting and lovely.

An hour after she left, I stepped into the lunch-room, where a half-dozen men quieted the instant they saw me. It was a sure sign that the boys had been discussing something inappropriate, and sure enough they all looked at me and sponanteously began conversations in my direction, speaking over one another:

“Heeey, Jane, how’s your day?”

“Did you get that memo written?”

“How long did you say that you were going on vacation? You’re going on vacation, right? Oh, you’re not? I guess I was thinking of someone else.”

“Nice dress, Jane!”

I waved all of that off, with my hand, and they looked relieved. “So,” I said, “Wasn’t she nice?”

The tempo of the room changed; it was electrified and sad. “I always used to say I would date her,” one man said, “She used to be different, sweeter.”

“Yeah,” another one said, “I mean, that body…..incredible. Too bad she’s such a ho.”

A third: “She used to be really classy; now she’s  a total hit-it-and-quit-it. I’d totally do that, but there’s no wonder she’s still single: she’s definitely not the kind you settle down with.”

I sat there staring, with gaping mouth, while they went on pointing out her physical strong points, encouraging one another’s strategies for sleeping with her, and establishing universal disinterest in her as a person.

This happened three more times before I got the point, with three different women. The others would have been less flattered by what they heard: they were average-looking ladies whose swear words seemed to immediately make them about one thousand times less captivating.

I was horrified, and after that, I was cured. I saw how differently they treated women who didn’t act like ladies, and I didn’t want to be one of those women. I waited six months, and then during an awkward silence one day when I walked into a lunch-room after everyone had been freely discussing guy-things in my absence, I announced nonchalantly that in twenty-five years I have never said the f-word. They reacted strongly, and their spontaneous attempts at conversation were the predictable things:

“Oh, Jane, it is TOTALLY okay if you swear once-in-awhile.”

“Yeah, it can even be sexy if you do it right when we’re not expecting it.”

“We’d still know that you were classy even if you slipped up.”

But all of their attempts were half-hearted, and anyhow, it didn’t matter what they said: I had seen firsthand what they might not have ever noticed: as soon as a girl swore around them, she immediately went from being one of the girls to being one of the guys.

I’m not one of the guys.

Handle With Care

My grandparents on both sides allowed their children to learn and figure things out alone. When there was any problem, my maternal grandparents’ standard response was: “Take the dog for a walk and think about it.” That was the extent of it, and (according to my mother) it was an idyllic childhood with quiet sweetness and no hot tempers. Dad’s family was the opposite. They were all confrontational: they lost their cool about parking spaces, and exploded over missing newspapers. When it came to telling their kids what to do, they refrained because they were convinced that they had done a poor parenting job if their kids couldn’t handle life themselves.  

Despite their vastly different upbringings, my parents have made it through the better part of thirty years of marriage, and they have settled on one thing: in our family we talk about everything. While other children were hushed into silence on mystery subjects, my mom used her platform as our teacher (I was educated at home) and took advantage of our student/teacher ratio (3:1) to host all sorts of roundtable discussions on every question she imagined that we would want answered.

One day, while my mom was in the shower, my brother and I politely knocked on the door. I think I was about six at the time, and he was younger. We heard the water turn off, because although our mother liked her personal space she’d agreed to shut off the shower whenever something was serious enough that we needed to interrupt her.

“YES?” she shouted. Our bathroom doors were sound-proof.

My little brother said, “MOM?”

“YES?”

“WHAT IS SEX?”

No hesitation. “I’ll be out in a sec!” The water went back on.

When mom came out, she pulled her hair up into a quick bun, threw on her glasses, AND PULLED OUT THE WHITE-BOARD. I am so not kidding about this: she gathered us around in chairs and gave us a detailed sex ed class right there in the living room, complete with tasteful drawings and straightforward descriptions. When she was done, she said, “Now, not everybody knows about this stuff; if you have any questions, you can ask me, but remember that you’d better not talk to your friends about this: when they have questions, let them ask their mom.”

So yeah. It was like that.

My parents had a mantra called YELL AND TELL, long before it was popular to sit your kids down in a living room and tell them about yell and tell. My skin used to crawl with the awkwardness of it, at first, but they made us sit there, while they instructed us on the protocol.

IF ANYBODY EVER,

EVER,

EVER,

EVER……

Then you,

SCREAM

RUN AWAY IF YOU CAN

STAY WITH THE FIRST RESPONSIBLE ADULT YOU CAN FIND

CALL THE POLICE

TELL MOM AND DAD.

Don’t be embarrassed, they told us. We want to know about anything that happened. If they tell you, don’t tell your dad or I’ll kill your family, they’re lying. They want you to be scared. Don’t be scared. They can never get away with it if you’re not scared.

They made this speech bi-annually until we were no longer squeamish, and until it had been drilled into our heads that if our favorite uncle, our pastor, a clerk at the grocery store, or our next-door-neighbor tried anything, our parents would believe us without question, and would sacrifice anything to help us heal. Plus, in the meantime, they never let us out of their sights, even with adults whom I assumed they trusted. It never occurred to me that other families behaved any other way.

These days, I know that my parents’ strategy came as a result of their own family history. I realize that they were giving their children the luxury of a safety they never enjoyed, and THAT DEVASTATES ME. My parents are both wonderful, sensitive, loving people, and it blindsides me to imagine that they were taken advantage of before anyone could tell them that they were supposed to yell and tell.

This week, my mom got summoned to a jury, and when the judge asked the prospective jurors about their history with the type of case, my mom gave the bailiff a note, and the attorneys called a sidebar to ask my mom what happened, and what she did about it.

Did you tell your parents? The judge asked. My mom said, No. Why not? He asked. She stared at him, not knowing how to answer the question, and then she finally said: Because I didn’t want to upset the family. She had spent forty five years suffering from that day, and the court dismissed her, as they should have. But when she was driving home, she stopped the car, and turned it around, and decided that it was time to tell her parents.

She drove to see them, and struggled through the words, and said, “I just didn’t want to tell you before, because I was so afraid of upsetting the family…”

They told her: “You handled it the right way, and we appreciate that.”

I am a very even-keeled person, and I love my extended family very dearly, but that was maybe the worst possible thing they could have said to her, and this morning when she told me the story calmly, I pitched a fit and got on soapboxes and declared that although kids sometimes turn out the opposite of their parents, I want my kids to have the same kind of mom I did.

The Treadmill Queen

In school I used to dread P.E. time. I was one of those weird freakazoid kids who was homeschooled, and since I was being educated by an educator from a long line of educators and school administrators, we weren’t allowed to do any of those stereotypical things homeschoolers get laughed at for, like:

SCHOOL IN PAJAMAS

ICE CREAM BREAKS

FIELD TRIPS TO AMUSEMENT PARKS.

Nooo…. everything about my schooling experience carefully matched Real School: pledge of allegiance at 8, fifteen-minute break at 10:15, and Phys Ed from 3:00-3:30. It was the longest half-hour of my life. My siblings used to tease and say that I was just a fan of The Great Indoors, and that I’d rather sit on the couch curled up with a journal than physically dazzle everybody on the soccer/football/baseball/whatever “field” our lawn was that day. That was technically true, but it had nothing to do with laziness: I was just very self-aware, and WHEN I DO PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES I AM SERIOUSLY THE MOST AWKWARD PERSON IN THE WORLD.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I am SO thankful that I was homeschooled, and I had the opportunity to receive a quality of education that few people in America can even dream of. But when it came to mirroring the traditional educational model, couldn’t my otherwise extremely sensible parents have made some accommodations for my uncomfortable clumsiness? Apparently not: my darling mother faithfully herded her offspring into the backyard and everyone pretended not to notice when I became a blob of physical instability as soon as I left the back door.

I could PLAY things decently well; I could kick a soccer ball and I could kind of throw a football. (I could not, and to this day cannot, catch a softball.) But when I did played whatever game we were assigned that day, I had absolutely no ladylike elegance. It was a real life ugly duckling story.

So, now I am a secretary and all that, and I sit at a desk for most of my day, and it is the best job in the world. But I’m twenty five years old and my metabolism isn’t what it used to be, and I have no mom to use a cattle prod to get me outside every afternoon at 3:00, I need to be accountable to myself if I’m going to keep my girlish figure. Accordingly, I have resorted to working out at a gym for an hour a night after work.

I HATE THE GYM.

Let’s just say, I have not improved, in attitude nor grace, since the fifth grade. I used to run on the city streets after work, but my brother, who is in public service, would get a million calls within ten minutes of my run:

“WHAT WAS JANE DOING OUT THERE ON THE HIGHWAY? Was that running? Was it walking? Was it shuffling? We have never seen anything like it before! With all of that weirdness going on she had BETTER be carrying pepper spray; she’s going to get abducted by a creepy weirdo!”

So, yeah.  Majorly pleasant for my poor brother to get calls while at work concerning the inevitable kidnapping of his sister as a result of her awkwardness in exercise. Yeah, so, like I said, I’ve resorted to working out at the gym. And…. I hate running. I am just….I have no style. I really can’t stay on a treadmill without activating the emergency shutoff mechanism, dropping my iPhone, or getting my ear buds tangled up. It’s a disastrous nightmare.

Thankfully, when I work out, I AM ALONE, and that is the only reason I’ve stayed with this as long as I have. My coworkers go to our work gym in little clusters, but I have carefully timed my schedule so that when I’m there THE PLACE IS COMPLETELY DESOLATE.

One time I heard voices in the gym, and quickly turned on my heels and left before they could spot me because there was no way I was going to go work out in front of them. I’ve seen what I look like when I run, and you have to take my word for it that working out with them would destroy my credibility in the workplace. After that, I showed up home right after work, all decked out in cute gym pants and a ponytail, and was all, “WHADDUP, Family?! Just dressing down for a quiet evening at home!” They didn’t even ask.

Last week sometime, I was a hot, sweaty, disgusting mess and I had forty minutes of my hybrid walk/jog/run behind me, when the door to the gym made a sound and in walked an athletic coworker who rides his bike about one million miles per week, runs marathons, and regularly skips lunches to improve his physique in unspecified ways.

THIS GUY IS A BEAST.

I looked down at the treadmill speed. A cautious 4.8 mph, and my ear buds on my iPhone were untangled. My heart was thumping. I was trying to come up with some excuse to leave. Please go do something in the other corner of the gym! But he didn’t. He selected a treadmill next to mine, set it to match my miles per hour, and within a matter of seconds WE WERE JOGGING IN UNISON.

I was trying to think of a way out, but there was none. If I left then, I’d seem like a bizarre unsocialized female who didn’t want to be alone by herself in a gym at night with a man. So I kept up conversation, asking pointed questions designed to make him think and therefore stare at the ceiling instead of me, and we jogged on into the night.

Those twenty minutes just about killed me.

Car Cleaning

I am twenty five and I still live at home because my family is exactly like that movie, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," and it is the cardinal sin to move out from your home before marriage unless you're going off to sacrifice yourself as a martyr in a foreign country, going to assist aunts of questionable lineage so they can die in peace outside of a hospital setting, or going to help a young mother mother her young ones. If you have trouble following all of that, it's ok. All you need to know if that I live at home, which is ok because I'm sort of a huge fan of my parents + siblings, but still, I LIVE AT HOME. Got it?

The structure of my room is basically RIGHT OUT OF THE LEGENDARY MUSICAL, "ANNIE." It's an orphanage! I have a lot of siblings, and a very small house, so in my room there are bunk beds everywhere and dressers shared between girls.

Because of the space problem, I BASICALLY LIVE IN MY CAR.

I keep clothes in my trunk that won't fit anywhere in my dresser.

I keep important paperwork that I won't want to disappear places.

I keep extra Post-It notes I've bought for my desk at work.

I keep my next toothbrush in my back-seat with my gym clothes!

I keep scarves. And receipts. And insurance policies. And extra keys.

My car resembles the semi-permanent home of the requisite vagrant sub-character featured in every made-for-tv movie.

Today, I'm moving to a new bedroom in my house, where there is more room, and where there are bookshelves, and closet spaces, and drawers. THERE ARE DRESSER DRAWERS. Today, therefore, it befalls me to vacuum and clean, and organize my car. It feels like I am moving across the United States.

I'm dreading it.

The Good Girl's Guide To Road Rage

I am twenty five years old, and I have never once slammed a door in anger. I've also never raised my voice unless I'm calling someone from the other room. I'm just not wired that way; I don't always want to be peaceful, but I am.

Awhile back, I had this boss-from-you-know-where, and after three years of trying to push my buttons and failing, I thought she was finally beginning to accept me when she called me into her office and asked me to shut the door.
"Hello," she said.
"Hi," I said.
Our conversations were unbearably awkward.
There was a big pause. She seemed to be looking out into the hallway, although I didn't know what she was trying to see: at that time of the morning, the offices were always abandoned and employees were in little groups tending to morning duties elsewhere.
"I have mail for you," she said.
I signed for it.
"Thanks," I said, and then I left.

When I'd been back in my office twenty minutes, my boss (whom I'll call Cherub for this retelling) came into my office, looking grave. "We need to go into a meeting right now," she said.
"Okaaaaay...." I said, terrified. I had no idea what was coming, and Lord knows I am not a racist, but let me tell you, I could tell from looking into her eyes that this woman's Latin blood was coming out.
"NOW," she said.
Her boss' boss was sitting there staring at us, when we walked in the door. He looked sad and bored, and he gnawed on his lower lip.
"Cherub told me what happened," he said.
I was lost. "Excuse me, sir?"
I looked at Cherub, and in an instant, I knew what was happening. She was slumped over in a chair, head in her hands, and SHE WAS ACTUALLY CRYING, big pathetic drops of deceit.
I'd been too optimistic: when I assumed that she had grown tired of trying to push my buttons and had finally decided to accept the pacificst Jesus and my parents had unexpectedly produced, she'd decided to start making up stories about me.
"Jane came in my office, shut the door, and started screaming at me," she said, shoulders heaving with silent emotion while I watched on in mortified silence. "She was just....just....screaming at me."

It wasn't the first lie she'd told about me, and nor would it be the last, but that accusation hurt more than them all, because I had often wished that I could stand up to this woman, or start yelling at her, OR EVEN TURN AROUND AND WALK OUT OF HER OFFICE while she was on one of her rampages. And because here I was, required to take the punishment for screaming at a superior, when I had never even had the satisfaction of getting angry with her.

It was the worst.

That darling woman is no longer my boss, and while I currently work for the same organization in the happiest job of my life, she has continued to terrorize future victims while I have been exonerated from all of the bogus charges, so I sometimes look back on those days without really remembering how awful it was to be treated like I was.
But sometime between then, when everything was real and terrifying, and now, when everything is fuzzy and hazy and gorgeous, THE INCIDENT happened.

I am not an aggressive driver. I let everybody else at the stop sign go ahead of me. I let people cut me off, AND I ACTUALLY MAKE UP EXCITING STORIES TO GO WITH THEIR BAD DRIVING, such as, "Oh, that poor guy; he's probably on his way home to a sick child." Or, "That woman looks really sad: she was probably just dumped by her boyfriend. No wonder she's driving like a crazy maniac."
One day, when I was driving sweetly and minding my own business, a car appeared out of nowhere, cut me off, flipped me off, weaved in between lanes, slammed on his brakes, sped up haphazardly, and flipped me off again, all in about ten seconds.
I didn't mind that he was being a bad driver, but he had scared me badly. By the time I saw him in my peripheral vision, my heart was already racing, and for some reason I was more frightened than I'd ever been on the roadway before.

I'd like to tell you that I lost it, because that's what it felt like to me. I followed him closely, I got in front of him when I could, I used my brakes liberally, and all of the while my heart raced. In actuality, I'm pretty sure I suck at road rage, because he seemed to feel that my behavior was consistent with normal driving, glanced at me casually without anger, and even looked at me with a sad wave of apology when we ended up at a stop light together.  But what happened in my heart was that I was angry -- terribly, perfectly angry -- for the first time in my life.

Everyone always told me that anger was cathartic, but they were lying. I felt sad and dirty, because getting angry had done nothing for me. It was all very anti-climactic, and I felt like an idiot while he drove on, never imagining that in those thirty seconds I had let a poor random stranger strip me of my anger-virgin status.

The Games We Play

I'd like to issue a general warning, here:

If I get one more "Marvel: Avengers Alliance" app request on Facebook, IT IS GOING TO GET UGLY UP IN HERE.

I use Facebook for keeping up with people. And there are so many people to keep up with. 

SO. MANY. PEOPLE.

I barely have time to check in with close friends + family after work, and to scan my Google Reader for interesting new recipes! and drama! and whatever else people post on blogs!

But, as far as I can tell, in twenty five years I have never once given off the vibe that I would be the foggiest bit interested in using Facebook for any type of computer game (not fake-farming, fake-rollercoastering, or fake-superheroing) or that I would be any good at it.

Growing up, we weren't allowed to play many computer games, which led to one of the first times when I let down the family in a significant way. My mom's distant cousin had met a girl, and he called to say that he wanted us to come visit her, and my mom tacked on a warning passed on by my grandma, "He really wants us to make a good impression."

What she meant was: this distant cousin's significant other had a daughter, who was my age, and it would be my responsibility to make her feel like joining our extended family was the most advantageous thing for her present and future happiness. Accordingly, we all loaded up into my grandfather's mini-van and made an eight-hour trek to our cousin's house, where we unloaded and I came face-to-face with my new suggested relative.

"We bought plastic cups for everyone," my cousin said, "It will keep everybody separate, you know." His girlfriend chuckled at this, LIKE IT WAS THE FUNNIEST THING SHE HAD EVER HEARD. This put major pressure on me, because he obviously liked her. I had to make sure that I did everything right with this cousin girl.

"Jane has gorgeous handwriting," my grandma said, "She'll write our names on the cups with a Sharpie."

I bravely grabbed the cups, hand shaking, and my cousin's girlfriend's daughter stared at me while I did. She was pretty, and was wearing multiple head-bands. Like all girls attending middle-school in the 1990's, her name was Megan. I did all of the other names first, and when I could finally put it off no longer, I wrote hers tentatively and held it out to her.

She didn't take it. "With an 'H'," she said.

I stared at the word on the cup. "H"? Where was an 'H' supposed to go in that name? I considered it a moment, felt the over-eager eyes of the cousins and everybody on me, and tentatively added an H to the end of the letters already written on the cup, then held it out to her.

MEGANH.

This did not produce the result I expected. Meganh laughed, swept her hair back into a pony-tail in one grand motion, and suggested that we play cars in the living room.

"Um, ok," I said.

Nods of approval from the adults followed me as I went into the living room, where it was pitch-black. Meganh handed me a game controller. "Here," she said, "I'm Car Two."

Immediately after this, she sat cross-legged (I followed suit) and I was trying to use a game controller to steer a computer car.

This was a completely new experience, AND IT WAS AN EPIC FAIL.

I crashed within 10-12 seconds of each new round, and Meganh looked at me with greater and greater frustration after each passing round.

"You're not even TRYING!" she finally told me. "You don't have to let me win just because everyone is trying to be all nice about my mom dating your uncle."

"Cousin," I said.

"Stop letting me win," she said.

After this public humiliation, my grandmother presented us with three computer games the following Christmas, and -- when my mom seemed claustrophobic when she saw them -- Grandma used the magic words, "THEY'RE EDUCATIONAL!"

After that, it was settled.

The three games were indeed educational, if you wanted to

a.) fly commercial / fighter jets (Flight Simulator III)

b.) escape starvation on a cross-country conestoga journey (The Oregon Trail), or

c) build a civilization (The Age Of Empires: Demo Version)

These all ran on what I can best recall was a hybrid between Windows 95 and MSDos. The flight simulator required a joystick, and a bored-sounding computerized voice would call out instructions:

"Pull up."

My brother and I would yank on the joystick.

"Pull up."

There were disjointed graphics on the screen, displaying ants for people on some distant horizon.

"PULL UP PULL UP PULL UP PULL UP!"

No matter how many times we crashed that plane, I never became accustomed to the moment when the dull computer lady's voice became urgent and final.

"PULL UP PULL UP PULL UP PULL UP!"

We would crash after that, in a ball of blackness, and the computer would re-boot to Windows 95 while my heart slowed back to its normal rate.

The computer game's absolute incompatibility with our skill level seemed to secretly please my mother. "We'll do better next time!" I assured her, "I think this is the program they use for ACTUAL fighter pilots. You have to be as good as a real pilot."

But we were not as good as a real pilot, and eventually we made our way into The Oregon Trail, where a series of folk songs played away cheerfully while catastrophes unfolded on-screen and the program required us to make important decisions regarding the future of our fake computer family: "Sally has been bit by a snake; do you want to purchase medicine for her?" "Your food supply has been depleted; do you want to reduce your intake TO THE DEATH-DIET TO MAKE SURE THAT YOUR CHILDREN DON'T STARVE?"

One of our little friends came over, and he knew cheat-codes for The Oregon Trail. We had never heard of cheat-codes before, and we watched, mesmerized, as he typed in strange characters, hit keys simultaneously, and accessed secret menus.

Unfortunately, he was a bit of a morbid child, and most of his preferred cheat codes involved killing off his computer children through vicious communicable diseases.

The Age of Empires: Demo Version seemed the most promising of the lot, because it was hard to mess up. Little computerized people ran around here and there, working on their own in a graphic re-creation of the stone age. The game had its own doctors, who would find sick people and heal them through unintelligible mumblings, and had priests who, through similar utterings, would proselytize unsuspecting converts to whatever religion they pleased. Eventually, though, the game required too little skill and, like our forefathers from the stone age who managed to make a world for themselves by self-governance, my brother and I abandoned our little computer and ran outside to imaginitive games of our own making.

The Biggest Loser

As I assume is customary in every workplace in America, my work is holding a "The Biggest Loser" competition over the summer. It's perfect, because the summer months are the worst for self-esteem anyway: there are endless parties and barbecues, and the swimming suits keep getting smaller and smaller. This year I pulled my suit out of the trashbag I keep full of summer clothes that I've threatened to give away to the thrift store every autumn since 2005, and I said WAIT, THESE TWO THINGS CANNOT POSSIBLY BE MINE. The little shorts were so, so little. And the top of my tankini was very attractive, but I'm pretty sure that last year it belonged to a much more voluptuous version of me. How in the world did I fill up all of that space last year?

I joined the competition because I love having excuses to go to parties where there are weird, unidentifiable appetizers and say, "Oh, I'd love to sample all of these but... I'M IN A WEIGHT LOSS COMPETITION AT WORK, so I cannot possibly eat your...." And I let my voice drift off and finish the rest of the sentence silently in my head with, "WHAT ARE THOSE?!"

Also, because the prize is a lot of $$$, and because winning a weight loss competition is a great way to supplement the iPad 3 fund.

The people at my work have no willpower, so to win these contests I sabotage everyone by bringing in healthy snacks at the beginning when everyone is motivated and is deciding whether or not to pay to participate, and then slowly transitioning to snacks all comprised mainly of trans-fats. I bake cakes that they'll love, I experiment with lasagnas in mini! individual! servings!, I whip up chocolate mousse and zucchini bread and eventually they can't stay on the wagon.

Now, don't accuse me of being selfish. See, all of the people at my work aren't fat. They're skinny. They're all participating in this contest because THAT'S WHAT AMERICA DOES DURING THE SUMMER AND FOR 4-5 DAYS AFTER NEW YEARS. They all look great. When there is someone in my office who is participating and could stand to lose a few pounds, I always make sure that the treats I bring appeal to everyone EXCEPT that person. I find his or her one hated food, and compose most of my snack menus around that item. NOT SELFISH. The rest of the people are healthy, hardworking adults who move around during the day, get sunshine, take a multivitamin, go to the gym, and WOULD BE EMACIATED IF THEY LOST TEN POUNDS.

Me, I'm 5'8" tall, so losing a few pounds never much hurts, and I proudly weigh in during the summers and collect my winnings and whatnot.

THIS YEAR THERE IS A COMPLICATION TO MY PLAN. A lady at my work recently had a baby and determined that she WAS going to win the competition by eliminating all of her baby fat.

BABY FAT.

Who can compete with a woman who is only coming in half-days (THANKS, FAMILY MEDICAL LEAVE ACT) and who has the rest of her time available to work out, carry a baby up and down flights of stairs, and cook herself good meals that leave her so stuffed that she is completely uninterested in any new and tempting treats I bring to work?

The worst part of all is that she is losing FIVE HUNDRED CALORIES PER DAY by breast-feeding. Um, hello? Major cheating, right?

My iPad fund is in jeopardy. It's a serious deal, and since there is only a week left in the competition, I'm starting to really worry. I think most of my meals for the next two weeks are going to be primarily comprised of grapes and flavored herbal teas.

THIS IS WAR.

Lemmings Fer Chickin

Everyone is all caught up with this Chick-Fil-A drama which, whatever. The supporters of the restaurant chain’s stances say, “It’s the best sandwich in the world and it’s free speech.” The opponents of the restaurant chain’s stances say, “It’s the best sandwich in the world and it’s hate speech.” No one ever says what I want them to say which is: IT IS NOT THE BEST SANDWICH IN THE WORLD.

Why is nobody saying that? I’m pretty convinced that this is exactly like the emperor’s new clothes. Everyone is blindly copying what everyone else says and starting with universal praise for the Best Chicken Sandwich In The Nation, and then tacking on whatever opinions they have to the end of that.

I didn’t try a Chick-Fil-A sandwich until I was twenty two. I was really looking forward to that sandwich, too, mostly because my extremely rational then-boyfriend made a beautiful speech to tell me that the restaurant served food that was “too beautiful to eat.” Umm? Since he rarely resorted to superlatives, let me tell you that after that I was expecting nectar of the gods.

When I went on vacation, some friends found out that I’d never eaten at Chick-Fil-A and they acted like I was missing out on seeing the world. In fact, they stopped my magnificent vacation to IMMEDIATELY TAKE ME TO THE NEAREST CHICK-FIL-A. When we were in line, they oohed and aahed over the menu (which had only one option: CHICKEN), talked about how amazing the sandwiches were going to be, and threw around words like “simplicity” and “middle class fare.”

My host and hostess elbowed me and pointed to the vivacious little clerk, who had a fauxhawk. “See?” they told me, “The servers here are amazing. They’re happy all of the time.”
When I nodded politely they insisted. “ISN’T SHE THE CUTEST?”
It felt like I was in an unsolicited discussion with one of those Lord Of The Rings fans who quotes various passages to you from a fan fiction website and then is like, “DIDN’T THAT CAPTURE THE EXACT ESSENCE OF TOLKIEN’S BEST WORK? DIDN’T IT? DIDN’T IT? DIDN’T IT?” until you’re forced to force enthusiasm and say, “Yes, that’s the finest and most elegant thing I’ve ever heard and I need some privacy now because I’M PRETTY SURE I’M GOING TO CRY.”
Like that.

When I stepped up to the counter, the clerk seemed to have a premonition that I was a Chick-Fil-A virgin. I was not intimidated: the menu seemed extremely basic, and I ordered what everybody else was ordering: a chicken sandwich, fries, and a milkshake.
“It’s seasonal!” my friends congratulated me on my milkshake selection, “It’s mint chip.”

Yay!

The clerk said, “I can’t believe that people order those milk shakes. Did you know that they’re nine hundred calories?”
KILLJOY.

She handed it over, looking at me like she was disappointed with what I was about to do. I wasn’t fazed by this either, since this was a special Chick-Fil-A trip and because it was absolutely imperative that I like this food that was too beautiful to eat, darn it!

When I took my first bite, I realized that what they handed me was just a basic piece of fried chicken on a bun with two pickles and some ketchup. There were no little fireworks in my mouth. There was no miracle. Chick-Fil-A had served me a smallish, overpriced chicken sandwich, and here I was eating it while everybody looked on, awaiting my reaction.

Since they paid for it, I praised the sandwich lavishly, and drank my 900-calorie milkshake with abandon. It was the thing to do.

I am glad that people are dialoguing about free speech. I love that. But I wish that someone on either side would just stand up and say the truth, here: Chick-Fil-A might have a cult following, but ultimately what they hand you is just a sandwich.

The Fake Wedding Ring

Now, I love to get dressed up. I mean, I really, REALLY love to get dressed up. I love wearing pencil skirts! And heels! And curling my hair so it bounces like Look! At! Me! every time I walk down the hallway at work.


BUT FRIDAYS.


At my job, we're off every other Friday, which means on Fridays I'm basically just a girl who happens to be twenty five and single, and who happens to go to Home Depot. A lot. And although I would dearly love to get dressed up every time I go to Home Depot....sometimes I am in a hurry and I don't even look mildly presentable. Who doesn't spend thirty seconds putting on mascara before they walk into Home Depot?


Ummm, this girl.
So.
Enter the fake wedding ring.


Yes, people. I bought a fake wedding ring on eBay (my account is private, in case any of my exes stalk me on eBay and are like, "I wonder what weird purchases Jane is making this week?") and I probably paid too much for it, but it's silverish, and has cubic zirconium, and it is the perfect fake wedding ring. It looks fancy without saying THIS IS A FAKE WEDDING RING, and it looks subdued without saying I MARRIED A MILLIONAIRE WHO WOULD OBVIOUSLY NEVER LET ME OUT OF THE HOUSE LOOKING LIKE THIS. When I wear it, on my Fridays off, I walk confidently through Home Depot and I'm pretty certain that everyone who smiles at me on the way past is thinking, "Oh, what a nice wife. She's running errands for her husband even though she looks tired after what was probably a long, crazy night of making him SUPER GLAD THAT HE MARRIED HER and now she's shopping for him while he makes her brunch before they spend the afternoon ALSO MAKING HIM SUPER GLAD THAT HE MARRIED HER!"


Yep. That's what everyone is thinking. My fake wedding ring makes me stand taller, look people in the eye, and wink pleasantly at everyone who walks past me in the garden aisle. Without mascara, of course.