We Thought You Would Be Prettier

by Laurie Notaro

  “Did you know that passing in a lane can KILL you? Ask this lady,” the instructor said as he pointed to a woman in the back and gave another wink. “She was eating a Big Mac, reading a book, and watching her soap opera while doing eighty on the freeway and trying to pass an RV! We’re going to learn how to DRIVE TO SURVIVE!”

  “That’s my hard-boiled egg!” Grandpa Munster said as he jolted awake.

  After we learned that you can get a $400 ticket just by using the HOV lane to pass someone if you are the lone passenger in your car, a cluster of horrified gasps escaped from the class as if the O.J. verdict had come in all over again. People were still shaking their heads as we moved on to a film narrated by a self-described “Anti-Terrorism Driving Expert” who explained that the danger and peril out there on the roads was equal to the danger you would experience from terrorism, mainly because of road rage and potholes.

  “The driver coming toward you may be the closest thing you ever experience to a terrorist attack,” the narrator warned, although I have to admit I failed to see the correlation between someone flipping me off and, say, the bus I’m on blowing up.

  Then the film centered on a charred telephone pole that a teenager had driven into, and then staged interviews with the boy’s friends and family at the crash site, all with the blackened pole somewhere in the background. Oddly enough, no potholes in the general vicinity were charged with or even suspected of operating on orders from an Axis of Evil country.

  Finally, it was time for lunch and Paris Hilton pulled herself together enough to call her boyfriend and assure him the paperwork was “probably pretty lost,” the oil drum ran down the stairs to get the money order, and the Pissed-Off Guy was complaining that he couldn’t believe we only had forty minutes for lunch, I’m assuming because that was only long enough to squeeze in a lap dance or two at the nearest skanky strip joint.

  Grandpa Munster was still sleeping in his chair when I left.

  He was still there when I came back, although his Drive to Survive workbook had slid to the floor.

  I took my seat, as did everyone else, and as soon as the instructor told us to turn to a certain page number, he looked up and walked toward me.

  “Speaking of speeding, I saw this lady at lunchtime,” the instructor said as he pointed at me and winked, “and she must have been hungry because she was burning rubber in her red-hot Camaro!”

  I gasped. I had been utterly anonymous up until this point, I hadn’t opened my mouth once. I was just another traffic offender in another driving class, trying to make it through the day. And now, my anonymous time was up. Laurie the Annoyed had been awakened. I was going to have to say something, otherwise risk the chance of being branded as “that white-trash Camaro girl who was too fat to be on crystal meth.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” I said blankly.

  “Yes, you were!” the instructor said. “Yes, you were! I saw you, squealing your tires in your red Camaro!”

  “It wasn’t me,” I protested, thinking, Why couldn’t I have been the drunk mom driving her kids to McDonald’s? Why, out of all these people, out of all the cars in the world, did you have to pair me with a RED Camaro and make me pretend to violate my staunchest Cardinal Rule? I’d much rather be the drunk mom than a chick in a tube top, cowboy hat, and white-leather ankle boots.

  “You can say I was driving a Pacer, you can say I was driving a Gremlin, you can even say I was driving an El Camino, but I will not cop to driving a Camaro. I’m sorry,” I explained. “I can’t do it. I’ve only been in a Camaro once, and it was against my will. And better judgment.”

  The instructor jumped right back in. “Okay, you were driving a . . . Firebird!” he finished.

  “Please pick something else!” I insisted. “Anything else! I will even drive a Geo for you, or a minivan. We’ll compromise! How about a Mazda?”

  “Okay, fine, a Mazda,” he said drolly. “And boy, did you burn some rubber as you tore through that red light! Let’s learn how to DRIVE TO SURVIVE!”

  “I was hoping we’d get to this part,” the Pissed-Off Guy said, suddenly invigorated.

  Paris Hilton sighed and then pretended to strangle herself.

  We spent the next two minutes talking about red lights, when it’s considered running a red light and when it’s considered a yellow. We spent the next eighteen minutes after that reenacting the Pissed-Off Guy’s traffic incident in a diagram he forced the instructor to draw on the board. They went over the scenario again and again, like it was a choreographed football move in the last minutes of the Super Bowl, an eraser symbolizing the Pissed-Off Guy’s 4 x 4, with dry-erase markers and the instructor’s wallet portraying other vital roles in the Mystery of the Left-Hand Turn play.

  Finally, after the instructor, who, by the way, played the Evil Cop role because Harvey Keitel wasn’t available, completed the scene for the sixth time, and to the Pissed-Off Guy’s satisfaction, even he was worn down.

  “Can we just say that it’s weird you got the second ticket?” the instructor begged. “Class is almost over and we’ll have to stay longer to finish.”

  “You were wronged!” a man called out from behind me.

  “You should sue the cop that gave you the second ticket!” another man yelled.

  “You should have given the COP the ticket,” the drunk mother joined in.

  “That’s what I thought!” the Pissed-Off Guy, now known as the Pissed-Off Guy Was Right, said gleefully. “That’s what I thought! Thank you. Thank you!”

  “Okay, let’s move on. I heard they got a guy going one-seventeen on the freeway last week, and that was you, wasn’t it, cutting all sorts of people off?” the instuctor interrupted and pointed to Grandpa Munster, who still didn’t wake up. “Let’s learn to DRIVE—”

  “—TO SURVIVE!” the class, minus Grandpa Munster, finished.

  After we learned why speeding was bad unless you wanted your family and friends to star in a driver’s-ed movie about your death and be questioned in front of the charred telephone pole that decapitated you, the instructor passed out evaluation forms.

  “When I went to go get my money order at lunch, I was almost run off the road! The driver in front of me OBVIOUSLY DID NOT use the three-second-cushion-for-safe-following rule that we just learned about! Now, I drive a semi, and the last thing you want to do is cut me off and make me slam on my brakes! Because I can’t!”

  “You drive a semi?” a guy asked from a couple of rows over.

  “Do you live in there?” another man asked.

  “Where do you sleep?” a girl behind me asked.

  The oil barrel lit up like an orphan who had just found a family with a pretty new mommy and went into great detail about the laws of entering and exiting a truck through the passenger side because her vehicle was her legal home in which she could get drunk.

  Everyone was very impressed.

  “I pull a horse trailer,” a woman behind the oil barrel commented, to which no one said anything.

  “On my lunch break, I saw a man making a right-hand turn from the far lane,” another woman said. “And he was speeding the whole time before that even happened.”

  Then, from the middle row, there was some stirring, a head raised, a throat cleared, and Grandpa Munster came out of his coma just as the evaluations were being passed down his aisle and we were ready to call the coroner.

  “An evaluation?” he said. “I have something to evaluate! Evaluate why there’s a minimum speed limit. Why is there a minimum speed limit? It’s not posted, but I learned that one the hard way. And where is the comment section? I don’t like these chairs at all. Something needs to be done about these chairs.”

  “Is there a number to call to report bad drivers?” someone else asked. “Because I would like to have it if you know it.”

  “I am still amazed at the HOV-lane rules,” another lady said.

  “I think a lot of people could use this class,” the Pissed-Off Guy Was Right said. “Very informative.”

>   “Everyone should take this class,” the truck driver said. “But you should really take checks.”

  It was like being in traffic school had reawakened something in every sucky driver in the class. It was as if a reckoning took place: We had accepted the Drive to Survive greater force as our roadtime scripture, our driving-school teacher its apostle, and the next time we would be behind the wheel we’d be born-again drivers. I was amazed at my classmates; they buzzed amongst one another with driving-atrocity stories—“Once I saw a man make a right turn from a left-hand lane. I did! It’s true!” or “Just the other day, I saw a woman zipping along in the HOV lane completely alone, and it was eight fifty-seven! A.M.! Oh, if I only knew then what I know now, or had that bad-driver number to call and report her!”

  It was contagious. It was like a cult, or a week at church camp deep in the woods where they show your very malleable and impressionable brain a disturbing film about bar codes and a world in which the proper half simply evaporates and the rest of the planet either gets crucified on streetlights or has to join forces with Darth Vader, and then they offer to sell you a “Child of God” Ziggy T-shirt, and should you decline, there’s the obligatory look from all those Ziggys around you that says, “Get ready for the nails, then. You’ve basically asked for it.” Everyone had a horror story of someone else’s poor driving skills, and before I knew it, there was a girl recounting how every week when she had commuted back and forth to Tucson, she would see people reading at the wheel, which was bad enough, but books on tape were readily and widely available at the time! I rolled my eyes until I realized I was standing up, shaking my right fist in the air, and that it was me recounting.

  “Sing it, sister!” someone else shouted from a back row.

  “We hear you, Red Camaro Lady, we hear you!” someone else seconded.

  “These chairs are too hard,” Grandpa Munster contributed again. “My whole body is asleep and I’m stuck in this position.”

  “Is class over?” Paris Hilton called. “I have to make a phone call.”

  On the way out of the parking lot, the cars drove slowly, in single file, everyone used their blinker, and everyone waited a second or two at the stop sign, except for Grandpa Munster, who stayed there until he woke up again.

  Everybody on the way home, I bet, was just driving and surviving.

  But It Won’t Fit Up My Nose

  My husband looked at me like I had a kilo of cocaine in my hand instead of a bag from a bookstore.

  “Don’t you dare bring that thing in this house,” he said, blocking the front door so I couldn’t get in. “We simply cannot go on living like this! You know the rules!”

  Indeed I did.

  “It’s only one. It’s just one little book,” I coaxed, as he huffed, dropped his arm, and permitted me inside.

  Unfortunately, I married a book guy. My ideal plan was to marry a tool guy, not only so that sticky windows and leaky faucets would be remedied without paying for a house call, but that I might also get a redwood deck out of the deal. However, the tool guy I could have picked up an option on smelled a lot like Sears, and when the book guy came along, he smelled like shaving cream and Downy. Thus, not only did we get married, but two book collections collided and, as a result, we were book bound. I shoved books in drawers, in the china cupboard, in the pantry, and, honestly, if you think John Nash was impressive, you should take a peek at the mathematically impossible stacking configurations I executed in order to get the most space out of our bookshelves. Oriental rugs have never been woven with such complexities.

  As time passed, our book collection took on the proportions of free-range feral cats that multiply into six more as soon as two of them touch each other. It came down to this: Either hire a Sherpa to help us navigate around the tall towers of books in our house, dump some of the books, or dump the marriage (I had, admittedly, started rethinking the tool-guy thing anyway when new blinds needed to be installed and flushing the toilet evoked a sound in our pipes very similar to a choir of Benedictine monks).

  In order to try and solve the problem, each of us went through our respective libraries and culled every book we believed we could part with, hauled them all to a used-book store, where we traded them for store credit, and each returned with a box of new books.

  Clearly, we needed a plan, preferably an effective one, because our current plan was the equivalent of trying to lose weight by eating a package of reduced-fat Oreos at every meal.

  “I say we make a book box,” my husband, the book guy, said, “and the rule is that if you don’t absolutely love a book after you’ve read it, you have to put it in the box and when it’s full we’ll donate it to charity.”

  “Perfect! And how about,” I said as my big fat idea met my big fat mouth, “every time we get a new book, we have to give one away?”

  And so the Rules were born, and I thought it was a fabulous idea until the day came when my giveaway stash—which included all of the books I had never returned to the library in high school, botany and statistics textbooks from college, books with puffy, embossed covers, and Rosie O’Donnell biographies my mother (“All I’m saying is that you’d get a lot farther in life if you were as nice as Rosie, that’s all I’m saying”) insists on giving me as gifts—was depleted.

  I had to get creative, and, admittedly, sneaky. I quietly opened the creaky door to my office closet and slipped a new paperback behind rolls of gift wrap and packing peanuts. Months passed, seasons changed. My one hidden book had expanded to a whole shelf, my awful terrible secret—that is, until the black, horrible day my husband ran out of staples. As I stood in the kitchen, I heard the creaky door of deceit open, a rustling of paper, a gasp, and then silence.

  My husband came into the kitchen, where I was frozen.

  “How will I ever be able to trust you with another book again?” he said, not even able to look me in the eye. “You could be holding the TV Guide, and now, I’ll wonder. I’ll always wonder.”

  “I didn’t plan for this to happen,” I said looking away, not able to look at his eyes not looking at me. “I didn’t want you to find out this way.”

  “The whole time,” he said sadly, “the book box was a lie.”

  “The book box was a lie,” I whispered, nodding slowly. “Except that we have two copies of Lolita, so I gave yours to the box. Mine had a cooler cover.”

  His eyes suddenly met mine in an icy, hard stare. “MY Lolita?” he questioned harshly. “My Lo-Lee-Ta?”

  The next day, feeling infinitely guilty for giving away his copy, even if the girl on his cover looked a bit tartish and wasn’t even remotely as cute as the girl on my cover, I went to the bookstore and bought him a new one. I came home, and after visiting my office closet, I slipped into my husband’s office quietly as he watched TV in the next room. I placed the new, unsoiled, perfect new Lolita on his keyboard. As I opened the door to leave, it abruptly stopped three-quarters of the way, blocked, I saw, by several tall, teetering stacks of books, shiny new books and some used, none of which I had ever seen before.

  The book box was indeed a lie.

  I smiled to myself.

  I’m awfully glad they’re not tools, I thought.

  Booty Call

  “I want to go home,” Jamie said as she looked at me and pouted. “I’m having a rotten time here. Let’s just go. We clearly don’t belong!”

  I was stunned. We had been in San Francisco only for a matter of minutes—only long enough to check into our hotel room—and already she wanted to leave.

  “But we come here every year for our birthdays and we always have a great time,” I argued. “Just relax. We’ll get settled and then head over to get a cookie from the French bakery around the corner.”

  “I don’t want to go anywhere,” Jamie asserted. “I’m too embarrassed. Didn’t you see as we drove up that every single woman in San Francisco had amazing black leather boots on? Every single one, except two: you and me. We’re going to stand out like sore thumbs. Eve
ryone will know we’re tourists and the street people will hit us up for money even more.”

  I laughed. “You’re upset because we don’t have black boots? You’re forgetting that the French bakery isn’t the only reason we stay in this hotel. It’s also because of the great Indian food joint around the corner, the incredible breakfast place down the street, the free croissants and doughnuts in the morning by the coffee machine, and,” I said, pointing out the window, “the largest designer shoe warehouse in all of San Francisco, proudly boasting three floors of nothing but discount high-end footwear, visible right now through that window.”

  “Oh my God,” Jamie gasped as she covered her mouth. “Look! I see boots! Rows and rows of nothing but black boots! If there was a sign that said ‘Free!’ or even ‘Seventy-five Percent Off Our Already Incredibly Low Prices’ I would think we had died and maybe weren’t such selfish, shallow people after all!”

  “I know,” I said, nodding my head and looking across the street. “Cheap, cool shoes. That’s as close to heaven as you can get. Let’s go. My buzz from the drinks on the plane is wearing off, and if there’s anything I loathe more than religion and taxes, it’s another woman touching the shoes that I want.”

  As we entered the store, both Jamie and I gasped with amazement, overwhelmed by the vast variety of choices. There were black boots everywhere, lined up along every top shelf, like spires on a castle. We dove in hungrily, tossing our purses aside and grabbing every long boot box in our size. Jamie, the more coordinated of the two of us, was the first to kick off her sneakers and slide her foot into a glorious, shiny tall boot. I was right behind her, whipping off a shoe and getting ready to ram my foot into a pair of my own when I heard a sharp cry and realized it was coming from my friend.

  “I can’t get it up!” she cried. “I can’t get this zipper up! It won’t fit! This boot won’t fit!”

  “Well, it must be broken,” I said, eager to see myself walking around in my own pair of black San Francisco native boots. “Try the other one.”