Rude Bitches Make Me Tired: Slightly Profane and Entirely Logical Answers to Modern Etiquette Dilemmas

by Celia Rivenbark

  Affix seat protector to seat without using your hands. (This one is particularly challenging.)

  “Aim” your pee through the punched-out hole in the seat protector.

  Realize too late that you’ve completely missed the open hole in the center, and the pee is now trying to physically find its way back into your body.

  Give up, stand up, and accept that the thing isn’t going to be sucked down into the bowl by the act of flushing, the way it’s designed to do.

  Kick the flimsy and wet paper into the toilet bowl with your foot.

  Now do you get it? It’s just a lot of work. I’d rather hover, although my knees are getting increasingly arthritic, since you ask, and I may just bag the whole thing and plop down on the seat, risking STDs and unwanted pregnancy and God knows what-all else. Next?

  Question: What do you do if you’re a man who is urinating in a public restroom and another man seems to be staring at your private parts?

  I dunno, Chaz. Maybe they’re just confused as hell.

  I’m told that it’s common courtesy to leave a buffer of at least one urinal between you and whomever. It’s creepy not to and really no different from the guy who sits right beside you in a near-empty movie theater. Nuff said.

  TP (Tips to Ponder!)

  • If you’re in an airport, or a nice place, you may encounter a bathroom valet with a tip jar and a depressingly pedestrian assortment of off-brand mints, mouthwashes, lotions, and the like. Just give him or her a dollar and get on with your life. If you ever need eight-year-old floss, she or he will be there for you.

  • Gentlemen, do not tap your toes in a stall. I have it on good authority that such behavior could turn you into a Republican congressman.

  • Don’t take too long. This means don’t use a public restroom to read your Kindle. (Unless, of course, it’s this book, in which case, well, Godspeed!) Don’t sit there and do puzzles or send e-mail, and for the love of all that is holy, do not conduct cell phone calls for either business or pleasure while seated on the toilet. I’ve heard women do this and then flush, so they don’t even care that the person on the other end of the line knows that they’re talking while peeing. Horrible!

  • If you are using the restroom at a friend’s house, leave the seat down. Just do it. It looks prettier, and my germ-phobic friend, Amy, swears that you should always make sure to flush with the seat down so “cooties don’t fly all over the room.” Makes total sense.

  • Admittedly, this isn’t so much an etiquette issue as a commonsense one: Should the toilet paper face front on the roll, or should it curl behind? Both have pluses and minuses, but it just looks better facing out. I have a childlike delight in the clever things hotel maids can do to gussy up a simple end flap of toilet paper, none of which could be accomplished with the paper on the inside, against the germ-ridden wall. (Okay, that was Amy again.)

  chapter 16

  “Your Toupee Looks So Natural!” How to Give and Receive Compliments

  Has anyone ever told you, “You really need to learn how to take a compliment”?

  Because, believe it or not, there’s a right way and a wrong way to give—and receive—compliments.

  I know what you’re thinking: “Isn’t it enough that I said something nice? Why you gotta analyze everything?”

  Okay, first of all, “why you gotta?” and second of all—oh, just forget it.

  We’re also going to talk about “left-handed compliments,” which, as a proud lefty, I find a tad offensive. Just a tad. I am now over myself and have already moved on.

  How to Take a Compliment

  This is particularly difficult for those of us who were raised in the South, where we’d rather plunge a butter knife into our own larynx than utter a single unpleasant word—to your face, that is.

  We consider it unseemly to agree with any kind words thrown our way. Yeah, I know it’s weird, but we are trained to repel compliments as though shielded by a protective force field that will simply take the compliment (“Your hair looks lovely today”) and reflect it immediately back upon the giver (“No! I’m having a horrible hair day. But yours looks ah-mazing!”). This boomerang effect leaves the giver of the compliment wondering why she or he even bothered.

  For shit’s sake, just say thank you. And if it’s true and you feel that you must, you can add, “Yours looks nice, too.” Was that really so hard?

  There’s nothing wrong with receiving a compliment with a simple and gracious, “Thank you!” In fact, it’s preferred. In the South, we are trained not to brag or put ourselves before others (which is why it’s such a shock when we hear others do it, as we discuss in another chapter).

  It can be vexing for a non-Southerner to have the last word when it comes to giving a compliment. Here’s an example of how difficult it can be.

  NS:

  That’s a beautiful scarf. And the color is so perfect on you!

  S:

  Oh, it’s all right, I suppose. I think the color would look even better on you!

  NS:

  Nonsense, it matches your eyes perfectly.

  S:

  Here, you take it. I think it would look best on you. I’ve always envied your skin tone. My skin is as green as a toad under most artificial lighting, but yours? You’re positively glowing!

  NS:

  Thank you. Let’s change the subject. Hey, wait. What are you doing? Are you taking the scarf off?

  S:

  You bet I am. I want you to have it. Really. It will look so much better on you than me.…

  NS:

  Okay, you’re right. You’re an ugly old hag with a gray face and yellow teeth, and I’ll look much better in the scarf than you!

  S:

  I know you’re joking, but really, I’ve been thinking about getting Lumineers. How did you know?

  NS:

  I give up. Give me the damn scarf. I’m outta here.

  The Left-handed Compliment

  Oh, you know the ones I’m talking about. Perhaps you’ve even delivered one and then walked away, rather enjoying its effect on the recipient. Or you could say it and not mean any harm at all. You just don’t think before you speak; work on that.

  While the most outlandish example imaginable was the title of my last book, You Don’t Sweat Much for a Fat Girl, most people would never actually say such a thing. I hope. Need more examples? Okay. Never say things like …

  • Wow! You drive well for a woman.

  • This casserole tastes almost as good as the one Mama makes.

  • That dress sure does wonders for your body type.

  • Your new toupee almost looks real!

  • I don’t care what everybody says, I think you’re a nice person.

  • President Obama is very articulate.

  • I like your hair; it makes your head look smaller.

  • You have great birthing hips.

  Question: Well, all of that is fine and good, but what about people who never give compliments, left-handed or otherwise? My sister has never given me a compliment in my life, in spite of the fact that I’ve always been supportive and caring toward her.

  Your sister is insecure and a bit jealous, I suspect. She is under the wrongheaded impression that if she compliments your work, clothing, hairstyle, cooking, home, garden, and so forth, this actually makes her seem inferior. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s the mark of a generous, openhearted person to give compliments lavishly and sincerely. If only she understood that. You sound lovely, by the way.

  Question: You know, it would be really nice to just once have a man compliment my archery or volleyball skills or even my elegant penmanship. Instead, I get “Nice rack!” or something equally juvenile. Why do men have to be so superficial?

  Hmmmm? What? Oh, I’m sorry, your rack was distracting me with its awesomeness. I don’t want to call you a liar, but I can’t imagine anyone saying, “Nice rack!” to your face (or to the rack in question). If you walked by a group of drunks at a s
ports bar and one of them said it, that’s different. Some men are dunderheads when they drink, so there’s no telling what you’re going to hear in the way of a “compliment.” All men aren’t superficial, just as all women aren’t uptight bitches with really nice handwriting. Just saying.

  Question: I’d love to be complimented on the work I do, but my boss manages to hog all the glory, taking credit for other people’s good ideas, including mine. I know he knows better. Should I confront him about this?

  That depends. He could fire you or make your life difficult if you speak up. In the interest of keeping a job you genuinely like and at which you excel, I would settle for the occasional “We all worked on this as a team!” whenever it seems appropriate in front of higher-ups. It should seem natural, not forced, and you can monkey around with the wording to suit the occasion. The object is to call out your jerk of a boss without seeming to make it personal.

  Question: I know that it’s important for kids to have positive reinforcement so they will have a good self-image, but isn’t there such a thing as being too complimentary? My friend compliments her young children constantly. I maintain that it’s too much of a good thing. Do you agree?

  Yes. We’ve all seen and heard those ridiculous playground moms who heap praise on their children for completing the simplest task.

  “Oh, Frankie! I can’t believe how you spent the whole day breathing in and out! Way to go, sweetie!”

  This sort of foolishness will, trust me, result in Frankie becoming the biggest turd at Positive Reinforcement Preschool and Child Development Academy. When the teacher corrects him, he’ll melt down and wonder if it’s possible that he’s not all that special after all. It’s not only possible; it’s likely.

  Children should be complimented and praised for genuine accomplishments. If you start gushing every time your kid remembers to flush his pee, he’s going to expect a ticker tape parade for doody. It will never end. Next thing you know, he’ll want high fives and hot doughnuts for simply managing to walk down the sidewalk without busting his ass every day. Enough!

  Question: I’ve recently lost a great deal of weight … 145 pounds, to be exact. I’m proud of my accomplishment and I do like it when people say how nice I look, but it makes me wonder if they thought I was hideous before. When I think about it that way, I can’t enjoy the compliment at all.

  Congrats on the weight loss. Now you need to gain some perspective, which, fortunately, weighs almost nothing. It would be odd indeed if your friends, family, acquaintances, and most especially people who haven’t seen you for a while, didn’t acknowledge your weight loss with a well-earned compliment. I know a woman who went from 306 (at five foot two) to 140 pounds after two solid years of counting Weight Watcher points and exercising. It would’ve been bizarre if I didn’t tell her how wonderful she looked the first time I saw her after the weight loss.

  Does this mean that she didn’t look good before the weight loss? Frankly, yes. She wasn’t “hideous,” but she looked miserable and unhealthy. It’s not about pretty versus ugly. It’s about slowly becoming healthy and strong. You’ve worked incredibly hard to give yourself an amazing gift here. The trick now is to reconcile your new look with your old insecurities. You can do this.

  Question: Wow. That sounded really sensitive and smart. You’re not so bad at this advice-giving thing.

  I know, right? I mean, “Thank you.”

  chapter 17

  Road Sage: Accept the Things You Cannot Change, Like Idiot Drivers

  The driver in front of me had inexplicably left at least three car lengths between his car and the one ahead of him. WTF?

  Okay, here’s something the Emily Vandersnoots and so forth never wrote about in their etiquette books: Most drivers are basically inconsiderate assholes. And that includes you and sometimes me.

  But usually it’s you.

  So here’s the scenario: The light has turned green at this hugely busy intersection in my hometown, and Slowpoke McDumbass is driving very sloooowwly toward the intersection. Remember, he’s still got three car lengths to catch up. I’m right behind him, and guess what? That’s right! He cruises sloooowly through the intersection just as the light turns red.

  So here I sit, pissed beyond all rational behavior, as I watch him totter on in the distance, leaving me to sit at the head of the line waiting for another 2.5-minute cycle to pass.

  I want to disembowel him. (Using the correct cutlery, of course.)

  I hear you: “What’s your hurry?” or “Life’s too short to sweat this small stuff!” or “Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I have had a lobotomy.”

  Normal people don’t drive that way. I realize that some of us have personal-space issues (more on that in another chapter), but the highway is no place to work through them.

  Do not leave three car lengths; hell, don’t even leave one! Proper driving etiquette demands that you basically get close enough to the car in front of you at a busy intersection that it would mean that in certain third-world countries, or South Carolina, you would have to get married.

  One of the things that irritate drivers who are new to life in the American South is that we natives don’t use turn signals. This is not only bad driving etiquette; it’s also unsafe. What can I say? I’ve spent a lifetime explaining that we don’t use turn signals because we know where we’re going and it’s nobody else’s damn business.

  But I know it’s rude, and I’m gonna stop. It’s just that, like making the transition to turkey bacon, it hasn’t been easy. (I’m just kidding, of course; that shit tastes awful.)

  So, my own sin confessed, let’s return to yours: Drivers who don’t use the turning lane. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve witnessed this violation of driving etiquette. Once, I witnessed a frustrated driver flip off another driver who turned left from the “motorway,” as the slutty-sounding British chick inside my GPS likes to call it, without using the turning lane.

  Question: When confronted with rude drivers such as you have just so cleverly described, is it ever okay to indicate annoyance and displeasure through the use of obscene hand gestures?

  No. Let me put it another way.… Hell no. This is because, as Aunt Verlie reminds me almost daily: “He could have a gun under his car seat and he could reach down there and get it and blow your brains out all over your leather-look vinyl seats.”

  In the South, because we are all, frankly, packin’, this is not an entirely baseless fear, this notion that road rage will result in death or, at the very least, a good old-fashioned case of what Verlie likes to call “your basic permanent disfigurement.”

  It goes without saying that you should never do what my friend Sam did when a rude driver pulled out in front of him, forcing him onto the shoulder to avoid a collision. Sam, catching the other driver’s eye, simply mouthed the word “Douchebag!” and, well, it was on like unto Donkey Kong.

  DB responded by mouthing the word “Cocksucker!” and the two of them drove along like this, side by side, for at least a couple of miles, finally exhausting their somewhat limited vocabularies.

  Ultimately, Sam had to resort to “Turtlehead!” which lacked the impact of his earlier expressions and left the other driver mouthing, “What? What did you just call me?” At this point, it really was over. And high time.

  Teach Your Children Well

  It’s hard to believe, but we’re already teaching the Princess how to drive. As we hovered over her crib fourteen years ago, watching her sleep and listening to the stuffed bear that made whoosh-whoosh womb sounds (kinda gross, now that I think about it), Duh Hubby and I never gave a thought to driver’s education.

  But here we are. My kid will be a well-mannered driver if it kills us. I have to admit, so far, she’s almost obnoxiously cautious, placing her hands on the wheel and muttering “ten and two,” adjusting the seat, all the mirrors and—for God’s sake are we ever going to go somewhere? Sorry. That was me. The truth is, I have been relieved of my coaching duties, owing to some tearful
accusations that I told her to run over a squirrel.

  Which I did, but it’s not as bad as it sounds.

  “Always remember,” I said, buckling in for safety, “if something jumps in front of you, run over it. You have no idea how many people die every year, trying to avoid hitting a squirrel or something. You are more important than a squirrel.”

  I know! That kind of parental wisdom just oozes out of me like cheese out of an Egg McMuffin.

  I didn’t tell her about the time I was so sleep-deprived as a new mommy that I strapped her to my chest in a BabyBjörn and drove all over town doing errands with her attached to my front like a really well-dressed little air bag.

  I did, however, tell the Princess that a recent study found that children watch how you drive, and if you’re steering with your knees while you add cream to your coffee, texting and curling your eyelashes, they’ll do the exact same thing.

  Which means I’m off coffee for a while. Also eyelashes.

  After an hour or so of driving around a church parking lot without incident, I took back the wheel and drove us home, feeling happy and sad at the same time. Happy because the Princess seemed to be a cautious, etiquette-conscious driver in the making. Sad because I forgot to TiVo Breaking Bad the night before. What? You were expecting something more introspective?

  Okay, how about this? Did you know that in Saudi Arabia, women aren’t allowed to drive? I’m not sure who does the carpool every day at Riyadh Preschool Learning Environment (“Where Every Kid Is Terrific!”) or who picks up the burka at the $2.25 Cleaners or who takes little Abdul to the orthodontist for the eighty gazillionth check on his spacers. Not to mention who takes his mother for her podiatry appointment twice a year.

  The reason given for not letting Saudi women drive is that the male leaders believe it will lead to premarital and extramarital sex. What the hell is on that driver’s test? It must be a lot more challenging than parallel parking.