I told the Princess that she was lucky to live in a country like the USA, where she can’t be jailed for simply “driving while female.” Rage on, Saudi sisters. We have your back.
Parking Lot Do’s and Don’ts
Oh, where to start? Oh, I know! With a true story …
Last week, we had twenty-four inches of rainfall in two days in my hometown. I needed groceries because we were down to having toothpaste for supper, so out I went, into the storm, with the dedication of a pioneer woman forced to forage for high-quality frozen lasagna for her family.
There were lots of fools like me out in the rain, but I chose my store carefully because it has a marvelous overhang thingy that helps you stay out of the rain while loading your groceries at the curb.
I left my filled cart at the curb in the clever groove that keeps it from rolling into the parking lot, presumably in search of a happier life. But when I drove up, I discovered a van parked smack in the middle of the loading area. A woman sat in the van, unaware that her Very Own Private Parking Spot, uh, wasn’t.
I tapped gently on my horn. Notice I said “gently.” I hate it when people honk like you’re getting ready to run over a toddler. Even if you’re getting ready to run over a toddler. So, yes, I tapped gently—almost Zen-like, if you can imagine that.
No response.
More gentle tapping, and, well, finally I had to approach her window, where I wanted to shout: “Move your car, you mouth-breathing malingerer” but instead said, “Please move up; I’m going to get soaked.”
She grunted, polished off her Funyuns, crumpled the bag, tossed it into the back of her odious van, and moved up. Just a little. Bitch.
I still got fairly much soaked. I looked, with sympathy, at the line of cars forming behind me, then made huge circles in the air beside my temple and pointed at the van. The man in line behind me smiled softly. What had he been smoking?
The moral: Think of others, all the time. Not Funyuns. Others. See? Not so hard, is it?
Driving etiquette may be even more important in parking lots. How many times have we staked out a spot in a crowded lot, turned the blinker on to signal our intentions, waited for the car to back up, and watched another car whip in ahead of you and claim your space.
She didn’t even signal!
In this circumstance, and only this one, you have only one possible response, and that is to key the offender’s car. Discreetly, of course. You don’t want to end up in one of those ghastly mug shot magazines with your startled face and bad hair right beside the child molesters, Lohans, and those wacky Amish beard-cutters. When you do key the car, be sure to bear down and go super deep so they can’t just get the half-price fix at Maaco. Not that I would know anything about any of that.
Summary Because You Know You Won’t Remember All This Stuff
• Tailgate at all intersections.
• Use turn signals and turning lanes unless you don’t wanna.
• Squirrels suck.
• Refrain from cursing at or gesturing at other drivers, no matter how much they deserve both, because they could kill you and, thus, make you super late for work.
chapter 18
Foreign Affairs: Stop Making Me Feel Stupid with Your Fancy Multilingualism
One of the vilest breaches of etiquette is to speak to others in a foreign language while in the company of people who speak only English. Yeah, I said it.
Please save your righteous indignation. I don’t want to hear that if we were European, where even the average dumb-ass (Russell Brand) can speak four or five languages, this would be less of a problem, so of course it’s our fault for being so hopelessly bourgeois to begin with.
While some of you might consider this brutally unenlightened, I’m afraid that this would come under the category of a “you” problem.
I’m not asking for fluent English at the Korean nail salon, for instance. I’m just asking for good manners. In other words, why must you scrutinize my pitifully rough heels and then scream very loudly to your coworker something that sounds like “Dong chow hok wad ho!”
It only makes it worse when the coworker scurries over, glances down, and laughs out loud. I mean doubles the hell over, she’s laughing so hard. Not cool.
Ah, laughter. The universal language. So I laugh, too. And then they abruptly stop. For a horrible second, they might think that the one yokel in Eastern North Carolina who speaks Korean has landed in their mall spa, and ain’t they got all the luck?
I can only imagine that “Dong chow hok wad ho!” is Korean for “Oooh, birthday pedicure. Big spender! She gets her toes painted once a year whether they need it or not!”
One time, after one of these foreign exchanges with her coworker, the technician giving me the pedicure returned to look at me with something approaching genuine sorrow:
“You work in garden all the time, miss?”
See? She might not speak English, but she can speak fluent bitch, am I right?
I truly love these nail places because they’re fast, reasonable, and there’s a better-than-average chance that one of the pictures on the wall will have one of those moving waterfalls in it. I love that shit. And I love how, if they’re busy, they just text more techs, who magically appear in under a minute. Are they beamed in from the pretzel kiosk? How is that even possible?
As an aside, there is one very odd aspect to a visit to my mall nail spa: The TV is always on. It’s a huge flat-screen, mercifully closed-captioned, because it’s always playing the same DVD of a young samurai slaying a village, and really, it’s a tad violent to see while you’re getting your calves massaged with eucalyptus oils.
Wordless bloodletting overhead aside, customer service wise, we’re all good. It’s just the language thing that needs to change.
I realize that there are a few English phrases that are memorized, but what amazes me is that there must be a list of “possible responses from the bossy American” who happens to be at your station.
“New glitter acrylic?” a technician who can speak almost no English inquires.
“No thank you,” I respond.
She assumes a big, oversized look of sorrow, as if I just strangled her kittens. Trust me, there is really nothing sadder than the face of a Korean nail tech who experiences the firm decline of a service upgrade.
She looks so sad that I hastily explain that I’m a little “long in the tooth” for that sort of stuff.
The idiom only confuses her further, and we are off to a very rocky start. I’m afraid she might apply yin–yang symbols to my teeth, at this rate. I decide that if she does, I won’t complain. And overhead, the young samurai has just disemboweled another villager at the exact moment I’m offered “soothing sugar scrub no charge?”
“Uh, no thanks. I like my disembowelments with an eyebrow wax usually.”
She looks confused, and I realize that I have been kind of a shit, so I say, “Sorry. Yes. Sugar scrub, please.”
I don’t want to be the Ugly American. Inside or outside.
Question: My daughter-in-law is from another country, and when we all get together for holidays, she and her family never speak English, which leaves me feeling left out and foolish. I feel like they are talking about me. What can I do?
Well, I hope you’ve been paying attention because, yes, of course they’re talking about you. Was it the part where they pointed at you and giggled behind their hands that gave it away? Wow. You truly are the sharpest tool in the shed, aren’t you?
Rude is rude in any language, so the only thing you can do is to say something like: “Please speak English. I can’t understand you.” This will be much more effective if you yell it at the top of your lungs.
Kidding! Don’t yell, but do make it very clear that you’re completely pissed off. I mean, really, who do they think they are? You gave them your son, after all, and while he was a classic underachiever and, if we’re being honest, you never loved him quite as much as his younger brother, he’s very much in love with
a woman who, despite her own flawless English, purposely leaves you out of the conversation whenever her parents are around.
Although I generally detest “walking a mile in someone else’s shoes” or “trying to look at an issue from both sides,” this really may be the exception.
After all, how frustrating it must be for them to hear you prattle on in English about your great-aunt’s buttermilk pie recipe as you serve it. They don’t have a freaking clue, so stop trying. Just slice the pie, shove the plate at them, and go back to your bedroom and watch The King of Queens.
Do not emerge from your bedroom until your son has taken his wife and “those people” aside and explained that you’re feeling left out, and while it’s true that you can be an overwrought, demanding handful even if everybody in the room is speaking perfect English, they really are being fundamentally ill-mannered.
You’ll want to hear all of this, so while I don’t generally condone eavesdropping (well, actually, it’s my third favorite pastime after scrapbooking and drinking too much), remember it really does help to keep your ear pressed to a juice glass at the door to listen in. You won’t want to miss a word! Except perhaps that part about being overwrought and demanding.
Question: Why can’t we look at this differently? Being a monolingual society isn’t anything to brag about, now, is it?
America is hardly monolingual. For instance, as a Southerner, I speak fluent redneck, so this makes me somewhat bilingual. I usually try to have a “when in Rome” philosophy when it comes to deciding which “language” to use. I meant Rome, Georgia, of course. This isn’t language hypocrisy; it’s just about knowing who you are and where you are. If you’re not skilled at this, you can end up the butt of the joke.
My friend’s cousin moved up north and returned home for a visit after a couple of years. The family had a good laugh at her expense after days of listening to her talk “citified” when she let slip, during a tour of the farm, “Oh, my, the ’baccy is certainly growing tall this year.”
While I don’t generally condone “putting on airs” or “getting above your raisin’,” there are times when we instinctively know to drop the redneckspeak. If, for instance, someone who looks anything at all like Pierce Brosnan walks into the room and he’s interviewing you for your dream job, it’s time to retrieve your dropped g’s, stop announcin’ what you’re “fixin’ to do,” and resume being the clever worldly woman you are. We know how to talk proper; we choose not to.
And now a question, directed at me, from my good friend Shelley: You know that thing you do every single time we go out to dinner and you’ve had a couple of beers and you tell me to “Talk German! Y’all listen. Really. She sounds so cool. Go ahead!” Well, I just hate that. I’m not a show dog, for heaven’s sake.
Well, ouchenstein, Shelley. I had no idea you felt this way, and I am so very sorry. Really, really sorry. I mean, the last thing I would want to do is piss off a German. Just sayin’.
Shelley says, correctly, that asking her to “talk German” shouldn’t be a party game, and it’s just as demeaning as pointing a gun at someone’s feet and telling them to “Dance!”
I know that she’s right. I hate it when someone recognizes me and says: “Hey! Say something funny!” Which I never can. I can’t even tell a decent dirty joke, much less be funny on command. Inevitably, I apologize for being so lame and they walk off mumbling to one another stuff like, “Damn, I thought she’d be funnier.” Yeah, well, I thought I’d be smarter, richer, and thinner, too, but shit happens. Deal with it.
Politeness: The Universal Language
• No matter how much you want to, never invite someone who is speaking a foreign language in your presence to “Go back to your country.” The only time that phrase is ever acceptable is if you are British and you are speaking to Madonna. In this case, I believe I speak for Queen Elizabeth, Charles, William, Kate, and even Kate’s sister (the pretty little thing who had to wear a fake ass to the royal wedding) when I say “Godspeed.”
• If you are speaking English in the ladies’ room at the Ramada because you are at your cousin’s quinceañera and I walk in because, while I don’t know your cousin, I really need to pee and then you, like, look at each other and then immediately start speaking in Spanish, well, amigas, it is on. Because I have three years of high school Spanish under Mrs. Vega, and she was muy tough. See, I can understand what you bitches are saying. Although it is something of a mystery why you think “the maroon llama likes the chicken to go to the library.”
chapter 19
Facebook Etiquette: An Oxymoron
Facebook is fertile ground for etiquette violations.… The lover who learns she’s been jilted when her boyfriend suddenly changes his relationship status to “single” … the pesky, impersonal pleas to participate in time-sucking games and quizzes and calendars and causes … the endless (and mostly mindless) political rants … the unauthorized use of that photo of you sucking the remains of a Jell-O shot from some cabana boy’s navel in Key West.
But really. Need I go on?
True story: Just this morning a Facebook “friend” posted a ghastly photo of a dead dog on my home page while urging me to join her pet-adoption cause.
Unfriend. Unfriend. Unfriend.
Question: I really want to unfriend someone because she puts so many obnoxious posts on Facebook. We’re not real-life friends, just went to high school together, but it could be awkward at the upcoming reunion if she knows I defriended her.
Well, which is it? Defriend or unfriend? Don’t get me wrong; I don’t really care; I’m just asking. Either way, this is what you get for accepting friend requests from former classmates because you naïvely believe that you’ll somehow like this person way more than you did twenty-five years ago, when you caught her blowing your boyfriend under the bleachers at the homecoming game. And remember how it stung when she just shrugged those little toad shoulders of hers and said, “Well, somebody had to do it,” like he was going off to war and all he wanted was this big ol’ blow job before he left?
Even if it wasn’t something that “grody,” as you used to say, the fact is, you weren’t real-life friends then, and you shouldn’t be Facebook friends now. Who really cares if she acts huffy with you at the reunion? You don’t need her or her tired-ass status updates (“I’m making pudding tonight!”) to punctuate your day, do you?
And speaking of status updates, the worst ones have some app or the other that tells your friends where you are at that very moment. (By the by, it took me quite a while to realize that “app” is short for “application” not “appetizer,” and now that I know that, I don’t care at all anymore.) I have a FB friend whom I truly love in real life, but she simply must stop these updates of “Manda Sue is at Best Buy,” followed thirty minutes later by “Manda Sue is at Olive Garden.” It’s not as if when I see her later this week, I’m going to say, “Oh my gosh! I saw where first you were at Best Buy and then you were at Olive Garden and then…”
You know why? Because I don’t give a fuck. So, yes, unfriend this “friend” and move on. Proper etiquette dictates that you should never deliberately hurt someone’s feelings, but proper etiquette also dictates that you shouldn’t blow someone else’s boyfriend. I remember Emily Post writing something about that one time.…
Question: I keep getting invitations to “events” that take place up to three thousand miles away. It seems rude not to respond, but really, there’s very little chance that I will fly fifteen hundred miles to see my ex-boyfriend’s Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band perform at a bar in Cootertail, Texas, am I right?
Well, I don’t know. Are they really good? Or do they just do one half-assed Skynyrd cover after another? I’d pretty much crawl nekkid over a field of broken glass to hear a decent cover of “Free Bird.” Okay, I’m getting sidetracked here. Let’s pretend you asked about going to an Average White Band tribute band performance instead. Yeah, that’ll never happen.
As with so much of what passes for
an “invitation” in these days of social media, the truly etiquette conscious may wonder how to properly reply. The answer is simple: You respond in kind. If someone, for instance, tweets their wedding shower invitation, you are within your rights to tweet back, in 140 characters, that despite the obvious love and care they have demonstrated in their kind invitation, you will not attend. You can even punctuate this with a clever “hashtag,” as they like to say. Something on the order of #lazycheapbuttfriend.
So, no, you don’t need to decline this “invitation” with your finest vellum monogrammed stationery and fountain pen. It would be high-larious, though, if you did. I mean, if you had the time, think of how perplexed the recipients would be to receive a proper note of regret in their real mailbox. They’d be all like, “Whaaa? I just wanted to know if she wanted to come to my home jewelry party three states away, and, whoa, look at this monogram and shit.…”
Question: Isn’t it kind of dumb to let the whole world know you’re not at home? If you post about your vacay every day on Facebook, couldn’t the wrong people find out that you’re out of town and go break into your home and steal all your belongings?
Whoa. Someone’s been watching too many episodes of CSI: Fort Wayne or some such. Actually, you make a good point. I suggest that if you must post real-time updates on your fabulous vacation, beginning with the obligatory picture of your toes in the foreground and the ocean in the background and caption a simple “Ahhhh,” then do leave behind a very large and very hungry attack dog for the unfortunate robbers to deal with.
This brings us to, in a roundabout way, the subject of bragging on Facebook. It’s extremely poor manners to brag in person, and it’s no different in the virtual world. We know that you’re over the moon that your up-to-now simpleton of a son hasn’t made higher than a D-plus on math and now he’s gone and gotten himself a B, but we just don’t care. We may “Like” that status, but we’re just doing it out of sheer politeness. We don’t wish you any ill will, but if your status repeatedly contains phrases like “I’m so proud of my son/daughter/husband/ferret,” you’re going to be unfriended. You are a blowhard.
Rude Bitches Make Me Tired: Slightly Profane and Entirely Logical Answers to Modern Etiquette Dilemmas Page 11
