I Need a Lifeguard Everywhere but the Pool

by Lisa Scottoline

  A gold mine!

  If they don’t stop there, where will they stop?

  It’s a slippery slope, ladies.

  But evidently, it’s not slippery enough.

  Take it from me, they won’t stop until we’re greased pigs, head to toe.

  Until every square inch of us is slathered with costly lubricants.

  We’ll have to shovel the goop on us with a trowel.

  We won’t ever be able to get dressed.

  Because the emollients will never sink in.

  Dogs will lick us all over.

  And if we have to leave the house, we will simply lay our clothes on the floor and slither into them like girl snakes.

  Because the alleged point of the creams is that they stop aging.

  I saw an ad for a face-and-neck cream that said, “Turn Back the Hands of Time.”

  I don’t mean to get all science-y on you, but that’s not possible.

  You know how I know?

  Professor Cher taught me.

  And if Cher can’t turn back time, nobody can.

  There is only one part of my body that gets dry enough for me to bother moisturizing.

  And that’s my feet.

  And you know what I use on my dry feet?

  It’s called Bag Balm.

  Not because I’m a bag.

  Because it’s used on cow udders.

  It’s made by the Dairy Association Company, has been sold since 1899, and it comes in a green tin. On the side of the tin, it reads, “After each milking, apply thoroughly and allow coating to remain on surface.”

  I’m not even kidding.

  Because evidently all of us girls have problems with our décolleté.

  The online ad for Bag Balm says, “It’s not just for cows anymore!”

  Now that’s marketing.

  And by that they mean, it’s for dog paws.

  It cost seven dollars.

  It won’t make any cosmetic company rich.

  But if I were you, I’d buy some and skip the other creams.

  After all, what do they think we are?

  Boobs?

  Barking up the Wrong Tree

  Francesca

  YOUR DOG IS BARKING LONG AND LOUD AND LATE. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

  That’s what was written on a piece of paper taped to my front door in the morning.

  Who left it? The note was unsigned. My apartment hallway was empty.

  Most puzzling, Pip had not been barking. He had snoozed soundly in my bed in various positions around and on top of my head all night.

  So, what on earth was she talking about?

  I say “she” because this nasty note was written in incongruously loopy script. It was only missing the hearts dotting the i’s.

  Plus, the passive aggression in leaving an anonymous complaint taped to my door, when it just as easily could have been slipped underneath, said “mean girl.”

  This was the girl’s bathroom approach to resolving neighborly conflict.

  Clearly this was a misunderstanding. The most likely explanation was that she was hearing a different dog barking, one that would presumably continue barking, while she would continue to falsely accuse me and my dog. But since she hadn’t signed the note, I had no way of reaching her to clear it up.

  I believe there’s a beagle down the hall, but I wasn’t about to start pointing fingers at neighbor dogs.

  I’m no snitch.

  It was a preposterous accusation, I threw out the note and hoped the problem would sort itself out.

  Then a terrifying thought: what if she told the co-op board?

  Co-op boards in New York apartment buildings are like illuminati. No one is sure exactly who they are, but they control everything and rule by fiat. Pip and I both had to interview with a member of the board to get my apartment. My dog’s politeness is a requirement for living here.

  If he got a reputation for bad behavior, we could be out on the street!

  The injustice of it was very upsetting. Pip is my baby, my angel, my pride and joy. He is the best-behaved dog I’ve ever had.

  He is also the worst watchdog I have ever had.

  He’s almost purebred teddy bear, and he has few vestigial dog instincts. He never barks at noises outside, from other apartments, or even direct knocks on my door.

  When the Chinese-food-delivery guy buzzes, he barely lifts his head off the couch and looks at me, like, “You gonna get that?”

  The anti-watchdog

  In fact, when my old apartment was burglarized, he was completely silent as the burglars broke my window, gathered all my Apple electronics, and left out my front door carrying my items in my Lisa Scottoline promotional tote bag!

  If nothing else, he should have barked at the irony.

  But that night, my next-door neighbors didn’t hear a peep.

  This was the witness-stand testimony I rehearsed in my mind.

  Although I was confident in my dog’s innocence, the note made me paranoid. I felt guilty.

  Over the next few days, if he yipped once during playtime, I’d rush to shush him. I feared every neighbor I passed going in and out of the building was potentially the one who secretly hated us.

  Then a few weeks later, just when we started to get comfortable again, another note:

  YOUR DOG BARKS FOR HOURS ON END, ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT. LEAVING YOUR DOG ALONE IS UNFAIR TO YOUR DOG, UNFAIR TO YOUR NEIGBHORS, AND AGAINST THE LAW. FIX IT OR I WILL CALL THE POLICE!!!

  Gurl, no. You did not just accuse me of being a bad dog mother.

  If the threat to call the police was meant to intimidate me, it had the opposite effect. It snapped me to attention.

  Pip couldn’t speak for himself, so I would be his defense lawyer. The best defense is a good offense.

  A charm offensive.

  First, I left a sweet-as-pie reply note on my own door explaining the unfortunate misunderstanding and leaving all my contact info should she wish to discuss it further.

  Although I never heard from my accuser, I know she received it, because she ripped the note from my door, leaving a bit of torn tape and paper behind.

  Luckily, I retained a copy for my records.

  Second, instead of being afraid of my neighbors, I was chatty and solicitous. I held doors, I helped unload groceries, I brought coffee to the doormen. And each time, I was sure to bring up the case of mistaken identity in our conversation.

  “I just feel so sorry I can’t help whoever is being disturbed, but you know it couldn’t be Pip,” I’d say.

  “Oh, no, I never hear him bark. He’s such a good boy.”

  Say it louder, so the jury can hear you.

  I called our superintendent myself and said I had a sensitive matter to discuss. He came over, and I told him, through quavering voice, how upset I was that a mystery neighbor would think I was so inconsiderate and was now leaving threatening notes.

  “I mean, ‘barking all day’? My Pip?” I gestured to the dog, who lay flat on the ground. He wagged his tail lightly when I said his name.

  He couldn’t have performed better if I’d coached him.

  “If all my tenants were as nice and quiet as you and Pip, my job would be much easier,” my super said. “Do you have the note?”

  Of course I’d preserved the evidence.

  He read it. “I think I know who this might be. Lots of problems with this tenant, not your fault. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of this.”

  “Oh, thank you, thank you!” I was relieved. And I was confident that I wouldn’t hear from my cranky neighbor again.

  I never did.

  Turns out, the illuminati is me.

  Question Authority

  Lisa

  History was made in the Supreme Court, this week.

  Why?

  That’s your question, isn’t it?

  It’s a natural question.

  And just coincidentally, it’s the very point of this column, which is that history was made this week in the Supreme Cour
t because it is the first time in ten years that Justice Clarence Thomas has asked a question.

  This would be my kind of Supreme Court Justice.

  I’m guessing he never asked a question because he has all the answers.

  I mean, what good is a Supreme Court Justice if he has to go asking the lawyers questions every time they come in to argue their case?

  He’s not there to do their job.

  He’s there to do his job.

  Which is to … well, be.

  In a robe.

  You’ve heard the expression, “Question authority.”

  Well, you don’t need to question authority if you are the authority.

  You’ve probably also heard people say, “Can I ask a dumb question?”

  And whenever somebody says that, usually somebody else will say something like, “There are no dumb questions.”

  But Justice Thomas knows that isn’t true.

  Every question is a dumb question.

  Especially if you know everything.

  And are smarter than absolutely everyone.

  The sheer brilliance of Justice Thomas can be better understood when you realize that only the toughest cases in the entire country reach the lofty heights of the Supreme Court. In fact, I was curious about the percentage of cases that got to the high court, so I went online to the Supreme Court’s website to find that information. Of course, the first place I turned was their FAQs, which stands for Frequently Asked Questions.

  Justice Thomas never has Frequently Asked Questions.

  Only dumb people do, like me.

  And others who use websites for information.

  The answer on the website says verbatim, “The Court receives approximately 7,000-8,000 petitions for a writ of certiorari each Term. The Court grants and hears oral argument in about 80 cases.”

  The website didn’t say what percentage that is.

  But you get the idea.

  It’s pretty damn few.

  And I know from my lawyer days that the Supreme Court takes only those cases that are the most demanding, difficult, and cutting-edge in all of American jurisprudence.

  So you can imagine how incredibly brilliant Justice Clarence Thomas is that he doesn’t even have a question about these impossibly difficult legal cases that come before him.

  I stand in awe.

  Because I have questions about everything.

  My first question is, if the Supreme Court gets eight thousand petitions and only grants eighty, what percentage is that?

  I think the answer is either 10 percent or 1 percent, but I’m bad at decimals.

  And I have other questions, too.

  In fact, I have so many questions, my head can’t hold them all.

  And my questions aren’t even about the hard cases that come before the Supreme Court, but just about the dumb stuff that happens to me every day.

  For example, can I ever train the dogs not to bother the cat?

  Or, why do I keep forgetting where I left my phone?

  And, who keeps peeing on the rug in the entrance hall?

  Is it me?

  I can never stay quiet when I have questions and often interrupt people who are saying things, just to start asking questions. For example, if I get lost and you start giving me directions, I will ask you in thirty seconds if you just said left or right. It’s not that I didn’t hear you, it’s just that I have a question.

  I have questions about everything I read and about everything I see on TV, and sometimes I even have questions for myself, like why am I watching this dumb TV show?

  I’M FULL OF QUESTIONS.

  So as soon as I heard that Justice Thomas had asked his first question in ten years, I had a question.

  The question was, What was Justice Thomas’s question?

  So I looked it up and found out that the case involved a man named Mr. Voisine who had shot and killed a bald eagle, and when the police went to Mr. Voisine’s house to investigate, they found a gun. But as it turned out, Mr. Voisine had a criminal record of fourteen convictions for domestic violence, and because of that, his owning a rifle was in violation of the Lautenberg Amendment, a federal statute that makes it illegal for convicted domestic abusers to own guns.

  Justice Thomas’s question was, “Can you give me another area where a misdemeanor violation suspends a constitutional right?”

  Which is proof that there are dumb questions.

  No matter how you feel about gun rights, I think we can all agree that a man with fourteen counts of domestic abuse, in addition to taking aim at our nation’s symbol, is not the poster boy for the NRA.

  Justice Stephen Breyer almost said as much, when he replied, “We don’t have to decide that here.”

  And, of course, I have a question.

  My question is, What the hell?

  But lately, that is becoming an FAQ.

  Something We Can All Agree On

  Lisa

  I’m watching everything about the elections.

  I’m watching the Republicans.

  I’m watching the Democrats.

  I’m watching the debates and the rallies.

  I’m watching the entrance polls and the exit polls.

  You get the idea.

  I’m all over the election situation.

  Bottom line, there’s a lot of dissent and discord.

  But I have found the one thing we can all agree on:

  We must stop having people sitting or standing behind the candidate while the candidate is speaking.

  It’s distracting.

  I try to listen to what the candidate is saying, keeping my mind open and giving everybody a chance. But there’s a slew of random people sitting behind him, and I start watching them instead of the candidate.

  Look at that hot guy in the front row.

  Does he have a wedding ring?

  If not, does he have a pulse?

  That’s all I ask.

  A functioning circulatory system.

  Blood pressure.

  North and south.

  Don’t forget south.

  I forget why, but it’s important.

  Or if there’s no hot guy, there’s a woman behind the candidate, looking down at her phone the entire time the candidate is speaking.

  Which drives me nuts.

  What kind of person sits three feet away from a person who might become the next President of the United States and looks at her phone during the entire speech?

  I try to watch the candidate but all I can think of is, what is she doing on that damn phone?

  I forgive her only if she’s reading a novel.

  One of mine.

  But I doubt that she is. My readers are geniuses who pay attention when something important is happening, like a speech by the potential LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD.

  Plus, I get distracted by the outfits that the people in the background are wearing. I try to size up who they are, what they’re like, whether they’re like me, and whether they’re just slobs.

  Full disclosure, I’m just a slob.

  Worst of all is when they wear funny costumes, because I’m completely distracted by them. Once when Donald Trump was speaking, behind him was a person dressed exactly like a wall.

  I got distracted.

  It was a terrific wall outfit.

  I’d like to see Wall Guy on Halloween.

  What does he wear?

  Dockers and a polo?

  And then there’s the times the candidates are interviewed outside, standing or sitting on director’s chairs. Sure as shooting, there’s a group of random people behind them, looking motley as all hell.

  In fact, “sure as shooting” is a poor choice of words, because that’s what distracts me. Every time I see the people who stand so close to a presidential candidate, I worry if they’re going to shoot the candidate.

  It’s not funny, but it’s true.

  I can’t help it.

  It’s how I think.

  I try to watch the c
andidate during the interview, but instead I end up watching the random people, praying that none of them goes for a weapon.

  It makes no sense to let them stand there.

  It’s an assassination-waiting-to-happen.

  Those people don’t have to go through a metal detector to stand so close to a candidate because, at this point, the candidates are only candidates. But one minute after the candidate gets elected, they get security.

  Until then, all they got is me.

  And then during one of the debates, I got distracted by a bunch of kids in the audience, because the houselights were on and the kids made faces, bopped around in their seats, and tried to get on TV.

  In other words, they acted like kids.

  First, I was annoyed at the kids, but then I started worrying about them.

  I knew they were going to get yelled at on the ride home.

  Then I worried they were going to be punished by their parents, teased at school, and embarrassed for the rest of their lives, labeled as The Kids Who Acted Out At The Debate.

  Don’t they know the adults are the only ones allowed to act out at debates?

  And then there was the debate where some woman in the audience kept whooping. We couldn’t see her, but we could hear her, like the most distracting laugh track ever.

  So from now on, let’s have the candidates speak in a bubble, with no random people watching, clapping, or wearing wall costumes.

  This election is stressful enough.

  Topsy-Turvy

  Francesca

  My best guy friend and I live two blocks away from each other and we share one very particular interest: Gilbert & Sullivan.

  William S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan were the writer-composer duo that created fourteen comic operas in the late nineteenth century. Their humor is satirical, heavy on wordplay, and pokes fun at Victorian England and theatrical clichés of the day.

  Don’t make that face. Before Hamilton and rap musicals, there were patter-songs.

  While others bonded over keg stands in college, my friend and I grew close standing onstage in various G&S productions. So when he found the Gilbert & Sullivan Society of New York on Facebook, we had to go to a meeting.

  I remember when we first walked into the church basement where the club meets, someone helpfully asked us if we were lost. (This happened again at the second and third meetings we attended).

  We’re about fifty years younger than the average member.

  That didn’t stop us. My friend and I were both close to our grandmothers, and we appreciate the value of intergenerational friendship. The members showed us the only authentic, top-notch diner in midtown, and my friend redesigned the group’s website to actually make it functional.