I Need a Lifeguard Everywhere but the Pool

by Lisa Scottoline

  We begin back in my days when I lived in Center City, Philadelphia, and of course I didn’t have a parking space. I’d drive around the block for hours trying to find a place to park, and when Francesca was a baby, I got ticketed for pulling up in front of my own house to unload groceries, even though I lived on a side street and traffic was nonexistent.

  I remember the incident to this day, mainly because when I came out of the house with Baby Francesca and found the ticket on my windshield, I cursed for a long time, which was her introduction to her mother’s incredible way with words.

  Later, she actually repeated one of the words, unprintable here.

  Unfortunately, she’s a fast learner.

  Anyway, that’s when my life became all about the parking.

  I eventually moved out to the suburbs, where I had my very own driveway, which was a remarkable thing. It was small, but I had only one car and the driveway’s size made it cheap to reseal. Then I moved down to the farther suburbs and my driveway got bigger, and it was cracking, pitting, and fading, which meant it was time to reseal.

  So I got an estimate and almost fell over.

  But not in the driveway, because it would’ve been too expensive.

  My head would’ve made a dent that would’ve cost several thousand dollars to repair.

  Now listen, I don’t mind paying for home improvements, which is now my hobby. As we speak, my retirement fund is being invested in a garden room with copper light fixtures, cedar shakes, and a pretty turquoise couch.

  But those are fun things to spend money on.

  A driveway is not.

  A driveway is like a black river running by your house, like a nightmare water view.

  The more I started looking at my driveway, the more I started hating on my driveway.

  I start to wonder if I could do anything to improve it, and then I thought back to Downton Abbey, which was where I get all my decorating ideas.

  In my mind, that is.

  I loved the TV show, but in truth, I don’t remember a thing about the plot, all I recall is every inch of that incredible house, Downton Abbey.

  I imagined myself living there with about three hundred dogs and an incontinent corgi.

  In other words, DooDoo Abbey.

  And one of the things I remembered most about Downton Abbey was the fabulous driveway.

  Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to think it was of perfect little yellow round stones the exact color of 14 karat gold.

  Like golden pebbles.

  And they made a wonderfully pretentious crunching sound when one of the shiny cars drove over the driveway or one of the shiny horses clip-clopped past.

  WANT.

  And last summer, when Francesca and I were driving around on book tour, we ended up in beach towns, and I started to notice that the driveways were of really pretty stones, pebbles, or seashells, all of which was more appealing than my Black Asphalt River.

  So when I came home, while I was running errands I started looking at people’s driveways and even visited one I liked a lot, of flat red stones.

  I stalked driveways.

  That’s pretty suburban.

  I even started taking pictures of the nicer driveways and would look through them in bed at night, like pornography for middle-aged women.

  Who also happen to be Downton Abbey fans.

  There may be some overlap here.

  I started calling driveway people, none of whom had heard of Downton Abbey because they lacked estrogen.

  But one of them knew what I was talking about, and he talked me out of the golden pebbles because apparently they roll too much and have to be raked every day, which is perfect if you have a staff of servants but otherwise not.

  Instead, he suggested that we do something called chip and tar.

  Which I kept confusing with fish and chips, because it’s always about the carbohydrates.

  The bottom line is that they come to your house, spray goopy tar all over your driveway, then throw a bunch of tan stones on top of that.

  I was sold.

  And that’s what we did.

  It was even cheaper than another asphalt river.

  And it looks fabulous.

  Granted, Downton Abbey it ain’t.

  But I actually look forward to driving out of my house so I can hear the satisfying crunch under my tires, knowing that I am running over my retirement fund.

  That’s a great thing about home improvements.

  You can actually see what you’re mortgaging your future for.

  And if you’re lucky, you can hear it too.

  I Like Big Brains and I Cannot Lie

  Lisa

  I have excellent news, ladies.

  And it’s excellent news for men too, depending on how they feel about big butts on women.

  But, men, whatever your opinion, I’m advising you to keep it to yourself. Don’t go spouting off to your wife or significant other while you’re reading. You will start a conversation that can go sideways pretty quick.

  Or more appropriately, south.

  Bottom line, no pun, I came across an article reporting that women with big butts are less likely to develop disease and are even smarter than women with average or smaller butts.

  Finally, some good news!

  Even if it does seem completely unbelievable!

  According to the article, women with bigger butts have lower cholesterol levels because their—correction, our—hormones process sugar faster. And we also have less of a risk of developing cardiovascular conditions or diabetes.

  I know that sounds totally wrong, but I read it on the Internet, so you know it’s 100 percent correct.

  When it comes to medical information, the Internet is always dead-on.

  But if you rely on it, you end up dead.

  Just kidding.

  I absolutely do rely on the Internet for medical advice. In fact, I don’t even know why we have doctors anymore.

  Oh, right, we don’t.

  Because if your deductible is $6500, like mine, you basically don’t have a doctor. Or you better hope that if something bad happens to you, it ends up being really catastrophic so you get your money’s worth.

  Fingers crossed?

  To return to point, the article said that women with big butts have a surplus of omega-3 fatty acids.

  Or fatty assets.

  Or a fatty ass.

  Anyway, I believe that. Because I’m a woman with a big butt and I have a surplus of everything.

  Including goodwill and happiness!

  And in even better news, omega-3 fatty acids are related to improved brain function.

  How great is that?

  Aren’t you glad you came?

  You can thank me anytime!

  In fact, I hope you’re sitting on your nice big butt as you read this column, and now you know that you’re comprehending it at warp speed because of your superior brain function.

  Who knew that your brain was connected to your butt?

  Unless you’re one of those people who have their head up their ass.

  The article even said that the fatty tissue in our butts “traps harmful fatty particles and prevents cardiovascular disease.”

  Wait, what?

  That’s basically saying that fat traps fat—but maybe it does!

  After all, birds of a feather flock together.

  Who are we to question Dr. Internet?

  More excellent medical advice!

  So from now on, just look at your big fat butt and visualize it as some extremely fleshy Venus fly-trap, trapping all the fat in the tristate area, strengthening your heart and increasing your IQ.

  Fat is genius!

  Now, if the medical advice in this article is true, that would mean that the Kardashians are the smartest people ever.

  Laugh away, but the joke’s on you.

  They made zillions of dollars selling pictures of their butts.

  And we bought them.

  In other word
s, they made asses out of us.

  With their asses.

  GENIUS!

  I must say that I have never weighed in, again no pun, on the whole big-butt phenomenon. My butt is big and always has been, but I never viewed it as positive. When I was growing up, the cool thing was to have a flat, skinny, or nonexistent butt. Happily, those days are over.

  Or behind us.

  Nowadays, people pay to have butt implants, and since this article, I finally understand why.

  So people will think they’re smart.

  High Note

  Francesca

  Think back to yourself at fifteen.

  What was your greatest desire?

  What was your greatest fear?

  Do you still want what you wanted then? Do you still fear what you feared?

  That would be silly, right? But some of these old wishes and old dragons stick around.

  When I was fifteen, what I wanted more than anything was the lead role in the spring musical, Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado.

  I’ve written before about my long-standing, deeply nerdy love of all things Gilbert & Sullivan, and I was the only one in our drama guild who was familiar with the show when they announced it. The older girls only wanted to be the lead for the lead’s sake.

  I wanted to sing Yum-Yum because I loved her.

  Even with this head start, it would’ve been quite a coup for a sophomore to nab the principal female role. So I practiced endlessly for the audition. I didn’t need the sheet music that trembled in my hand.

  But it was a near miss. I was cast as the understudy. And as any understudy knows, a meteor would have to strike the lead for me to get to perform.

  I never did.

  Which wasn’t entirely bad, because my greatest fear?

  Performing the lead role of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado.

  See, there’s this high note in the soprano’s signature aria, “The Sun Whose Rays” that scared the hell out of me. It’s a B flat, not the highest note in my range, but it comes up twice, sung very slowly, and falls on the words “worth” and “a-wake,” which are very hard words to sing so high.

  When I was alone in the barn (it had the best privacy and acoustics), I could hit it most but not all of the time. But as soon as I got in front of someone, nerves clutched me around the throat, and it came out in a squeak.

  The thought of missing the note in front of everyone was a recurring nightmare.

  So I didn’t really think I deserved the role, in spite of how much I wanted it.

  Flash forward fifteen years, and the spring musical is no longer the apex of my year. Singing didn’t turn out to be my truest and deepest passion simply by virtue of being the most far-fetched.

  I am pursuing that passion, writing, this very minute, and I’m grateful to you readers who afford me the opportunity.

  Prioritizing our pursuits is part of adult life, and not everything makes the cut. Certain interests get demoted to hobby or shelved forever. I never lose sleep over not pursuing a career in musical-theater performance.

  But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it from time to time.

  Which is part of the reason I joined the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Society. The group isn’t a performance troupe, there are other organizations that put on real productions within the communities. But that’s part of why I like it—low commitment, low pressure.

  I joked about it all week. How silly it was that I was doing it, how bad I was going to be with no rehearsal and being so rusty, how this was hardly some arch revenge on my high-school doubters—I ironically texted my friends:

  I SHOWED THEM! LOOK WHO’S SINGING IN A CHURCH BASEMENT, BETCHES!

  It was true, but it also helped me calm myself down. I couldn’t admit to myself that I still cared about how this performance went.

  A lot.

  The night before, I allowed my thirty-year-old self one moment to take my fifteen-year-old self seriously, and I texted my friend’s wife who is a voice coach to see if she had any tips on how to hit the note, downplaying it even then:

  “It’s a super casual concert, not prestigious. It’s just that a-WAKE is such a weird sound. I have to just say, ah-WAHH.”

  She replied: “Minimize the W too, all you need to do is move your lips slightly to suggest the W but just stay open.”

  Hmm. In all my years practicing it in the shower, I had never thought of that.

  When I arrived the night of the concert to see it wasn’t being held in our usual church basement but in the nave of the church itself, I felt all those old nerves tightening around my throat again.

  When it was my turn, I stood in the middle of the stage and began to sing, I might as well have been a high-school sophomore again. The notes climbing slowly, higher and higher.

  But then I spotted an elderly woman with white hair sitting in the audience, and I noticed she was mouthing the words as I sang them.

  Maybe this was her favorite song, too, loved for a lot longer than fifteen years.

  And before I knew it, the B Flat was there, and it came out, clear as a bell.

  The woman clasped her hands in front of her chest when I hit it.

  It was my best performance for the best audience that fifteen-year-old me could have ever hoped for.

  I’m not going to make some treacly point about how it was all the sweeter for the wait. It might have meant more to me when I was fifteen, when my world was smaller, and everything felt like a big deal.

  But what took me by surprise was the sense of rediscovery, of connection, and of triumph. Resurrecting that old bogeyman, defeating it, and doing something just for the love of it was well worth feeling a little silly for caring a little too much.

  Life changes us.

  But not that much.

  Collect Them All

  Lisa

  You’ve heard the expression, “Out with the old, in with the new.”

  I’m not familiar.

  I say that because I’m noticing lately that I’m doing a lot of “in with the new,” but not “out with the old.”

  Maybe because I’m getting older.

  Or because I’m getting wiser.

  Either way, I have too many books.

  I know, I don’t think it’s a problem, either.

  The only thing is, they’re overtaking my house.

  We begin a few years ago, when I notice that my books are piling up all over my dining table and I didn’t have any bookshelves for them. So I had some bookshelves installed, first one wall of them in the dining room, than a second wall, and a third, and over time, even those bookshelves got full. All these were books that I have read and loved, then I started collecting signed books, and so when one of my favorite authors would tour, I just called the store.

  Who knew you could do that?

  I did.

  I started to get to the point where I shelved my signed books separately, in alphabetical order by author, and even had a little sign made for them.

  The sign says, Signed.

  Subtlety is not my strong suit.

  You know this if you read my books.

  Then my signed collection of books started growing, roughly at the same time as my TBR pile started growing. Hard-core readers know that a TBR pile means books To Be Read, but for me, it could easily mean books To Be Reshelved Without Being Read, because more and more, I am acquiring too many books.

  Let’s assume for present purposes there is such a thing.

  And so now I’m thinking about putting more bookshelves in my kitchen, of all places.

  Why?

  Because it’s the only room in the house that presently has no bookshelves.

  I don’t know if you can put bookshelves in the kitchen, or if it’s against federal law, but the great thing about a middle-aged woman is that we make our own rules.

  And also that we never throw anything away.

  And now there are going to be bookshelves in my kitchen.

  Because I can’t part wi
th a single book.

  I don’t even lend my books.

  Why?

  Because they’re mine, all mine. I treasure each one. I just love books.

  The child in me will ask, if you love books so much, why don’t you marry them?

  The answer, of course, is that I have.

  I have books that lasted longer than both marriages combined, and somewhere along the line, I became a collector.

  I always thought that the world divided up into people who collect things and people who don’t, with me being distinctly in the latter, but no longer.

  I stopped being judgy.

  And somehow the pleasure from collecting is different from everything else. Maybe it’s rooted in the childhood commercials, because I know I can recall them instantly, where they say, Collect Them All.

  You can never have too many books!

  And here I am, collecting them all, which is the worst kind of acquisitive urge because it’s one that can never be fulfilled.

  I mean all?

  It was one thing when there were three Barbies, but now there are 479 Barbies, and of course there are an endless number of books.

  And I can’t seem to help myself, nor do I even want to try.

  My name is Lisa and I’m a bookaholic.

  Please tell me I’m not alone in this.

  Are any of you collecting anything? Is it threatening to overtake you? Are you building more shelves, display cases, or signs that say Signed?

  Have you lost your damn mind, too?

  Or are we simply greedy?

  I’m wondering what drives the urge to collect, and whether it’s just hoarding without a cable TV show.

  What set am I trying to complete?

  And don’t tell me it’s myself.

  Because you might be right.

  It’s a Boy!

  Lisa

  Did you hear they invented a birth control that men can use?

  Just kidding.

  Seriously.

  By way of background, you may have heard the news that recently, there was a trial of 266 men who took hormonal birth control, in the form of an injection that mixed testosterone and progestogen. An article I read said that the idea was to “trick the testicles into reducing production of the highly concentrated testosterone they need to create sperm.”

  Quite an idea.

  Happily, my days of tricking testicles are over.

  In fact, testicles might be the only thing about men I don’t miss.