Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim

by Lisa Scottoline

  What gives?

  I went online, where I learned that every time somebody reads a text, they get a surge of dopamine in the brain. You know about dopamine. It makes you dopey.

  And its little burst of pleasure makes getting a text almost addictive, much like trolling the Internet in general. I can’t explain why I am the one addicted to Francesca’s texts when she isn’t, except that I’m dopier.

  And her iPhone, unlike my BlackBerry, actually beeps until you answer. My BlackBerry doesn’t, maybe because it knows that uncool business types like me don’t need to be told twice.

  Yet Francesca just says no, and it took me a while before I realized that she was having ongoing text conversations with four different people throughout the day, all while we were running errands, making dinner, and cleaning up. To her credit, she did this with such finesse that I didn’t notice, in contrast to my rookie reaching for my phone at each text alert, even during dinner.

  Most of my texts are about work, some are about fun, but I mentally feel them piling up if I don’t answer them. Texts are the new email, the never-ending list of Things To Do. I actually have a crack on the dry skin of my thumb from my CrackBerry, and sometimes my neck hurts from looking down all the time.

  “Mom,” Francesca said. “You need to chill.”

  And I do, but I can’t.

  Except when it comes to dating, where the time you take to return the text is carefully measured, and examined. I wasn’t sure of the protocol, but took a poll of my besties Laura and Franca, in addition to Francesca, and here’s the skinny: If he replies right away, you reply right away. If he replies a day later, you reply a day later. In texting, symmetry rules.

  Also it matters what you say and how you say it. I have edited my text messages more times than any of my novels. Francesca has coached me to be more informal and approving—ironically, the tone of every one of these columns, but nowhere in anything I text. Evidently, when you set up a date, “looking forward to it” isn’t sexy.

  And don’t write xoxo before you have xoxoed.

  Also, emoticons are out unless you’re dating a twelve-year-old.

  ☺

  Bottom line, you have to keep your texts in context.

  In-box of Letters

  By Francesca

  I was recently informed that I am at 95% capacity at my Gmail account.

  Anyone who has a Gmail account will appreciate the irony. Gmail’s tagline was once, “Why delete? Unlimited storage!” So for me to be at capacity feels like being told I’m walking too close to the edge of the world.

  I’ll be honest, I don’t really understand the concept of physical space on the World Wide Web. I thought the Internet was like outer space—an infinite expanse of interconnected websites orbited by advertisements, black holes of discount shopping, and countless porn stars.

  So if the Internet doesn’t have physical space, how did I run out of it?

  Well, I didn’t exactly run out. Gmail tells me more storage exists, I just have to buy it.

  Immaterial space doesn’t come cheap.

  So I set about trying to understand how I had exhausted my inexhaustible storage. I clicked to see the “oldest” email in my in-box and learn when I’d opened the account.

  5/19/06 was my first email. It was from my then-boyfriend, who set up the account for me. The subject line was “test,” and the body contained only one line, all lower case: “hey lovely lady.”

  Aw.

  Well, I couldn’t delete that.

  I clicked through some of our lovey-dovey emails and found myself swooning all over again. Until I got a few pages further into the-honeymoon’s-over stretch of emails, and I regained my senses.

  Please, I can’t afford any more airplane trips to get dumped.

  But truthfully, I cried a little rereading our breakup emails. Viewing our year-plus relationship condensed within a few pages of messages, I could see that we really loved each other, we really tried, and it ended anyway. Two people with good hearts and the best intentions just couldn’t make it work. I felt sad and comforted at the same time.

  Despite the heartache, I wouldn’t “Trash” any of it.

  But I had to make room somewhere, so I got back to culling, this time starting with the insane number of emails between me and my best friend. Many were as short as one line, how important could they be?

  Reading a few, I confirmed they weren’t important.

  They were hilarious.

  I was crying again, this time with laughter. We had email threads riffing on boys, professors, classmates, celebrities, ourselves, everything.

  I remember Harvard as a pressure cooker, but I’d forgotten how fantastic she and I were at letting off steam.

  I started forwarding the best ones to her, but they were all the best ones, and soon I realized my email-blast-from-the-past was only going to clutter her in-box and mine.

  Not helping.

  The only person who emails me more than my best friend is my mother. When I filter my in-box to show only those messages from lisa@scottoline.com, the system is so overwhelmed, it can’t calculate an exact number, saying only that it’s displaying one given page “of many.”

  If you take this as proof that she’s checking in on me all the time, you’re mistaken.

  She does that by phone.

  My mom uses email to send me cell phone pictures of our pets. Our routine is that she sends the picture with no text at all, and I reply with a funny caption. It’s like our own personal cuteoverload.com.

  And “many” is polite. She has sent me hundreds—maybe thousands!—of them over the years, but her cell-phone-photography skills haven’t improved one bit. Most of the pictures are blurry, marred by a finger, incredibly dark, or flashed so bright that the dog looks like Cujo.

  Still, even the grainiest of images are cherished reminders of my furry family back home, and my in-box archive now includes photos of four pets that are no longer with us.

  So I’m keeping them. Every last one.

  I also tried eliminating old emails relating to schoolwork, but that task was a) arduous, because there was no common sender or keyword with which to fish for them, and b) anxiety-inducing, because rereading them returned me to that time when there was always too much to read, too many papers to write, and too harsh a curve on tomorrow’s exam.

  I could almost smell my all-nighter fuel of microwave popcorn and the sick-sweet taste of Red Bull.

  Blech.

  Word to the wise: Red Bull doesn’t give you wings; it gives you the runs.

  PTSD aside, since my hard-drive wipeout in the Great Crash of 2010, many of these emails contain the only remaining copies of papers I wrote for school—the first short story I wrote for a fiction workshop, even the three-page poem on Beowulf that I wrote in medieval verse.

  I didn’t say the stuff was cool.

  They say nothing in this electronic age is permanent. I had many an English professor bemoan the lost art of letter writing, journaling, etc. But my in-box holds a more prolific record of my work, worries, laughs, and loves than I ever could’ve committed to paper. It doesn’t offer a mere glimpse into my life at the time, it draws a map of my universe.

  Looks like I’ll be buying more storage.

  Spoiled

  By Lisa

  Francesca and I love to go to the movies, though we disagree on everything about movie-going except the movie itself.

  We generally love and hate the same movies, usually for the same reasons, and after the movie, we spend the evening deconstructing the plot and analyzing what worked and what didn’t and why, which might be an occupational hazard.

  But that’s where our agreement ends.

  Our differences begin before we even leave the house, because I like to go early to arrive at the theater at least forty-five minutes before the show. I hate to miss the beginning of the movie, even nowadays, when the movie doesn’t begin until after the previews, Coke commercials, local Realtor commercials, cell
phone and texting warnings, then the little man driving a go-kart on a filmstrip.

  Francesca thinks we should miss all of this, and of course, she is clearly right. But she indulges me, which is what filial duty is all about. Moms are entitled to be humored from time to time, as payback for all the little-kid rainbow drawings we said were great.

  Please. How hard is it to draw a rainbow, anyway? Open any old-school Crayola box, and get busy. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. We get it.

  Plus they owe us for labor, too. I mean, really. And I had back labor. As far as I’m concerned, that child should go when and where I say, forever.

  Anyway at the candy counter, we continue to disagree, though I don’t concede I’m wrong so easily. I like to get a Diet Coke, a small popcorn, and Raisinets, and eat it all myself. She likes to get a bigger popcorn and share.

  She knows I will not share my Raisinets. Half the reason I go to the movies is for the Raisinets.

  I don’t like to share because I’m a fifty-six-year-old woman, and as such, have spent a lifetime sharing. Now I want it all for myself. It’s my turn, and my popcorn.

  So I coerce Francesca into getting her own goodies, and we enter the theater, where we disagree over the seating. I like to sit close, in the front third of the theater. Francesca likes the back third. You might think that the easiest thing to do would be to compromise on the middle third, but that doesn’t solve the problem.

  Why?

  Because then we divide the middle third into thirds, and she wants to sit in the back third and I want to sit at the front third. We could further compromise by sitting in the middle third, but the seats there are full of mothers and daughters who compromise more quickly than we do.

  Also I like to sit near the end of the row, as I have to get up at least once to go to the bathroom, not only because I’m middle-aged, but because I wouldn’t share my Diet Coke. She likes to sit in the middle, because she is twenty-five years old and pees once a day, like most camels.

  We don’t compromise on this, and usually take what seats we can get. I cope by not feeling embarrassed about having to go to the bathroom when nobody else does. The old bat climbing over your shoes on the way out of the row is me, poster child for urinary incontinence.

  But these are mere quibbles. Our biggest disagreement is over spoilers.

  I love spoilers.

  I love to know the ending of a movie before I go. I read every review I can and every spoiler alert. A spoiler alert doesn’t spoil anything for me.

  In fact, I don’t go to a movie unless I know the ending. I’m a suspense writer who doesn’t like to be in suspense.

  This issue came up recently, with Steven Spielberg’s War Horse. As soon as the movie came out, Francesca knew it was right up our alley, and I did, too. But the previews made clear that it was a story about a boy who lets his beloved horse go to war, and I wasn’t going to the movie unless I knew he got the horse back.

  And not a different horse.

  And not the horse’s baby, like they do in every animal movie ever.

  Guaranteed in the movies that if they kill off the animal you love, there will be a new litter of whatever by the final credits.

  That doesn’t wash with me.

  I love what I love, and I want it back.

  Things die in real life. If they don’t, that’s entertainment.

  And if I’m holding popcorn, I want entertainment.

  I’m divorced twice, remember? I require a happy ending.

  So I wasn’t going to see War Horse unless I knew the horse got home, but Francesca absolutely didn’t want to know the ending. She never wants to know the ending. She covers spoiler alerts with her hand.

  Who raised this child?

  I asked everyone I knew if the horse got back, but no one knew, because the movie had just opened and it was Christmas. Francesca wanted to go, but I refused, and I said we had to wait until I could find out the ending.

  “Don’t find out the ending,” she said, unhappily.

  “Why not? I won’t tell you.”

  “I’ll know. Because if you find out the ending and still want to go, I’ll know that the horse comes back.”

  Hmm. She had me there.

  For a moment.

  Then I did what any good mother would do. I lied to my daughter.

  I found out the ending, but told her I didn’t.

  And now I can’t tell you if we went to the movie or not, because then you’ll know the ending.

  The End.

  To Everything, There Is a Season

  By Lisa

  At this point, I’m a brain in a jar.

  Here’s what I mean. We know I had the bunion surgery, and I can’t put any weight on my right foot. I’m supposed to stay off my feet for the next seven weeks, and luckily, I’m one of the few people in the world whose job requires them to stay off their feet.

  And apply my butt to a chair, my fingers to a laptop, and write.

  So I thought the whole surgery thing would be easy, and I was wrong.

  It’s paradise.

  At least now, because I’ve surrendered. I get it now, though I was skeptical at first. I didn’t really believe that you had to stay off your feet all that time, because I never follow directions, in general. Usually I don’t even read them. I used to think this was fun and rebellious of me, but now I think I was just stupid.

  Because by the end of the first week after surgery, I had fallen twice.

  The first time I fell was when I was trying to lift my golden Penny onto the bed, and the second was the next day, when I woke up in the middle of the night because Peach had jumped off the bed, and I forgot I’d had foot surgery and took a step without my walker.

  Dogs, beds, and a bunionectomy are the disaster trifecta.

  And the pain from both falls was considerable, which is a stoic way of saying OOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

  So now I see the light.

  I got religion.

  After the fall(s).

  And I remembered that my wonderful doctor had said that the only time he had to reoperate on someone was on a woman who had fallen. Of course, when he told me that, I thought, What a klutz she must have been!

  And now I’m the klutz.

  Lesson learned.

  Shut up and heal.

  So I sit upstairs in my bedroom, waiting for a bone that has been sawed apart to grow back together, like the anatomical equivalent of watching paint dry.

  Being still isn’t something that comes naturally to me, because I keep feeling the urge to do things to heal. Doing things makes sense, and not doing things feels odd.

  And lazy.

  Plus, I feel so guilty that people have to tote food to me and take it away, walk the dogs for me, let in the UPS guy, and do all the normal things for me, that people do for themselves.

  Turns out there’s nothing you can do to heal except, be still.

  Sit still.

  Lie still.

  Healing is doing nothing.

  So I sit still and write, which is the brain-in-a-jar part.

  I do little things, though I don’t know if they help. For example, I started taking calcium citrate twice a day, because I heard that it grows bone, and I wanted to heal faster.

  Grow, bone, grow!

  Come to think of it, healing faster may be more wrong thinking. Our greeting cards say Get Well Soon and Speedy Recovery, but my guess is that no proper recovery is speedy.

  Sports cars should be speedy. Recoveries, slow as tar.

  Even the Bible says that there should be a time to heal, just as surely as there is a time to go to the dry cleaners, a time to do the laundry, and a time to empty the dishwasher.

  I’m quoting the newest translation.

  All the purposes under heaven have their time, and the way we usually multitask, those times are all at once.

  But no longer.

  Not for me.

  I just saw an article in today’s paper saying that stillness a
nd solitude lead to greater creativity.

  Good news for single gals with a bum foot.

  I’m already working on my next book.

  A Time to Heel.

  Hang-Ups

  By Francesca

  Last night I hung up the phone on my mother.

  That sounds harsh, but you should know I employed our modified hang-up, the one we use when we’re angry but have the presence of mind to keep some perspective. It goes something like this:

  “Ugh! I’m hanging up, but I love you,” I say in the span of one second, so it sounds like, “ImhangingupbutIloveyou.”

  Click.

  My mom trained me to do this at a young age. If we were arguing and I tried to storm out, she’d remind me that one of us COULD DIE AT ANY MOMENT, so the last words we say to each other should be, “I love you.”

  In Italian, the word for love is guilt.

  I’m not proud of hanging up on my mother, I apologized later, but it happens. Every mother-daughter relationship has logged some hang-ups on phone record. It’s not the most enlightened behavior, but when an argument gets out of control, it’s better to end the conversation before it gets uglier. But you still want to get the last word.

  Who am I, Mother Teresa?

  Even she was Daughter Teresa at some point.

  When you’re a teenager, you can slam the door. Well, I couldn’t, because we had dogs. And if you close a door to a dog, whatever’s on the other side of it becomes the most interesting thing in the world. So two minutes after my dramatic you-may-never-see-me-again door slam, I’d have to open it to let our golden, Lucy, in.

  Golden retrievers are the family therapists of the canine world.

  But after you grow up and move out, you mature past slamming doors.

  And hang up the phone instead.

  My mom and I have elevated it to an art form. Our technique is so advanced, we have categories of hang-ups.

  There’s the enigmatic Fake Hang-Up. The Fake Hang-Up comes from one of our favorite movies, the Bill Murray comedy What About Bob? In the film, Murray’s character, Bob, is so incapable of believing that his therapist would set a limit on him and end a call, he blithely asks, “Is this a fake hang-up? It’s a fake hang-up!”

  That movie came out twenty-one years ago, but that line is still so funny to us that if one of us stays quiet on the phone for more than two seconds, the other will say, “Is this a fake hang-up?”