Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

  NOSE JOB

  I can never tell if a woman has had a nose job. Jason always says, you’re telling me you couldn’t tell? It was so obvious. I just assume that was her nose.

  NOTE

  When someone mails something to me—like a copy of an article, for example—it’s so much better when they include a quick note, or even just a Post-it. Here’s the article I was talking about at dinner the other night. Talk to you soon. Otherwise I’m left searching the envelope going, that’s kinda lame, no note, how impersonal. Even just a quick hope you like it! Love, me does the trick and confirms our friendly connection.

  NOTE ON AIR CONDITIONER

  The hotel housekeeping keeps putting our air conditioner on, and Jason and I keep turning it off. We prefer the breeze and fresh air from the windows. By the second or third time they turn the air on, we decide to leave a note on the air-conditioning unit itself so they can’t miss it. The unit is affixed high on the wall, so I have to stand on a chair to leave the note: Please leave off. Do not turn on. I draw the circle/slash symbol in case they don’t exactly understand. We return later to find the note has been moved slightly to the side, and the air is, yet again, on. This seems incredibly funny to us, imagining them seeing the note and deciding that we were just leaving them a note to say, you know, hi, all the way up there on top of the air-conditioning unit.

  NOTHING

  Death is the ultimate nothing. We are petrified of this nothing, yet we spend a great portion of our lives trying to create a state of near-nothingness. We spend the day hacking away at our to-do lists so finally, when the dishes are done and the kids are in bed, we can sit on the couch and do nothing.

  Doing nothing feels natural, and we easily slip into it. Doing nothing often involves some kind of watching: Sitting at a café or in a park people watching. Being the passenger in a car, watching the trees or lines on the highway go by. Watching nothing on TV.

  Movies are ideal because they combine doing something with doing nothing. You have gone out, but you do not have to do or say anything. The people in the movies are doing everything for you, expending themselves; nothing is required of you at all. That is why—unlike going to a party or a wedding—going to the movies never feels like a social obligation. On the occasions where we do have to participate, to do more than nothing, it is desirable to have a glass of wine to soften all the everything.

  NUANCES OF WORDS

  There’s a parking garage I often pass on Wabash that has a sign that says: NO ONE TOUCHES YOUR CAR BUT YOU. All of the other garages say SELF PARK. Of course, these are the exact same kind of parking garages, but one makes you feel privileged and empowered, and the other is sort of saying, We’re lazy—YOU park your damn car.

  They’ve recently changed the one size fits all tags to say one size fits most. I think this new version is rather awful. One size fits all was inclusive: Hey, everybody, we’re in this together. It was also meaningless in a good way, innocuous, generic. But the language of this new version is halting. Fits most. That clearly rubs it into the excluded minority.

  We called to make reservations at a hot restaurant, and instead of saying, Sorry, we’re booked, they said, We’re completely committed tonight. The booked response makes one grumpy, but this committed language, that’s a totally new angle, never heard a restaurant say that before. I hung up going, Yes, these are honorable restaurant people, they are committed to their patrons, they’ve made a pact and are standing by it. I support that.

  NUN

  A friend sat next to a nun on a plane. He asked her what she missed most. “Wearing blue jeans,” she replied.

  O

  OFFERING NAME AS A WITNESS

  While driving to work, I saw this woman pull out right in front of another driver, and the two cars immediately crashed. After driving one block, I turned around to go back to the scene to offer my name as a witness. I did this partly because I felt it was my civic duty, and partly because I wanted to chat about the collision. What was that lady thinking?! I mean, I saw the whole thing.…

  OFFICE DEPOT

  If I step foot in Office Depot I can’t not buy something. The last unnecessary purchase was a WILL RETURN sign with the clock and movable plastic hands. I thought it would be fun to hang in the house somewhere. I finally threw it out yesterday.

  OLDER COUPLE

  I saw this old couple—attractive, well-groomed, but old, in their eighties—sitting down at Starbucks the other afternoon. I couldn’t help but stare at them; I was intrigued by their oldness, their presence, as old people, at Starbucks. I suddenly felt like it would be okay to go up to them and converse about their oldness. I would ask them if they look at each other and say, can you believe how old we are? we were once young, and now we are old. I imagined them naked. I was curious if coffee tasted any different once you got old, or if it was pretty much the same pleasure it had always been. There was a muffin on their table, and he was reading the paper; he was dressed up, wearing a jacket and tie, as old(er) gentlemen often do. I imagined Jason old, and wondered if, even though he is not this way now, he would wear a jacket and tie once he got really old, and I hoped not because I don’t think I would find that attractive. I hoped he would still wear his brown corduroy shirt with the button-down snaps, and his cute form-fitting sweaters, particularly the one with the stripes that I like.

  See also: Photos, Old; Sexy

  OPENING

  I have no patience for figuring out how a package of cookies or a manila pouch in the mail or a bag of lettuce opens. It’s not really even a matter of patience, though; that implies that at first I want to find the designated opening. I simply dive right in, tear into it, never occurs to me to take a moment to access the opening options but soon lose interest in it. I only realize after the fact that, yes, right here, there is a nice perforated line or convenient ziplock seal or tear here arrow, which would have made the opening of the package/pouch/lettuce much easier and much neater. My world is one where lettuce escapes out the side of the bag, and clumps of white fluff ooze from the padded envelope onto the counter and floor.

  OPINION, FRAGILE FOUNDATION OF STRONG

  The two people laughing and drinking and carrying on at the next table are annoying, stupid, childishly conspiring, and clearly beneath you, until they invite you over to join them.

  OPTIMIST

  My dad is such an optimist that when his watch battery ran out, his immediate reaction was, well, FINally.

  ORDER NUMBER

  I never write down the order number when ordering from a catalog even though I pretend to do so when the salesperson says, Do you have a pen handy? I’m going to give you your order number now.

  OTHER PEOPLE

  It’s hard to accept that other people’s lives are as full and real and now as yours. You look at someone and sort of think, against your intellectual knowing better, that they have a less complex life, they’re able to flit about, their lives aren’t clogged with the same kind of pressing deadlines, they don’t really have cousins like you have cousins, they are free tonight, of course they are free, or if they have plans they can easily break them to be with you. Our lives just feel so impossibly big to us; we’re breathing versions of that Saul Steinberg poster, where New York is in the foreground, prominent and massive and drawn in colored-pencil detail, and the other states and Asia and Africa are tiny lumps fading into the horizon.

  This egocentric/inner bigness is precisely why we have conversations like this with our friends:

  You: I tried calling you this morning.

  Them: Well, you know I’ve got that Pilates class I’m teaching on Thursday mornings, and then I had to run over to …

  You (thinking): I have no idea what you’re talking about. What Pilates class? I have not memorized the intricacies of your daily schedule. I do not even know if there are one or two n’s in your last name.

  And it is precisely why people leave their phone number so quickly on other people’s answering machines; they’ve said
the number so many times that they think everyone else in the world is as familiar with it as they are. The number has become synonymous with their identity: Surely my phone number/me is as prominent in your brain as it/I is/am in mine.

  It is precisely why the tiresome phrase you know me, followed by a characteristic, habit, or preference of some kind, sounds so self-involved. Oh, you know me, I don’t care where we go to dinner.

  And it is precisely why you think everyone is looking at you and your lopsided, Novocained mouth, when in fact, not only is the droop indiscernible, but there is not even a single gaze directed your way; you’re filler at best. You’re one of the endless chunks of extraneous, dispensable flesh flurrying about in the wings of the next person’s (equally delusional) center stage.

  P

  PALINDROME

  I am overly enamored with the palindrome: Won Ton, Not Now.

  See also: Wordplays

  PARIS

  I was going through a massive sack of letters I had sent my boyfriend during my junior year abroad in Paris, which was nearly twenty years ago. I was thrilled that he still had the letters, though not shocked: There were simply too many of them to just casually pitch. It was funny to receive the package, with a quickly scribbled Here you go note on his business letterhead, all that passion and je t’aime-ing traveling through time and space to arrive at my middle-aged doorstep via FedEx. I wanted to reread the letters because I knew that I had thoroughly chronicled my day-to-day thoughts and experiences, and because it was such an important time in my life—I always viewed that year as an awakening of sorts—I thought I might be able to pinpoint (to the day!) my stunning emotional and intellectual growth, to actually see it unfolding from one powder-blue airmail letter to the next. But after going through a couple dozen missives, pretty much what I learned was: (1) “Thoroughly chronicling” makes for a hell of a boring read and is best kept to dispensable journal writing. (2) It is painfully embarrassing to reread what I wrote; I sounded so—what’s the word?—so up! all the time. (3) Despite the exceedingly detailed and lengthy nature of the letters, there is no real documentation of alleged awakening. And (4) apparently that year I cooked a lot of stir-fry.

  PARKING SPOT

  I would rather take the extra two minutes to maneuver into a tight and awkward parking spot that is a couple feet closer to my destination than take the big, wide-open spot a few cars down.

  PARKING TICKET

  There is that moment when I get a parking ticket when I want to be like Screw that, I’m not touching that stupid ticket, and just leave it on my windshield to spite the cop. But then, next stop in my train of thought: The cop isn’t even here to see me ignore the ticket, so what’s the use, and not only that, but I’ll look like a total idiot driving around with it flapping against the windshield wiper.

  Experiment: Contest Parking Ticket on Grounds of Karma (see this page—this page)

  PASTRIES

  Pastries do not tempt me.

  PAY PHONE, GUY ON

  At the convenience store, I couldn’t help but overhear a guy having a heated discussion on the pay phone. Over and over he was saying, It’s not my baby. I swear on my mama’s life, it’s not my baby. You gotta believe me. I swear on my mama’s life. He was in the middle of the store, broadcasting this.

  PEDESTRIAN

  When I’m about to cross a street and a car stops to let me go, I don’t just walk—I sort of jog-dodge across to, you know, show the driver that I’m not taking advantage of this situation. Yes, I, the pedestrian, have the right of way, but see, I care about you, too, here, just a sec, I’ll cross quickly and get out of your way.

  PEPPERS

  Green and red peppers taste less alike than one would think.

  PERIOD

  I’ve been getting my period once a month for about twenty-three years now—that’s what? 276 times (minus three pregnancies)—and yet I never instantly recognize the slight discomfort in my lower belly and groin as the like-clockwork symptoms of it coming on. I’ll think, I feel a little blechy, what’s that vague tweaking sensation? as I’m putting the breakfast dishes in the sink. Then later, Oh, right, I’m getting my period. There is a science to a woman’s cycle—it is not free-form, it is not random—yet I receive it in the same way I receive the weather: simply as it comes, without consulting any charts or forecasts. Just as I know many people carry the precautionary umbrella and can tell you what weather is expected over the weekend, I know many women are actually able to answer the nurse when she asks, what was the first day of your last period? While this is a fairly straightforward question, and seems like a reasonable thing to know about oneself, it feels as ludicrous as asking if I wouldn’t mind looking at the calendar and telling her when was the last time I tweezed my eyebrows.

  PHONE

  It’s embarrassing when you’re getting off the phone and in the rush of going through the in-closing finalities you combine your take care with bye bye and say bake care!

  PHONE, GETTING TO KNOW SOMEONE ON THE

  When I get to know someone fairly well over the phone, and then, after a while, meet them in person, I am invariably disappointed. It has nothing to do with how attractive the person turns out to be; it has to do with how … human they turn out to be. When we were speaking on the phone, I envisioned not a distinct person with a face and body, but rather a vague, faceless essence, as if their whole personality manifested itself into an aura that wasn’t exactly physical as we know it. So when we met, it was startling to see that they indeed had eyes and torsos and chins. As soon as we went back to communicating by phone, my mind would revert to the (preferred) floaty-aura-portrait.

  PHOTOS, OLD

  It’s a powerful thing, coming across an old photo of someone close to you. It makes you pause—

  You have to closely examine it. Like a portrait of my grandmother from forty years ago—so vibrant, poised, that nice tweed skirt. Without the mask of old age, her features are more pronounced; she’s herself, but crisper. I have a snapshot of my parents from their courtship period, swinging at a park, all smiles and good skin. There they exist as a young man and a teenage woman who love each other, nothing more yet; they are not parents, they have no affiliation to an unborn me. I know how the story unfolds from there—quite happily actually—but in that photo, they are ripe, on the verge, unencumbered, and so very beautiful. I know my own children will one day come across an old photo of me and Jason. Look at Mom and Dad. They were so young. Look at Mom’s hair. And how handsome Dad was.

  PICNIC

  When you go on a picnic, it is customary to pack three times as much food as you would normally eat. For lunch at home, you’ll have a sandwich, chips, maybe a pickle, and be quite satisfied. The picnic version, on the other hand, would be something along the lines of: sandwich, chips (for ten), some Goldfish crackers, pickles, fruit, potato salad and/or coleslaw, a few fried chicken legs, some random leftover from the fridge, and a bag of Tootsie Rolls. Even the napkin ratio is askew: At home, one napkin is standard, but for the picnic you figure about seven per person.

  See also: Customary, Things That Are

  PIE

  There are few gestures kinder than a friend baking you a pie.

  See also: Woman Across the Hall

  PIÑATA

  It would be cool to hang a piñata in the living room and leave it there for a year, looming as a symbol of possibility and sweetness—all the anticipation. A character in a Lorrie Moore story did this. I want to do that one year. Surprise my family. Fill it with something that won’t spoil, like Twinkies—yes, a piñata full of Twinkies. Or dozens of CDs—just go wild on CDNow, get a ton of great new music, and then have to wait a year to listen to it. Or I could take it in a totally different direction: fill it with those Styrofoam packing curls, as an antimaterialistic statement about anticipation—Ah, now see, wasn’t the anticipation grander than the actual thing?—and also because the curls look like the ~ above the n in piñata.

  PITCHER
r />   At a local pizza place, I overheard a woman ask if she could order one pitcher of soda, but get two separate half pitchers—a half pitcher of Coke and a half pitcher of 7-Up—for the same one-pitcher price. By the look on the bartender’s face, I could tell that this was a first. I found the request to be peculiar as well, but also rather brazen and creative.

  Survey: For the price of one pitcher, could you get a half pitcher of Coke and a half pitcher of 7-Up?

  CHICAGO PIZZA PLACE RESPONSE

  Pizzeria Uno Would only charge for one.

  Pizzeria Due Would only charge for one.

  Gino’s on Rush Would make you order two.

  Lou Malnatti’s Would only charge for one.

  D’Agostino’s Would make you order two.