by Rita Rudner
Molly never attempted to run into a table corner, pry open a glass door, swim in the toilet, stand in a drawer, or mix a margarita, although I did suggest a few of those activities to her so as to justify the holes in our furniture. I suppose it’s better to be safe than bloody, but most of the things that were true for Sheri’s baby were not true for mine.
Toilet training is next. Sheri says she bought a musical potty that plays a fanfare whenever her child christens it and it has been very effective. I think I’ll take her advice and pick one up. Not for Molly, for me. I can’t figure out how to unlock my toilet.
* * *
I’m kind of a wimp. I was once hospitalized for three weeks with a bad perm.
* * *
The Pillow Show
I CAN’T REMEMBER WHEN MY FASCINATION WITH fancy pillows began, but in my fifties it is alive and well and threatening our marriage.
“Rita, it’s easier to undress a nun than it is to get into this bed,” my husband moans nightly.
When I make our bed, I have a strict and rigid system of pillow placement. Putting the show together is a task that rivals the creation of a Broadway musical, so I will attempt to explain my pillow philosophy. This is not written in stone, by the way. It’s just how I’ve choreographed my own personal pillow show. However, I hope it will help you to create your own unique pillow vision.
1. The two anchor pillows must be leaned diagonally against the headboard. These pillows will never be seen in their entirety, so they don’t have to be gorgeous, but they do have to be attractive enough to keep the integrity of the pillow show intact. They should, although it is not a prerequisite, have ruffles around the edges because although they will never be seen completely until the pillow mountain is moved, an edge might peek out. They must also be large and sturdy. They should be square rather than rectangular to give dimension to the piece. They must be stuffed with foam rather than feathers because they are the foundation of the structure.
2. On top of the anchor pillows are placed the shams. A sham is rectangular, and though not as dense as the anchor pillows, it must still be firm. While an anchor pillow is usually one color, a sham can begin to have a pattern. A sham is bigger than a regular pillow and for some reason is absurdly expensive.
3. With the pillows that lean against the sham, you can begin to go a little crazy. I would suggest two square or squarish textured (possibly velvet) pillows that express your personality. I’m a butterfly and tassel woman myself. I don’t know what that says about me. Maybe I wear too many colors and need a haircut.
4. Next, we’re going to change shapes and go for a single round antique pillow that somebody’s grandmother would have owned. This is a conversation pillow. Example: “Is that your grandmother’s pillow?” “No, but I bought it in an antique store, and the salesman said it may have belonged to Eleanor Roosevelt.” This is your important pillow.
5. We’re coming to the end now. The bolster or accent pillow is the final bit of foam that you will place on your bed. It should lie on one side of your important pillow and should be placed at an angle so as not to appear studied.
6. You will realize that I have left out pillows that you actually place your head on. These must be kept in a closet and placed on the bed only after the decorative pillows have been removed. They are functional pillows and do not belong in pillow show business.
Again, these are only my suggestions. I leave the actual creation up to you.
My husband’s question is, “We are the only two people who go into the bedroom. Who are we doing the little pillow show for?”
And to tell you the truth, I don’t know. I only know that I love my pillows…and I have to do the show.
* * *
I just bought this new mattress and I can roll on it and not disturb my husband all night. His mattress is in the other room.
* * *
The Scan
ONE OF THE GOOD THINGS ABOUT ADVANCING years is discovering new ways to save money while spending it.
“Could you please scan this?” requested my expert shopping friend Joyce as she handed a beaded evening gown across the counter to Freda, the frazzled saleswoman.
“Sure, honey.”
“I like it when they call me ‘honey,’” Joyce confessed to me. “It makes me feel loved.”
“Why did you ask her to scan it? Isn’t the price on the label?” I inquired.
“I have a feeling,” Joyce announced. “That gown has been marked down three times, from three seventy-five to two ninety-five to two forty-five. It’s on the take-fifty-percent-off-ticketed-price rack. This is the Columbus Day sale, which means take off an extra thirty percent. Plus, I have a ten-dollars-off coupon that’s good until five o’clock. I could take this shiny little girl home for about seventy-eight bucks.”
“Plus tax.”
“It’s a no-tax day, Rita. Gee, you are such an amateur.”
“I have another stupid question.”
“What now?” Joyce asked in a voice laced with condescension.
“The tag says it’s a size fourteen. You’re a four.”
“I know. What’s your point?”
“You can’t wear it, pencil legs,” I replied, getting even with her for the “amateur” comment.
“I don’t want to wear it,” she admitted. “I don’t even want to buy it. I just want to know what I could have bought it for if I wanted it and had they had it in my size.”
“I see,” I said, not seeing.
Freda had been strangely quiet during our conversation. As she glanced up from the computer, Joyce and I both tried to look her in the eye. She looked away.
“She’s hiding something,” Joyce whispered to me.
Freda leaned across the computer, crushing her ample bosom against the screen. “Baby doll, come closer.”
Joyce met her halfway across the counter.
“Eight dollars and fifty cents.”
“What?” Joyce whispered.
“What is it?” I asked. “Is it not on sale after all? Did someone put it on the wrong rack? I hate that. The people who do that should be punished. They have no idea of the hardship they cause.”
“Rita, shut up,” Joyce snapped. “This is serious.”
Freda lowered both her head and her voice.
“Someone has made a mistake and put the wrong price in the computer,” she confessed. “It’s in the computer, cutie pie. Once it’s in the computer, Bill Gates couldn’t get it out.”
“Will anyone get fired if I buy this gown for this price?” Joyce asked. “I don’t really care, but I’d just like to know.”
“No one will suffer. It will go down in the books the same as any other sale. If you don’t buy it, sugarplum, I will.”
“What mistake? Who’s going to get fired?” I demanded. “I can’t be your friend anymore unless you tell me immediately.”
Joyce looked around before whispering hoarsely to me, “An error had been made. If I act quickly, I can purchase a beaded gown that was originally three hundred and seventy-five dollars for eight dollars and fifty cents.”
“Oh, my God!” I said, clutching my chest. “Is that legal?”
“It’s not only legal, it’s meant to be. The shopping gods are looking down on me. It’s a bargain triumph.”
“But it’s a size fourteen.”
“I’m not taking you with me anymore, Rita. You’re a real consumer pessimist.”
Freda became impatient. “I’ve got other customers, ladies. What’s it going to be?”
“It’s getting hot in here,” Joyce mumbled in my direction. “Freda’s not calling me endearing names anymore. She wants the dress.”
“She would. She looks to me like she’s a size fourteen.”
“I can’t let that sway me. I was here first. I was the one who asked her to scan it. It’s rightfully mine.”
“You’re a machine.”
“I’ll take it,” Joyce announced, sifting through her overstuffed purse and emerging
with her credit card.
“It’s eight dollars and fifty cents. Why don’t you pay cash?” I asked.
“If you pay cash, you only enjoy the shopping win once. This way, when the bill arrives at the end of the month, I can relive it.”
“Hung or in the bag?” Freda asked curtly, not bothering now to address us as people at all.
“Hung.”
Joyce turned to me. “Before you ask, if you take it home hung, you get a free hanger.”
“I knew that one.”
With palpable bad grace, Freda encased the beaded prize in a plastic bag and handed it to Joyce.
“Here.”
“Thank you,” Joyce replied. “It’s for you.” She sadly handed the package back to Freda. “I can’t wear it,” my friend admitted. “I just had to buy it.”
“Oh, honeybun, I can’t take this,” said Freda guiltily. “At least let me give you the money.”
“No,” Joyce said. “You wear the dress and think of me. Just give me the hanger.”
And with that we slunk away in the direction of the escalator.
“You do know you just paid eight dollars and fifty cents for a hanger, don’t you?” I asked.
“Yes, Rita, I do. I didn’t really want the dress, I only wanted the glory.”
“Didn’t you mention you have a coupon that entitled you to an extra ten percent off until five o’clock? It’s five to five. You could have gotten another eighty-five cents off.”
Joyce immediately stopped in her tracks and looked at me with a new respect.
“You’ve learned well, Rita. We’re going back.”
* * *
I have a new push-up bra. It’s an underwire made of this special new metal that’s attracted to the fillings in my teeth.
* * *
It’s My Potty and I’ll Cry If I Want To
I PROMISED MYSELF I WOULDN’T STRESS OUT ABOUT toilet-training our baby. After all, this is something to which everybody eventually catches on. I’ve never heard the sentence “Marissa is twenty-seven and she’s still in diapers. She just can’t quite get the hang of it.”
I didn’t want to push my daughter into something that she wasn’t ready for, but without becoming too graphic, the watertight seals on the paper panties weren’t as reliable as they appeared to be in the commercials. The sooner I could complete the diaper stage the better.
My friends weren’t much help when I needed their guidance. Because I’d waited until I was older to become a mother, their children were already in their teens; consequently their memories of child rearing were a little hazy.
“How did you toilet-train Alexandra?” I asked my friend Marilyn.
“I don’t remember,” she responded, as did all my other friends.
My father revealed quite a bit about his participation in the messier parts of my infancy when he asked, “What’s toilet training?”
My British mother-in-law had the best answer when I asked her about toilet-training my husband.
She said, “He just did it naturally by himself at eighteen months. He was a fastidious child.”
I didn’t believe her, but after eighteen years of marriage to her son, I knew not to question her.
“You have to wait until they’re ready. If you don’t, it can cause problems in later life” was the only clue people would give me.
“What kind of problems?” I wondered.
Most children are frightened of monsters and snakes. I’d hate for my child to be frightened of toilets and flushing.
The books I read were also unhelpful.
“Introduce your child to the potty gradually,” one book advised. “Buy one early and just casually leave it in the bathroom.”
My husband and I ordered a personalized potty when Molly was twenty months old. Her name appeared on the back of it in red, shiny letters, as if she were the star of the seat.
“Molly, this is your potty,” I said, introducing her to her new friend. “Do you like it?”
“Yah,” she said.
For some reason, the first words my child uttered all sounded Swedish.
“Do you want to sit on it?”
“Noh.”
She then went and found her favorite stuffed toy and placed it with a flourish in the plastic hole in the center of the seat.
“For bunny.”
Well, not really, I thought. “Yes, for bunny,” I said out loud. I didn’t want it to affect her later in life.
We left the potty in the bathroom and it subsequently became home to various stuffed animals. I checked the books and none of them referred to the my-child-thinks-the-potty-is-a-place-to-keep-her-toys syndrome. I didn’t mention it; I didn’t want it to affect her later in life.
A few months later, Molly and I were playing with dolls in the potty when the phone rang. It was my friend Marilyn.
“I just remembered. We had a musical potty. Every time your child uses it, it plays a little song. Alexandra loved it. It worked like a charm.”
I hung up the phone.
“Martin, get the car keys. We’re going potty shopping.”
We arrived home, assembled the musical potty, and placed it in her bathroom. It had an infrared light positioned under the seat that sensed when the child sat down and would play a musical flourish as if introducing the queen. My mother-in-law would approve of it.
“Martin, I hope she doesn’t carry this association with her in later life. What if every time she hears music she loses control of her bladder?”
“Alexandra plays the piano. She doesn’t have to wear Depends,” my husband reasoned.
“You’re right. Molly, come here. I want to show you something.”
My child appeared at the door of her bathroom.
“Molly, this is your new potty. It plays music. Do you want to try it?”
“Yah.”
She then disappeared into her room and reappeared with her bunny. She placed the bunny in the plastic cup, which sang its little tune. She laughed, sat down on the floor, and played with it for a good hour. I was patient. A few days later, when changing her diaper, I asked her if she wanted to sit on the new potty. We walked into the bathroom and she sat down. It played the musical flourish. She jumped up as if it were on fire and began to cry. Hoping I hadn’t affected her negatively for the rest of her life, I went back to the potty drawing board.
One day, while scouring the parenting section of the bookstore, I spotted it: the potty video. I didn’t know if this would help, but I knew I couldn’t fail more miserably than I had previously. I showed it to Molly, and she liked the photo of the baby on the cover. The animated tape was all about a little girl graduating from diapers. Molly loved it and requested it every day for a month. I could sing “The Potty Song” in my sleep. I was humming it during the day. I think I even sang it by mistake one night in my act. There was one problem. Although we owned a personalized potty and a musical potty, we now needed to find a cheap, plastic, old-fashioned version like the one in the video.
We finally succeeded in tracking one down. Molly sat down on it and, with the video playing in the background, we had our first success. We looked at it. We cheered. We kissed her. We considered saving what was in the potty, but then came to our senses. We prematurely congratulated ourselves about conquering toilet training. It turned out Molly thought she only had to do it once.
In her baby mind, she was thinking, I’m glad that’s over. Now I can go back to my good ol’ diapers and they’ll leave me alone.
It took another month but, thanks to the video, she was trained by the time she was two years and two months. My mother-in-law wasn’t impressed.
“In England all babies are trained by eighteen months. They do it naturally.”
“That’s because everything in Britain is better than everything in America,” I replied.
“Yes, that’s correct.”
* * *
My friend’s going through menopause. Her hot flashes are so severe, she’s been banned from Baski
n-Robbins.
* * *
To Hell in a Handbag
I’M A LAW-ABIDING WOMAN, REALLY. I NEVER thought I was the sort of person who would end up in handbag prison.
I didn’t think anyone would ever know. The bag had Made in France stamped on its inside and even had the signature lock and key connected to the gold zipper. Anyway, it wasn’t my fault. Let me take you back to the days when I roamed the department store aisles freely, and allow me to explain why I feel I’m not guilty.
In the past five years something has gone extremely awry with the handbag industry. Handbags are no longer abused leather sacks that women fill with makeup, money, and lint-covered mints. They are now more valuable than jewelry and rarer than truffles. In the old days, I would see a handbag in a magazine or a store and if I liked it, I would buy it. I would use it for a year or so and then throw it away, thereby avoiding the risk of not being handbag-current. Then one day, everything changed.
I don’t know if Louis Vuitton was an actual person, but if he was, I certainly hope he once ordered something that he really wanted and that it never arrived.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, I have to deal with the overwhelming feelings of guilt attached to the action of ordering a handbag from a snobby store when there are perfectly acceptable handbags in the world that desperately need owners. I’m not like that. Really. My dog is from a pound, and I only book a manicure if I obviously need one. I just got caught up in LV frenzy. It was the handbag with multiple LVs in all different colors that I lusted after. And, again, it wasn’t my fault. It went with everything and it was perfect for spring.
So early one morning, I marched into a self-important luggage store that seemed cleaner than a laboratory where they develop important drugs, approached the pony-tailed, bat-faced woman behind the counter, and squeaked in a voice that sounded like me when I was twelve, “I want to buy a handbag.”
