As I say, all of this goes without saying.
Still, I’m saying it.
Why?
First, because I’m a mother, and as you know, it’s our job to say things that go without saying. For example, for years I have been saying to Daughter Francesca:
When it’s cold out, take a jacket.
I said this to her when she was eight, and I say it to her now that she’s twenty-eight.
Also, I still tell her, Eat your vegetables.
You know what’s funny about that?
She’s a vegetarian.
Maybe she listened?
So, when I read in the newspaper that an American doctor had returned from treating Ebola patients in West Africa, then decided to eat a meatball sandwich in a restaurant, then take the subway, and then go bowling, I instantly texted Francesca, who lives in New York. I said to her what goes without saying:
Don’t take the subway.
Don’t go bowling.
Don’t eat meatball sandwiches.
Never mind that I can’t remember the last time Francesca ate a meatball sandwich, especially now that she’s a vegetarian.
Also I doubt that she has ever gone bowling, but you never know, the idea to go bowling could just randomly pop into her head, and as a mother, I had to nip that in the bud. Plus she takes the subway all the time, a fact I hated way before Ebola-bearing doctors started riding around.
So being a good mother, I texted her the things that went without saying. I give myself credit for not texting her the things that I really wanted to say, which were:
Come home now.
Don’t touch anything in New York.
Avoid using the letter E altogether.
To stay on point about Ebola, I’m making a big point of saying what goes without saying because I know what a lot of you are going to say because of what I’m about to say next.
Which is that I’m in favor of quarantining for three weeks any health-care worker who has treated Ebola patients in West Africa.
Don’t think that I’m being hysterical about Ebola. I know that it isn’t easy to spread. And I’m not being mean about these health-care workers, because as I said above, I believe they are true heroes.
But everything is a cost-benefit analysis.
And in this case, the cost is me getting a dreaded disease or you staying home for three weeks.
Guess which I choose.
My answer is informed not only by the fact that I think I’m adorable, but also by the fact that I don’t think being quarantined is the worst thing in the world.
I would love being quarantined.
It would be like a permanent snow day.
I wouldn’t have to go out to run errands and I might not even get out of bed. I would just watch TV or read. I could have someone deliver me my groceries. I would finally organize my closet.
In fact, I already live in quarantine.
All writers do.
I’m always inside, especially when it’s cold outside.
Brrrrr.
Also, inside is all the food I like to eat, right in my very own refrigerator.
I could wait three weeks to go bowling.
And I don’t eat meatball sandwiches because I’m a vegetarian, too.
But a lot of people don’t like the idea of quarantine, and someone made the point that quarantine would be a hardship for returning health-care workers because they would be unable to make a living for three weeks.
Good point.
So I propose that the government pay them to stay home.
And if the government won’t pay them, I will.
Because they need to earn a living, and I need to keep on living.
Living, all around, for everyone!
And no bowling until Ebola’s in the gutter.
Keeping Abreast
By Lisa
I saw in the newspaper that some genius conducted a study on what constitutes the perfect female breast.
Oh, good.
They decided that the perfect breast has a 45:55 ratio, and if you’re wondering what that means, it is the “ratio of the upper to the lower pole of the breast.”
These people might be crazy.
If you have poles in your breasts, you’re in big trouble.
But the way they describe it, the nipple is the dividing line between “the upper and lower poles.” So in a breast with a 45:55 ratio, 45 percent of the breast is above the nipple, or the upper pole, and 55 percent is below the nipple, or the lower pole.
If you ask me, these people are splitting hairs.
Nipple hairs.
By the way, they conducted the study by showing one thousand three hundred people pictures of breasts.
I wonder how much they paid the people to look at breasts all day.
Or if the people paid them to look at breasts all day.
Because the one thing that’s true in this world is that people never, ever get sick of looking at breasts.
Generally speaking, men look at them because they’re sexy, and women look at them to compare them to their own.
This means that after looking at breasts, one group will feel really great, and the other will feel really crummy.
Breasts have made tons of money for magazines, websites, restaurants, and beer companies. In fact, there is probably no company on earth that has not used breasts to sell something.
Breasts are busy.
And they work for almost nothing.
Of course they do, they’re female.
By the way, of the one thousand three hundred people in the perfect-breast survey, 53 of them were plastic surgeons.
This surprises me.
I would have expected all one thousand three hundred to be plastic surgeons.
Because if I made my living out of making human beings look perfect, I’d make damn sure that I got on the Perfection Committee.
The funny thing is that if you were a girl growing up a while ago—let’s say you were born in 1955, hypothetically speaking—you had no idea what breasts looked like.
Okay, I’m talking about myself, really.
When I was little, the only way to see breasts was in Playboy, and you better believe we didn’t have any of those magazines around the house.
Mother Mary didn’t approve.
But when I was fourteen, I started babysitting, which was the same age I discovered Playboy, because I found it accidentally on purpose, in the bedroom drawers of the couple I was sitting for, after the baby was in bed.
Sorry, unnamed people.
Anyway, I looked at the breasts in Playboy magazine, and all of those breasts were perfect.
Perfectly large.
I don’t know what the poles or ratios were, but all I knew was that when I got breasts, I wanted them to look exactly like that.
Of course, when they didn’t, I felt inferior.
I assumed everybody else got the good breasts and that all of the good breasts looked exactly alike.
It took me a long time to figure out that everybody’s breasts were different.
Like until last year.
And I didn’t realize that everything about everybody’s breasts was different, whether it was shape, nipple size or color, or anything like that. Nor did I realize that breasts change with time, and gravity, so that even if they were perfect once, they won’t be perfect forever.
Because breasts are no different from every other part of your body, which is different from everybody else’s parts, all of which change over time, and it generally ain’t for the better.
But for some reason, women still want to be perfect.
Whatever that is.
And it’s not only breasts.
Nowadays it’s faces, too, and we’re flocking to plastic surgeons and paying them to inject and fill and puff our cheeks and lips, too, so that we all look completely alike, evidently closer to the ideal.
Which is a fish.
To be precise, a very young fish.
So, in my opinion, what constitutes the perfect female breast?
Answer: Whatever you’ve got on your chest.
If it’s little or if it’s big, if it’s flat or if it’s skinny, if it’s old or if it’s young, no matter what it is, it’s perfect.
If you have two breasts, that’s perfect.
If you have one, that’s perfect.
And if you’ve had breast cancer and had your breast reconstructed, it’s perfect.
And if you had breast cancer and decided not to have your breast reconstructed, that’s perfect, too.
Why?
Because you’re alive.
Because you’re an individual, and as such, unique.
And because nobody’s perfect.
At least nobody human.
If I Were Beyoncé
By Francesca
Beyoncé is the spiritual leader of our time. She’s like Oprah if Oprah could twerk. And while her wisdom reaches from big topics like feminism all the way to not being ready for this jelly, Beyoncé has helped me most with solving problems of the heart.
When I couldn’t get my first boyfriend to say those three little words after a year of dating, he could at least put “Crazy in Love” on a mix CD.
Yes, kids, in my day, people listened to music via a saucer called a compact disc. And we walked six miles to school.
When my college sweetheart and I broke up in a fiery argument, he tried to get the last word by leaving a shoebox of my belongings outside my door the next morning, including such precious items as bobby pins, a hair elastic, and one plastic earring.
I thought, is this your, “Everything I own in a box to the left?” Are you trying to out-Beyoncé me? Please.
I’d already made “Irreplaceable” my new ringtone as soon as I left his dorm room.
But this most recent breakup had no pyrotechnics. To quote a poet nearly as popular as Beyoncé, we went out not with a bang, but with a whimper.
My birthday and our anniversary fell on the same day. We had planned to have a special dinner and exchange gifts. I had gotten his anniversary gift months earlier and kept it hidden in my closet, counting down the days until I got to give it to him. But when the day came, he had nothing for me. He was very sorry but didn’t have much of an explanation. He’d been really busy. He’s no good at picking out gifts. There was bad traffic that day.
It was so difficult for me to process and acknowledge that he didn’t think about me the way I thought about him, that I spent that night, my birthday, consoling him for his oversight. I still tried to fix things for another month.
After we broke up, I wondered why it had taken me so long to see the ways our relationship was uneven, and worse, why it took even longer for me to recognize that unevenness as a reason to leave.
My default is to assume I don’t deserve all that much, because I don’t need all that much. But need and deserve are two different things. Theoretically, I know I deserve good treatment, but in practice, I often feel guilty asking for things.
I never hold the men I date to the same expectations that I hold myself to. I go above and beyond for the person I love, but I don’t expect or demand that in return.
That would be high-maintenance. That would be too much to ask.
But that wouldn’t be too much for Beyoncé to ask. Beyoncé understands that if she gives her all, she can expect the same in return. She needs someone who puts her “Love on Top.”
Top, top, top, top, to-op.
And yes, I can do all the key changes (and the runs).
And I thought of another song, Beyoncé’s 2008, double-platinum hit, “If I Were a Boy.” In the song, Bey imagines herself as a man, first to indulge in all the perks of boys-will-be-boys behavior, but then vows that she would be better because she knows what it’s like to be on the other side.
What would Beyoncé do?
So I put myself in the shoes of my ideal man—not some Mr. Big fantasy, but a good man, an equal partner, the type of boyfriend I would be if I were a boy. And thinking of it that way, my next step was clear:
I needed to buy myself a birthday/breakup gift.
And it had better be sparkly.
I took my best friend to the jewelry store to help me choose it, to get a female opinion. We settled on a necklace with a short chain and a wide, horizontal pendant—it looked tribal and strong, and in fourteen-karat gold, it complemented my skin tone.
My mom and me at Beyoncé’s concert/group therapy session
Well, technically it’s only gold-plate, but I won’t know the difference.
And I pinky-swore my friend that if I backslid with my ex, I’d have to give the necklace away and take the loss.
Six months later, I still have my necklace.
And every time I wear it, I’m reminded that I deserve a man who can care for me at least as well as I can care for myself.
Or better.
Because that’s what Beyoncé would want.
Hot Mama
By Lisa
I have met the love of my life, and it comes in a box.
I’m talking, of course, about ThermaCare.
For those of you who have yet to fall in love, allow me to explain.
ThermaCare is a heat wrap you can buy in a drugstore. It has some kind of black pods attached to a piece of paper, and you stick the paper on various parts of your body that happen to be aching, like your lower back.
Me!
In no time, the black pods start to heat up and your lower back will not only stop aching, but start feeling loose, relaxed, and ready to twerk.
Okay, I’m exaggerating, but the bottom line is, you’ll feel better.
While you werk.
At least, I sure do.
Of course, this isn’t a scientific explanation of what makes the wraps get hot. I didn’t know what was inside the black pods, but so I could be your faithful reporter, I looked it up on the website, and it is evidently pods of iron that begin to oxidize when they hit the air, emitting a low level of heat.
As far as I’m concerned, the black pods could be magic.
Black magic.
I started using the wraps when my lower back started hurting, and the one for your back is like a superwide paper that fits around your waist and has heating pods on the back. You can wear it under your clothes all day, like the unsexiest undergarment on the planet.
Think of it as a chastity belt for your back.
It’s hot, but not in a good way.
You can also wear it to bed at night and you’ll drift into a toasty slumber. Plus you’ll save money because you’ll never have to turn the heat on. Your dogs will cuddle up to you, because you are the new furnace.
If you get hot flashes, you might start a fire.
Don’t ask me how your husband, wife, or significant other will react.
My guess is they’ll want one of their own.
I suppose a heating pad would do the same thing, but you can’t wear a heating pad to the supermarket and have a telltale slip of paper peeking out from underneath your shirt.
They have ThermaCare for aching knees, elbows, joints, wrists, shoulders, and “multipurpose muscle.”
Luckily, none of my muscles are multipurpose.
They have only one purpose.
Which is to relax.
They also have ThermaCare for menstrual cramps, which makes me wish I still had my period.
Just kidding.
And by the way, please don’t write me an angry email saying that I’m shilling for a product. I didn’t get any money to write this, and I wouldn’t accept any. I’m writing this out of love for ThermaCare.
I Care about ThermaCare.
Why?
Because now I’m an addict.
I started using it about a month ago, only at night, and now I have it on continuously. I started out with the heat wraps that last for eight hours but graduated quickly to the ones that last sixteen. They’re expensive, but no junkie complains about the price of heroin.<
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There are only twenty-four hours in a day, but if you wear two wraps that last sixteen hours apiece, you have the luxury of changing your wrap before your initial high begins to wear off.
The more you have, the more you want.
I sense that I’m not the only addict, because if you look at the frequently asked questions on the ThermaCare website, one was, “How many heat wraps can I use at one time?”
Answer: You can wear more than one, but not in the same location.
Damn.
In other words, if you wrap two around your back, you might spontaneously combust.
You have to be ThermaCareful.
Princess Lisa
By Lisa
I live a fairytale existence.
But not in a good way.
When I was little, I remember reading old-school fairytales, and there was one in which every time a princess spoke, no words came out of her mouth, but only snakes, newts, spiders, and mice.
Well, it turns out that princess is me.
And they’re not coming out of my mouth, but they’re coming out of my heat vents.
Or from under couches.
Or even from my oven.
I don’t know where to begin the fairytale.
Maybe just to remind you that every year in the autumn, I always have an invasion of wolf spiders.
To be fair, they don’t invade. They have better manners than that.
They merely wait for the front door to open and run in, usually in a flying wedge.
There are NFL teams that don’t have the formations of these spiders.
Mine are professional spiders.
I can’t bring myself to kill them, so I try to catch them under drinking glasses, flip the glasses upside down, and throw them back outside.
I’ve made my peace with the spiders, as I have with the mice that tend to appear this time of year, too.
I found one in the oven last week, and he wasn’t helping with the cooking.
So I set a bunch of mousetraps, because I don’t cut mice the same slack that I cut spiders.
You have to draw the line somewhere.
Anybody who has had a mouse in the house knows that the best and worst sound is a snap of the trap.
Then a few days ago I noticed a horrible smell coming from the wall of my bedroom closet and all the dogs were going crazy every night, at bedtime. When I couldn’t take the stench anymore, I called a contractor. The dogs told him exactly where in the wall to dig.
Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat?: True Stories and Confessions Page 15
