Another Candle on the Cake

Happy Birthday Terri!!!

An Epiphany

I found this on my laptop. Apparently I started this gem in January and never got around to finishing or posting it. Here it is now, for your reading enjoyment.

Last Wednesday, I had an epiphany. Not the kind of epiphany where three kings travel far across a desert and wander into my stable offering gifts of rare, exotic metals and spices. No. This was one of those lightening-bolt-hits-you-in-the-head moments when everything in life seems perfectly clear for a split second and you have the option to act on that clarity or keep trudging along.

There I was, at the local mall waiting in line to meet my favorite Pittsburgh Pirates as part of the organization's annual Winter Caravan. I thought the autograph session began at 6 p.m., so I arrived not much later than 5 p.m. to get a "good spot" in line. Few people were there, so I did a little shopping and finally secured my spot--within the first 50 people--around 5:30 p.m.

I've always excelled at standing in line. Finances, math and business boggle my mind, but I'm fantastic at line-standing. The only time I get angry or impatient is if someone invades my personal space. Stand too close to me and chances are I'll give you a dirty look before the night's over. That's all that really annoys me.

So there I was, doing what I do best, and I noticed that the man in front of me had a 2005 pocket schedule. I hadn't seen one yet, so I casually asked him where he got it. Turns out he had an extra, so he handed me a copy and I settled in to read for a little while. The gentleman who had given me the schedule asked me a simple question--possibly something about the upcoming fan fest--and from that point on, I don't think we stopped talking. He was around my parents age and not the least big scary (and really, it was the middle of the mall with tons of security guards in the vicinity). The conversation ranged from baseball to dentistry (he was a dentist) and most things in between.

This talk-with-a-stranger-for-hours scenario isn't new to me. On almost every flight I've been on, I've met people who have been content to chat the trip away. I inherited it from my mom, who, within five minutes of meeting someone knows who they are, where they live, who they're related to and what they do for a living. The gift of gab is apparently genetic. Once I went to a baseball game alone, ended up sitting by a Canadian minister and his friend, and by the fifth inning knew both their life stories. Another time I was on the standby list for a flight to Las Vegas and chatted with the person ahead of me on the list. He got on the flight--seat 16F--and I was stuck at the airport. The next day, waiting for my early morning plane, I met the girl who was supposed to be 16F the night before. On another flight, my random seat neighbor and I kept the back two rows of the plane laughing from Pittsburgh to Charlotte. By the time we touched down, perfect strangers were telling us we were the funniest people they'd ever met. I'll probably never see him again--that band director from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina--but for two hours of turbulence, he was my best friend.

What's my point, you might ask, and I'll tell you. Standing in that autograph line with Harvey the Dentist, I realized what I'm really good at. I can talk to people. Maybe it's my perky attitude or curly hair, but complete strangers somehow feel comfortable enough with me that they let their guard down. I don't know how much good it will do me in life, but it was nice to leave the mall that night knowing that Harvey would probably go on to remember the short, round writer from a local university who wants to work for the Pirates someday.

So what do I do with this gift? How does it change my struggle to master the maze of life? It reminds me that I have the power to do something with these stories from the people I meet. With patience and a little creativity, I can use my gift for gab to be a better writer--with any luck, a phenomenal writer. I may not be famous now, I might just be scraping by, but a stranger will remember me. And I'll remember his story.

Then someday, he'll be standing in line for my autograph at a book signing, because he remembers the local girl who made good. And he'll say he knew me when.

A Woman in a Hardware Store...

...is a target for male ego and attitude.

When I go into Lowe's or a similar store, I know what I want. Tonight, I needed bookshelves and a quart (or less) of high-gloss enamel paint in a deep red color that matched my kitchen chairs. Since I needed a high-gloss paint, I was hesitant to just look at all the colors without knowing what brand I needed to constrain my search to (thinking they might only have a high-gloss enamel in, say, Olympic and not Behr). I had the following conversation with Paint Mixer Guy (PMG):

Me: Hi there. I need to buy some high-gloss enamel with a color mixed in. Is there a specific brand I should constrain my color search to, or can I pick anything?

PMG: What are you doing with it?

Me (somewhat confused): Painting a chair to match my other chairs.

PMG: Are they white?

Me (thinking I already covered this): No, they're red.

PMG: So you need to mix in a color?

Me (Is he braindead?): Yes.

PMG: You can pick any color in any brand.

So, I venture to the "American Traditions" paint colors and--lo and behold--I find the correct color right off the bat. After checking a few other colors just to make sure, I take the card and set off to find my mom, so she can double-check my paint card against the paint chips I brought with me. After a "pretty darn close" from her, I go back to PMG.

PMG: You're back.

Me: Yes. I need this color in a pint of high-gloss enamel, please. (Hands card to PMG.)

PMG: You can only get a quart.

Me: No. I saw smaller sizes of high-gloss enamel on the shelf.

PMG: This color actually only comes in the latex interior. You can't get the enamel.

Me (getting annoyed): You TOLD ME I could pick from any of these colors on the wall and it would be fine! I made a point of asking you, and you told me I could choose anything. This is the exact color I need. That's why I ASKED YOU BEFORE!

PMG (laughing at my annoyance): It's spotty. You picked an interior color only.

Me: How am I supposed to know that it's an interior color only? You said I could pick anything.

PMG: Pick any Olympic color.

Me: Maybe you should have told me that in the first place and we could have avoided this entire situation.

PMG: (Walks away from me and pretends like I don't exist.)

Me: This is ridiculous. I'm leaving.

And so I left, without spending the $100 I had budgeted for some cute bookcases and random other things. I only got the necessities and got out.

This situation happens to me so frequently that I want to start ripping out eyeballs. Some older man waits on me and thinks I'm clueless just because I'm a girl in a hardware store. It doesn't matter that I've done my research online and read DIY articles that tell me what I need and how I should do something. No way. I'm young and I'm female, so I'm stupid about home improvement.

Well, PMG (wherever you are), you're old, ignorant and you probably have a small penis.

And I'm going to Sherwin-Williams.

So there.

Shut Up and Eat

Dave Barry's column this week was about the ridiculousness of woman's perennial question, "How do I look?" The article requires registration to read, so I'll just summarize for you. Basically, a man would never ask, "How do I look?" because all men think they either look crappy or fine. And they're OK with both. Women, on the other hand, spend hours trying to use make-up endorsed by supermodels to look like those supermodels. In a great comparison, Barry said that men would never sit around and try to use the hair gel Brad Pitt uses because most men don't think Brad Pitt is any better looking than they are. But women are obsessed.

As one of those women Barry makes fun of, I'm ashamed to admit that we are obsessed. But it doesn't stop with how we look. It carries over into how we look WHEN WE EAT. Take the following scene: four apparently normal women stroll into a restaurant for a nice meal. The waiter seats them and the chatter begins.

"This chicken sandwich looks so good," swoons Woman A, "but it's probably loaded with calories and I had some toast for breakfast so I don't really need all that food. Oh look! Salad! I'll have that. And water with lemon."

Two of her fellow lunchers can't find the salad section of the menu fast enough.

"Oh look! 'A mouthwatering blend of watercress, spinach and romaine served with fat-free raspberry vinaigrette,'" said Woman B. "That sounds perfect. But I think I'll get it with the dressing on the side just in case it's not really fat-free. Oh, and I'll need a water with lemon."

"I'll have the same exact thing," quips Woman C. "I've been craving watercress all morning and I really need to pay for that piece of Juicy Fruit I chewed after breakfast. It's not really fruit you know! And I'll need to double-check that the dressing is fat-free. Ooohhh, and some water with lemon."

Woman D watches all of this in horror. You see, she's hungry and not for bunny food. She wanted a sandwich, could virtually feel the texture of the bun as her teeth cut through the first bite. She's been looking forward to this lunch for a long time and has privately justified the break in her attempts at healthy eating, chalking it up to a fun day with the girls that won't kill her. And now this. She can either order a salad or suffer the social stigma of eating real food in front of other women--one of the worst crimes a 21st-century female can commit.

"I'll get the chicken club sandwich," she blurts before she can help it. She looks at the waiter. "That comes with bacon, right? And lots of American cheese and pickles? It says here I can get a side salad, but I'd really just like some fries. And a Coke."

Women A, B and C stare at her open-mouthed. Woman D has done it. She's ordered what she actually wants to eat. From this point on, she's the enemy.

You men out there are probably reading this and chuckling, thinking it's the work of my paranoid (yet highly entertaining) imagination. Like Dave Barry argues, men would never do this—sit around a table, telling people how fat they are and how they don't deserve to eat certain foods. But the sad truth is that female peer pressure about food is one of the worst things I personally have ever had to deal with in my life. Lunches like the one I described, or breakfast meetings at work when female colleagues talk about the fat and calories in the Danish, opting instead to go have a cigarette and drink a cup of coffee, scowling at you when you slather reduced-fat cream cheese on a cinnamon raisin bagel....They're absolute torture. You learn to say things like, "I know these are so terrible, but I just can't resist," or even worse, you ignore the bagel you desperately want to avoid the stigma of actually eating it.

What irritates me most about the salad movement isn't so much that people want to eat salad, but that they have to share it. If you want a salad, don't justify it by running it past me first. Don't make me massage your ego by ordering a salad too. Just order the damn thing and don't put on a Broadway song and dance about it. Don't itemize your caloric intake for day and tell me how horrible you've been. Don't make me feel guilty because I'm hungry and I'd like to splurge for the week and eat a burger on the bun with lots of pickles.

And that's what happens—the guilt inevitably sets in. Woman A gets a salad and women B and C follow suite out of guilt, thinking Woman A will ostracize or make fun of them for eating, say, a turkey wrap. But Woman D has the balls to eat what she wants, and you know why? Because Woman D is a round woman who has always been aware of what she eats and how people view her because of it. Woman D has tried not eating, eating only apples, eating breakfast, skipping breakfast, skipping lunch, drinking coffee, not drinking coffee, eating junk, not eating junk, not snacking at night and eating only popcorn. Her battle with food is waged deep within her soul and is not to be shared with others over a friendly lunch with expressions of "I'm so fat, I don't deserve the house dressing." Years of struggle have taught her that her body needs food to think clearly, function properly and sleep deeply. Without food, she grows weary, dizzy and irritable.

Above all, Woman D has learned that the chicken she ordered and the bread it comes on aren't going to impact her life so dramatically that she needs to make everyone else's life miserable because of it. She's tired of the pressure and she's rebelling against it.

Life would be so much easier if people would just shut up and eat.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Play ball!