Bossypants

by Tina Fey

  Just implementing four or five of these little techniques will prove restorative and give you the energy you need to not drink until nighttime.

  A Celebrity’s Guide to Celebrating the Birth of Jesus

  Goldie and Kurt like to soak in the crystal blue waters of St. Barts. Melanie and Antonio prefer the festive chill of Aspen. Tina and Jeff are absolutely mad for Route 80W between Philadelphia and Youngstown! We never miss it.

  Lying on a beach feels a little “first thought” to me. I prefer the retro chic of spending Christmas just like Joseph and Mary did—traveling arduously back to the place of your birth to be counted, with no guarantee of a bed when you get there. You may end up sleeping on an old wicker couch with a dog licking your face while an Ab Rocket infomercial plays in the background. It’s a modern-day manger.

  Our annual pilgrimage from one set of in-laws to the other happens every December 26, or, as they call it in Canada: Boring Day.

  We always plan to leave around seven in the morning and, like clockwork, we’re out the door by ten. After gassing up, deicing, and turning around for an unanticipated bowel movement, we glide onto glorious 80W by ten thirty. Sure, there are those trendy types who prefer 76/70 because it’s “more scenic” and “they have a McDonald’s,” but I think 80W has a certain ceci me déprime.

  My husband drives the whole seven hours because I don’t have a driver’s license. It’s just one of the many ways in which I am developmentally stunted. I don’t drive. I can’t cook meat correctly. And I have no affinity for animals. I don’t hate animals and I would never hurt an animal; I just don’t actively care about them. When a coworker shows me cute pictures of her dog, I struggle to respond correctly, like an autistic person who has been taught to recognize human emotions from flash cards. In short, I am the worst.

  There are plenty of positives to being married to me. I just can’t think of any of them right now, and I’m sure my husband can’t think of any of them either while he’s driving wideways across Pennsylvania.

  Still: There’s something hypnotic and relaxing about cruising through the Alleghenies, frantically searching for a radio signal. If traffic is moving well, you won’t ever find a station that lasts for an entire song. So you nestle in between your baking-hot dashboard and the freezing-cold door and enjoy the radio’s static with occasional fragments of a shouted religious broadcast.

  KHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—Friends, are you living in such a way that there is a crown in heaven waiting for you?—KHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—a man must die of self—KHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

  When you feel about to “die of self,” pull over and enjoy one of the local eateries.

  I recommend the Roy Rogers at Exit 4B or the Roy Rogers at Exit 78. If you’re a die-hard

  “foodie,” hop off the road in DuBois and enjoy a Subway sandwich made at a place that is eighty percent gas station.

  “Youngstown!” my husband always yells as we pass the sign. He yells it in a way that you can actually hear the letters getting bigger at the end like an old-timey postcard. It never fails to startle me and make me laugh. Half the time it wakes me up. Yes, I fall asleep while he’s driving. Did I mention that I’m the worst?

  In the last hour, highway turns to snowy country roads and the GPS system shuts down because you’re in a part of the world that Toyota doesn’t recognize (and the feeling is mutual).

  We always pull up carefully, making sure not to run over any outdoor cats. (One of the best-kept secrets of “country life” is that people accidentally crush their own pets a lot.) The house is cozy warm from the wood-burning heater. There are hugs and kisses and pies and soup and ham and biscuits and a continuous flow of Maxwell House coffee with nondairy creamer. We City Folk can pretend that we prefer the rotgut from Starcorps with skim milk and Splenda, but who are we kidding? Maxwell House with French vanilla corn syrup cannot be beat.

  If there’s one thing my husband’s hometown has that St. Barts does not, it’s the water. “Legally potable” doesn’t quite capture it. Straight from the tap it smells like… How can I describe it?—if you boiled ten thousand eggs in a prostitute’s bathwater. It turns your jewelry green, but it leaves your hair soft and manageable. So, while I couldn’t find it in St. Barts, I could probably sell it there.

  My in-laws always have a huge dog—a dog so big that even I can see it. For years it was Robbie.

  When Robbie passed away from surprisingly non-vehicle-related causes, they got Bear. Another way my body rejects dog love is that I am allergic to them. Those first few Christmases, I had to dose myself with Benadryl to survive. I would end up sleeping half the day and then shuffling aimlessly around the house like later-years Judy Garland in a Christmas special. Most of my in-laws didn’t experience my actual personality until Claritin was invented. By then it was too late to get rid of me.

  My three sisters-in-law have always been welcoming and affectionate, and boy, can they clean a kitchen. After a big family meal they rinse and scrape and dry and Saran-wrap like nobody’s business. I pitch in half-assedly like the spoiled suburban younger child that I am. “Where… should I put… this…

  chicken bone? Throw it out, or…?” See above, re: “worst.”

  I can’t promise you will find a family as lovely as my in-laws to stay with on your Route 80

  Christmas. Honestly, I know you won’t, because we had Mamaw Pearline. Pearline was eighty-seven when I met her and she lived to be ninety-six. She spent almost all her time upstairs in the den watching TV and chain-smoking. She had gradually retired from working hard all her life, raising kids, cleaning, and cooking in a coal camp in West Virginia. She had earned the right to refer to the National Enquirer as

  “the newspaper.”

  By the time my daughter was born, Pearline’s short-term memory was gone. She’d come downstairs and smile at the baby. “Whose little baby is this?” “IT’S JEFF’S!” we’d yell. “Look at those dark eyebrows.” She’d smile and pat the baby’s head. “I never saw a baby with such dark eyebrows!”

  Then, two hours later, she’d come down for a cup of coffee. “Whose little baby is this? Look at those dark eyebrows!” This went on for three days.

  For reference, this is the swarthy little baby she was talking about.

  We did seven or eight 80W Christmases in a row before I had to be a fool and mess with perfection. Why couldn’t I be like Goldie and Kurt and stick with what works? I couldn’t because as glamorous as the drive always was, it got even more magical and glamorous when the baby became a toddler. One year, I believe, she screamed all the way from Hazleton to the Moshannon State Forest.

  And who could blame her? She didn’t understand why we had strapped her into this frozen contraption only to shove cold Roy Rogers fries in her mouth.

  In an attempt to make things easier for myself, which is the basis for all of history’s worst decisions (see: “George W. Bush’s Repeal of the Estate Tax,” “Scott Peterson’s Plan,” and “Dred Scott v.

  Sandford” ), I invited the whole family out to New York for a Christmas adventure. I learned quickly that trying to force Country Folk to love the Big City is like telling your gay cousin, “You just haven’t met the right girl yet.” They just don’t like big cities. It’s okay. It’s natural. They were born that way.

  When you see your Big City through a non-admirer’s eyes you notice things you normally would not.

  “Hmm. I guess there are a lot of dog turds on Eighty-third Street.”

  “No, it’s great. We just put our garbage out the back door and when it starts to overflow the super picks it up.”

  “Who, that guy? Yeah… he’s playing with himself. Okay, let’s go in the playground the other way.”

  The Christmas in New York Adventure didn’t go so well. My father-in-law tripped on a crack in the pavement and spent the rest of the week politely pretending he had not dislocated his shoulder. I dragged all the kids onto the subway and through the crowd to see the Rockefeller Center
Christmas tree, which is unlike any tree in the world, except for hundreds of trees near their homes in Ohio.

  If I had one bone to pick with the Country Folks, it’s that they are not gastronomically adventurous. Family-style Italian sent them all running for the Alka-Seltzer. Greek yogurt left my sister-in-law stymied, like I had offered her a bowl of caulk. But who am I to judge? I have never been able to get my head around ham salad or pickled eggs. And I would like it explained to me in writing what’s so great about apple butter.

  After four days, I could see the city wearing them down. It was too much walking for them, oddly. It turns out City Folk walk way more than Country Folk.

  My young nephew went to the deli with me. “There sure are a lot of foreigners here.” No, I explained, those people live here. In the “Great American Melting Pot,” rural Ohio may be a lump of white flour that hasn’t been stirred properly. Not that New York is any better. New York is that chunk of garlic that you bite into thinking it’s potato and you can’t get the taste out of your mouth all day. It all blends once you mix it, but sometimes you really have to grind it against the side.

  Clearly we needed to shake that year off and try something new. Last year, determined to

  “save” the full 80W drive until our daughter can really appreciate it in twenty years or so, I made a new pitch: Let’s meet in the middle. We chose Williamsport, Pennsylvania, home of the Little League World Series and almost exactly halfway between us on the map.

  We’d spend three days and two nights at the Holiday Inn and then head our separate ways. I cannot emphasize to you how well this went… because I don’t know how to do “double underline” on my computer.

  The kids swam in the hotel pool. We dined at Red Lobster. There is no one of-woman-born who does not like Red Lobster cheddar biscuits. Anyone who claims otherwise is a liar and a Socialist. We fed fifteen people for two hundred dollars. Success!

  The next day, while Beyoncé and Jay-Z were probably having a frustrating time on their yacht trying to figure out the French word for plunger, we walked around the Lycoming Mall. There was a carousel for the kids. Later, we exchanged gifts in the lobby by a ten-foot Christmas tree that none of us had to put up or take down. Victory!

  That night, while Mariah and Nick shopped for dog jewelry in Aspen, we convened for an amazing meal at a local inn called the Herdic House. This stately Victorian inn offered a menu where city jerks and country carnivores could find common ground. Pork chops, duck, pear crisp. The setting was cozy and twinkly and Christmassy in a way that worked for everybody.

  Of course the final ingredient for a perfect Christmas vacation is a good Buffer. A Buffer is a neutral party who keeps the conversation light. Everyone needs a Buffer. You don’t think Mary and Joseph were psyched to see the Little Drummer Boy?

  That night at the Herdic House my best friend from high school, Marlene, and her husband joined us for the evening. She was visiting family in Williamsport, too, and she is the perfect Buffer. My girl Marlene can talk to anyone. She could talk to a Frankenstein about neck bolts. She could talk to your great-aunt Joyce about the tumors of a person she has never met. She could exchange e-mail addresses with a wreath. Nick and Mariah wish they had a Buffer this good. They probably wanted to kill each other after three days of wearing matching ski outfits and never skiing. WILLIAMSPORT FOR THE WIN!

  This Christmas I’ll be riding my metaphorical donkey all the way across 80W again. But I’m insisting that we’re back in New York City for New Year’s Eve, where we do more of an Ahab-and-Jezebel thing.

  Juggle This

  My daughter recently checked out a book from the preschool library called My Working Mom. It had a cartoon witch on the cover. “Did you pick this book out all by yourself?” I asked her, trying to be nonchalant. Yes. We read the book and the witch mother was very busy and sometimes reprimanded her daughter for messing things up near her cauldron. She had to fly away to a lot of meetings, and the witch’s child said something like, “It’s hard having a working mom, especially when she enjoys her work.” In the heartwarming conclusion, the witch mother makes it to the child’s school play at the last second, and the witch’s child says she doesn’t like having a working mom but she can’t picture her mom any other way. I didn’t love it. I’m sure the TWO MEN who wrote this book had the absolute best intentions, but this leads me to my point. The topic of working moms is a tap-dance recital in a minefield.

  It is less dangerous to draw a cartoon of Allah French-kissing Uncle Sam—which let me make it very clear I HAVE NOT DONE—than it is to speak honestly about this topic.

  I will start by saying that I have once or twice been offered a “mother of the year” award by working-mom groups or a mommy magazine, and I always decline. How could they possibly know if I’m a good mother? How can any of us know until the kid is about thirty-three and all the personality dust has really settled? But working moms want to validate that it’s okay to work, especially if they work at magazines where they can then package that validation and sell it to stay-at-home moms who are craving news from the outside world.

  What is the rudest question you can ask a woman? “How old are you?” “What do you weigh?”

  “When you and your twin sister are alone with Mr. Hefner, do you have to pretend to be lesbians?” No, the worst question is “How do you juggle it all?”

  “How do you juggle it all?” people constantly ask me, with an accusatory look in their eyes.

  “You’re fucking it all up, aren’t you?” their eyes say. My standard answer is that I have the same struggles as any working parent but with the good fortune to be working at my dream job.

  The long version of the answer is more complicated.

  When my daughter was about two, I was convinced that our babysitter was cutting her fingernails too short. They looked red sometimes, and she was going below the white part; it was all wrong, in my opinion. I know you’re thinking that the obvious thing to do would be to point this out to the babysitter. Hear me out.

  I can tell twenty comedy writers what to do; I can argue with a cabdriver about 10th Avenue versus the West Side Highway; I will happily tell a joke about Osama bin Laden or the Ku Klux Klan on live television; but I could not talk to the babysitter about the fingernail clipping. I’ll bet you Margaret Thatcher would say the same thing if she were alive today.*

  Here’s the truth: I couldn’t tell the woman who so lovingly and devotedly watches my kid every day that I didn’t like how she did this one thing. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

  And here’s the next layer of truth: As someone who grew up middle-class with no nannies or housekeepers of any kind, I didn’t know how to handle it. I was not just a first-time mother, I was a first-time cross-cultural nanny-communicator and I was broken. Maybe that’s what I should tell the roving reporter from Showbiz Hollywood the next time she asks me, “Is it weird for you being the boss of all these people?” “Who? These actors and teamsters and camera guys? These dummies don’t scare me.

  Now, can you call my house and tell the babysitter I’m gonna be forty minutes late? Pweeeeze?”

  But here’s the deep truth: I didn’t want to spend MY PRECIOUS TIME AT HOME having an awkward conversation with the babysitter. I JUST WANT TO BE WITH MY KID. That’s what it comes down to, really. The best days are the ones where you pass the babysitter* in the elevator, all smiles, and your apartment contains no one but your family when you walk in the door. I think my babysitter would agree. But I’m scared to ask her.

  I would think of Midge’s little fingers in the middle of a busy workday. I would tell myself, “Once I have the baby full-time to myself, everything will be easier.” And then it hit me; that day was not coming. This “work” thing was not going away. There was no prolonged stretch of time in sight when it would just be the baby and me. And then I sobbed in my office for ten minutes. The same ten minutes that magazines urge me to use for sit-ups and triceps dips, I used for sobbing. Of course I’m not suppo
sed to admit that there is triannual torrential sobbing in my office, because it’s bad for the feminist cause. It makes it harder for women to be taken seriously in the workplace. It makes it harder for other working moms to justify their choice. But I have friends who stay home with their kids and they also have a triannual sob, so I think we should call it even. I think we should be kind to one another about it. I think we should agree to blame the children. Also, my crying three times a year doesn’t distract me from my job any more than my male coworkers get distracted watching March Madness or shooting one another with Nerf guns, or (to stop generalizing) spending twenty minutes on the phone booking a doggy hotel for their pit bull before a trip to Italy with their same-sex partners.

  After sobbing, I always fantasize about quitting my job. “We don’t need a lot of money!” I tell myself. “We don’t live extravagantly; we just live in an expensive city. If we moved to a little house in the middle of Pennsylvania we could live like kings for much less! And we’d all be together all day and we’ll make cupcakes and plant a garden! And I would be taller! Yes, somehow I would be taller.” My reverie is inevitably interrupted by someone who needs me to get back to work. There are almost two hundred people who work on this TV show with me. A lot of them have kids that they miss all day just like me; they keep the same terrible hours as I do; but unlike me, they are not working at their dream job. They need this job to pay their bills, and if I flaked out and quit, their jobs would disappear.