The Woman Who Is Always Tan and Has a Flat Stomach

by Lauren Allison

  Obviously, those horrid little elves had welded the lights right onto the tree. Even with pliers, they wouldn’t budge.

  I sat down next to the tree and cried. Suddenly, a burst of inspiration hit. “Why didn’t I think of this three weeks ago?” I asked myself.

  I put the bottom half of the tree back on top of the other bottom half, and got Michael’s chain saw from the garage.

  I effectively shaped the Christmas “bush” into a Christmas tree.

  Feeling very pleased about the outcome, I plugged in the tree. As I did so, a puff of smoke blew out of the electric socket. I quickly unplugged it, realizing that I must have cut off some of the wiring for the lights. Just then Michael walked in from work.

  “Honey, what’s for dinner? And why do I smell smoke?”

  “Smoke?” I yelled. “Why do you smell smoke? It’s because I bought a fake tree which turned out to be a Christmas bush, and then I couldn’t get through to those stupid little elves, and finally Snowflake said he’d send me a top to the tree, and then when I got it the lights on the top of the tree and the bottom of the tree didn’t match, and so I put the bottom half of the tree back on the other bottom half of the tree and used your chain saw to make the Christmas bush into a Christmas tree, and when I did that I cut off the wiring to the lights, so when I plugged it in smoke came out of the socket. And that’s why you smell smoke.”

  “That sounds good.” He nodded nervously. “I’ll just take Caroline to McDonald’s and we’ll eat there,” he said, backing out of the house.

  I wish I could get my hands on that annoying elf, Blizzard. I’d like to see how high I could make his voice go then.

  46

  The Woman Who Has a Better Way to Do Everything (Like Make Jell-O) and Wants You to Know It

  The other day, while a neighbor was over for coffee, Caroline called down from upstairs to say that she and her friend, Hailey, were hungry. I made them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and Caroline came down and got them and returned upstairs. I emptied the jelly jar and threw it in the recycling bin.

  “I can’t believe what I just witnessed,” my neighbor said quietly. “You’re really throwing away that jelly jar?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” I asked, perplexed.

  She retrieved it from the garbage. “Because you need to first fill it with hot water and shake it. Then you can use the water to make Jell-O.”

  “But I don’t make Jell-O.”

  “Well, what do you serve for salad and dessert, if you don’t make Jell-O?”

  “We don’t eat that much Jell-O. Besides, you can buy it now in containers that the grocery store makes.”

  “Do you think grocery stores would use jelly water to make their Jell-O?”

  “I can’t imagine they would.”

  “I rest my case. Jell-O without jelly-flavored water is clearly inferior. I would never eat such a thing.”

  I thought, “I’ve got to get out of here,” and then realized I was in my own home.

  “Well,” I said cheerfully, “thanks for stopping by. I’ve got to go somewhere now.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Well, um, I’m dropping Caroline off at her friend’s house and then I’m going to a movie,” I lied.

  “What are you going to see?”

  “Ah, well, I don’t remember the name of it.”

  “I have one question for you. Are you going to buy a small-to-medium-size drink and popcorn, or a large drink and popcorn?”

  I’ll admit it. I had to find out where this was going. “Probably a large drink and popcorn. Why?”

  “Because then you’ll have to leave during the middle of the movie to use the bathroom. You should get the small-to-medium-size drink. Unless, of course, you have a weak bladder; if so you should only get a small container and tell them to fill it with lots of ice.”

  Warming to her theme, she went on, “I always call the movie complex ahead of time and ask which theater the movie is playing in so that I can park close to the exit of that theater. Would you like me to call them for you? I have the phone numbers of all the theaters within twenty-five miles of here programmed into my cell phone. You’re not planning to go to a theater more than twenty-five miles away, are you?”

  “Ah, no.”

  “Well, which movie are you going to see at which theater?” she asked, cell phone poised in her hand.

  “You know, I’m not sure,” I said, getting up and walking to the door. Luckily, she followed.

  “When you’re about to go in the theater, notice which side has the garbage can, so you don’t have to carry your empty popcorn and drink containers as far.”

  She was actually telling me where to throw away my containers at the theater. What next? Which bathroom stall to use? I decided I had to walk outside to get her to leave.

  She followed me out. “And don’t forget to close your purse completely after you get into the theater; otherwise, all kind of valuables might fall out. This happened to my sister once fifteen years ago and since then I try to tell everyone to close her purse while she’s in a theater; otherwise she might lose something important.”

  Increasingly desperate, I was now walking down the street.

  She followed. “Do you want to know what my sister lost in the theater?” Without waiting for an answer she continued, “She lost her favorite shade of lipstick, Raspberry Ice, and right after that Clinique stopped carrying that shade. That’s why you need to be really careful about closing your purse at a theater.”

  I was now standing in front of her house.

  “There’s nothing worse than finding the right shade of lipstick only to find out it’s been discontinued. That’s why I have stored up 137 lipsticks of my favorite shade, just in case they decide to discontinue it.”

  By now she had joined me on her front porch. Foolishly I said, “A hundred and thirty-seven?”

  “Why, yes,” she said. “I calculated how long my mother lived, and how long her mother lived, and took into account the exact number of antioxidants I consume each day, and then multiplied that by two, since I go through one lipstick about every six months, and I came up with 137.”

  I pushed her into her house, shut the door, and held the doorknob in case she tried to get back out.

  While I stood holding the knob, she shouted at the top of her lungs, “And make sure you don’t use the first bathroom stall; everybody uses that one.”

  47

  The Woman Who Has Mirrors Installed All Over Her House So She Can Enjoy the Results of Her Plastic Surgery

  Recently, a neighbor invited me over to see her newly decorated home. As I went in, I commented on how spacious her foyer seemed.

  “Well,” said Melanie, “I just had these floor-to-ceiling mirrors installed all over my house.”

  “Did you use mirrors to make the rooms look bigger?”

  “Heavens, no. I’ve spent a fortune in the last five years on plastic surgery and wanted to enjoy the results without standing in front of the bathroom mirror all day. I’ve had everything nipped and tucked and realized that other people were enjoying the results more than I was. Let’s take a little tour.”

  As we entered the living room, I noticed a mirrored grand piano.

  “Oh, do you play?” I asked.

  “Well, I do now. I bought this piano from Liberace’s estate in Las Vegas. Now that I can see myself while I play, I play every day! It seemed pointless before.”

  She led me into the family room. On one side of the fireplace she’d hung a flat-screen TV, and on the other side a large mirror.

  “This is now my favorite room because my husband can sit in his chair and watch television and I can sit in my chair and watch myself.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “I really think it’s important to spend quality time with your spouse.”

  As we walked into the kitchen she said, “I’ve totally redone the kitchen. I even had mirrors installed on my kitchen cabinets, upper and lower, so that wh
en I’m preparing food, not that I ever do because I don’t cook, I can see myself.”

  “Isn’t that a little scary first thing in the morning?”

  “I’ve always felt strongly that personal grooming should be done the moment you get up in the morning. That way you can enjoy the results all day.”

  As we climbed the stairs, I noticed that mirrors had replaced each of the risers.

  “When I first had these installed, I felt it was terribly distracting to see myself in motion. Now it’s the best part of my day.”

  As I watched myself ascend the stairs, I thought about how demoralizing it was to see my own thighs jiggling.

  We peeked into the master bedroom, where—you guessed it—there were mirrors everywhere.

  As a person who had spent years avoiding looking at myself in mirrors, particularly full-length mirrors, I was starting to panic. I felt like I had to get out of there.

  As I was getting ready to leave, I said, “I’m a little surprised. I’ve just never seen a house decorated with so many mirrors before.”

  “Well, I realized I was spending so much time at the gym just so that I could look at myself in their full-length mirrors. And after all, I’m already a size 2 and my stomach is flat, so it seemed pointless to spend any more time there. So I decided to put the same floor-length mirrors in my home.”

  I went home shaking my head. I knew there was a reason I hadn’t spent much time at the gym. I may be addicted to a lot of things (Dove chocolate, Weight Watchers toffee ice cream bars, Diet Coke), but watching myself in the mirror isn’t one of them.

  48

  The Woman Who Took First Place at the International Napkin-Folding Contest

  At the Super Bowl party we recently attended, I noticed that all the cloth napkins had been folded into the shape of regulation-size footballs. I remarked to the hostess that I had never seen anything like it.

  “Oh, that’s Juliane’s creation,” she said, “Let me introduce you.”

  We walked across the room to a woman sitting on the couch, who was showing pictures to the people around her.

  I overheard her say to the woman next to her, “This one took third place in Zurich.”

  I gave the hostess a quizzical look. “Lauren, this is Juliane. Juliane is the winner of several international napkin-folding contests.”

  I said, “Really! I’ve never heard of an international napkin-folding contest.”

  “Oh, yes, there’re very popular. And the competition is fierce. Here’s a picture of the napkin I folded at the Russian competition in 2004.”

  Looking at the picture I remarked, “I’m sorry, I can’t make out what it is.”

  She said modestly, “It’s actually not literal. It’s an interpretation of the poem ‘Renascence’ by Edna St. Vincent Millay. See, this part right here is the grave. The Interpretive Poetry Design category is always tough, but I usually do okay. This napkin only placed fourth, but then, the Russian judges always cheat.”

  “There’s an Interpretative Poetry Design category?” I was intrigued.

  “Of course,” she said, as if I had never been out of my house before. “They also have Regional Design, Landmark Design, Interpretive Dance Design, and Interpretive Music Design. Here’s a picture of the small English village I did last year at the Regional Design competition in Manchester, England. As you can see, Tudor-style architecture really lends itself to paper-napkin-folding.”

  “Yes, it really does,” I said, impressed. “I had no idea there was so much going on in the napkin-folding world.”

  “That’s the whole problem,” she sighed. “For the average person, paper-napkin-folding has become too boring. We need to break new ground and open new frontiers. During the Interpretive Music Design Competition in Hong Kong last year, many of the younger women wanted to bring in music by Christina Aguilera, and I was all for it. Although there’s nothing like doing a napkin-folding interpretation of Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King ,” she said wistfully. “But I suppose those days are over.”

  “How did you ever become interested in paper-napkin-folding?”

  “From reading the biographies of famous paper-napkin folders, such as Isadora Duncan. Before she became a famous dancer she ranked pretty high in INF (international napkin folding) circles. Her techniques were revolutionary. And Mamie Eisenhower was another pioneer. She had those foreign diplomats in the palm of her hand after they saw her fold a napkin.”

  “It sounds as if you’ve become quite famous in the international napkin-folding arena yourself.”

  “Yes, but I’m thinking of quitting. The competition has become so cutthroat. I never realized how much stress goes into napkin-folding at the championship level. But there is one more competition I’d like to enter, which is the Interpretative Design category in Milan, Italy, this summer. We’ll be interpreting the cubistic design of Picasso, which should be fabulous.”

  “Do you think you could show me how to fold a napkin so it looks like a fan?”

  She pretended not to hear me. “I also like to do biblical interpretive paper-napkin-folding. I once depicted the parting of the Red Sea. It was very moving. And here’s a picture of the Eiffel Tower that I did last year for the Landmark Design category. It was held in New Zealand and I took first place. I didn’t want the Austrians walking off with the top prize three years in a row, so I thought I’d better compete.”

  Someone walked over and commented on the football napkins she had folded for the party. She said, “It’s worth doing something special for your guests.”

  And I used to think folding a napkin in half and placing it under a fork was doing something special for my guests.

  49

  The Husband Who Doesn’t Ever Want to Open the Refrigerator Door Because that Would Be Wasting Energy

  Many husbands exhibit the following behavior:

  1. The minute you leave the family room, your husband runs in and turns out the lights, even though you just left to get a paper towel to wipe off the dust on the TV in an effort to see Rob Lowe more clearly in a made-for-TV movie.

  2. Because you like to leave a porch light on at night, in the spirit of compromise your husband changes the porch light from a hundred-watt bulb to a five-watt bulb, which wouldn’t illuminate King Kong dressed in Reynolds Wrap if he were trying to break into your house.

  3. Whenever you open the refrigerator door, before you even feel a chill, you can sense that your husband is on “the alert” and fidgeting until you shut it again. You learn to use the oven only when he’s not around.

  4. Because he complains about your wasting water, you have a twenty-five-gallon drum of artesian water set up in the kitchen. This water costs sixty-eight dollars a month, but the water bill goes down thirty dollars a month. He thinks he’s saving money on water, only because he doesn’t notice a sixty-eight-dollar drum of artesian water in the kitchen.

  5. He asks that people enter or leave the house no more than three times a day to avoid heating or cooling the entire neighborhood. Your children and their friends learn to hurl themselves out the door in an emergency-like fashion. You do receive some macabre satisfaction, however, when his mother visits and has chest pains and he won’t let the paramedics in because the kids have already opened the front door three times that day.

  6. After complaining about the high electric bill, he insists that you shut down the family room and all pile into the car to watch the DVD and do homework. The next morning he estimates that he saved eight dollars on electricity that night, even though, later that same day, he had to buy a $154 car battery.

  50

  The Woman Who Is Always Tan and Has a Flat Stomach

  I’m always suspicious when the Woman Who Is Always Tan and Has a Flat Stomach calls me up to get together with her. I suspect her motive is that she just looks that much better when she’s standing next to me. Against my better judgment, I recently went with her to a movie and then we grabbed a bite to eat afterward. When we got to th
e restaurant, I ordered the French dip with extra fries, split pea soup, and Key lime pie for dessert. When the waitress turned to her, the Woman Who Is Always Tan and Has a Flat Stomach said, “Actually, I’m not hungry and I never eat when I’m not hungry. I’ll just have herbal tea, thank you.” The waitress frowned and left.

  I stared at her and said, “You’re not ordering?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  I said, “So?”

  She confided, “That’s why I don’t gain weight.”

  I said, “I haven’t been hungry since 1981 but that certainly hasn’t kept me from eating. And in 1981 I was only hungry for about ten minutes until they fixed the microwave in my dorm.”

  She shrugged.

  I pressed on. “Do you know that when my doctor prescribes medication that has to be taken on an empty stomach, I have to set my alarm for four a.m.? And do you flat-stomach people understand that when I got pregnant, I began to show seven hours later?”

  She pretended not to hear me.

  Not only is she always thin, she is always tan. In her ancestry she was lucky enough to have a great-great-grandparent who was Italian or Spanish. Obviously, my ancestors were only thinking of themselves and not me when they married only other Norwegians. Would it have hurt anyone to marry someone who was not named Lars or Ole so that we could get some color into our skin tones? Sure, it would have required perilous six-month journeys on scurvy-ridden boats to other countries to find mates with darker skin, but that wouldn’t have killed them. Well, probably not. Okay there was a good chance they might not have made it, but is that really the point here?

  So last year, right before I had to accompany my daughter to the neighborhood pool, I decided to do something about my Scandinavian-colored skin. I decided to make an appointment at one of those spas where they first exfoliate your skin and then apply a tanning cream so that by May I would look less like a cadaver wearing shorts. Actually, a cadaver has more color than I do.