Best Friends, Occasional Enemies

by Lisa Scottoline; Francesca Serritella

  I own a BlackBerry, which makes and receives phone calls and emails, cruises the web, and takes pictures. It may do other things, but I don’t need the other things it does.

  Maybe I need a dumbphone.

  Let’s assume my BlackBerry is a smartphone, which makes sense. It remembers the phone numbers and email addresses of my friends, which is more than I do. And it saves all my photos in chronological order, which is also more than I do. And finally, it finds a way to cost me three hundred dollars a month, which is very smart.

  In fact, it’s Einstein.

  But its glass has a huge crack, and it’s time to replace it, especially since I got a flyer in the mail that tells me I’m eligible to upgrade my phone for less than $3 million.

  Please.

  Tell me I’m not the only one who’s been caught in the upgrade scam, where they charge you a normal price for your phone, but if you want to upgrade within two years, you hand over your firstborn.

  You can get a fairer deal from the Mafia. Organized crime takes many forms. I’m talking to you, AT&T.

  The funny thing is, I’m old enough to remember all the way back in time, before portable phones and car phones, then before that to pushbutton phones and rotary phones, to the time when AT&T was the only phone company. The government said that AT&T was a monopoly that had to be broken up, supposedly to give consumers more choices, and you can judge for yourself how well that turned out, because now there are plenty of phone companies, and all of them charge you $3 million to upgrade your cellphone.

  Yay!

  Now, you can choose which phone company gets to raise your firstborn, which makes them a godfather. Or, er, The Godfather.

  And this is when you know your government is working for you, at upgrade time.

  Me, I’m thinking that we should upgrade our government.

  I need to replace my smartphone, but I want to make the right choice, now that I have so many choices. So I did some research and looked at some ads, and as best I can tell, there are three basic choices in smartphones: BlackBerry, iPhone, and Android.

  Sorry, I mean two choices.

  Android is not a choice, for me. In any movie I’ve ever seen, the androids are killer robots. I won’t even go to the android store.

  I’m scared.

  If Android, Inc. wants me to buy one of their phones, they need to change their name to one that girls like. Chocolate. Puppy. Or George Clooney.

  You knew that was coming.

  So I went to the Apple store, an experience you have had if you’ve seen the color white. And I picked up the iPhone and played with it, noticing its functions, of which there are several hundred.

  Definitely, smart.

  And it had a function that lets you see the person you’re talking to on the phone, and vice versa. I got excited. It would be nice to see Daughter Francesca while we yapped away. And it would be fun if she could see me.

  But then I thought about other people who could see me on the phone. In my bathrobe. In my glasses.

  My plumber.

  My electrician.

  My blind date.

  And then I remembered that when I’m on the phone, I sometimes write, eat, and pet things.

  So I didn’t buy the iPhone.

  I’m too smart.

  Oh, You Don’t Know

  By Francesca

  I look to my mom for advice about everything. I call her to ask how long to cook a chicken breast, and at what temperature to set the oven. I send her cellphone pictures of clothes I’m trying on in the dressing room. I call her when there’s a mouse in my kitchen, even though she is roughly 130 miles away.

  I also ask my mom for advice about men.

  I just never take it.

  This is not to say her advice is bad. Two marriages teach you a thing or two—at least two.

  So no, her advice is far from bad. It’s just Mom Advice. Nine times out of ten, I want, need, and crave Mom Advice. But modern romance is not one of those times.

  So why do I keep asking?

  I admit when I’m wrong, and in this case, I am. Why do I solicit my mother’s opinion when I know I’ll disregard it? Is this some last vestige of adolescence? Must I wean myself off my past addiction to eye-rolling and the general dismissal of all things motherly?

  Oh, Mom.

  It does have a nice ring to it.

  And I confess, it is funny sometimes, to hear her wacky logic. A while back, I was introduced to a cute guy at a party—I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pursue him, but I didn’t want to lose track of him.

  “Should I friend him on Facebook?” I asked my mom.

  “No, I think that’s a little intrusive.”

  “Mom, you wanted me to get a criminal background check on that lawyer before our first date, do you remember that?”

  “That was for your safety. This is different.”

  “Psh, you don’t know.”

  But why would she know? When she was my age, people called each other on the phone. And instead of reading a list of interests online, they had to actually get to know each other, slowly. And the craziest of all: If they weren’t physically in front of each other, they had to—wait for it—imagine what the other person looked like.

  I know! Who has the time?

  My mom also has impossibly high standards for dating protocol. For example, this guy I met asked me out to drinks, and I called my mom to ask her thoughts on a potential outfit, but she had other opinions:

  “Drinks? You should go out to dinner.”

  “He didn’t ask me to dinner, Mom. And anyway, drinks are fine. It’s a first date.”

  “It’s not a date. A date is a meal.”

  “What? There are lots of types of dates, coffee dates, lunch dates, drinks dates. C’mon.”

  “I don’t get it. Why would you want to drink and not eat? Is he trying to get you drunk?”

  “You sound crazy right now. Drinks are a perfectly normal date.”

  “I’ve never been on a ‘drinks date.’”

  “Never?”

  “In fact, I’ve never been in a bar.”

  “Oh, forget it.”

  This is one of my mom’s favorite myths—that she’s never been in a bar. I still have a hard time believing it, but that’s her story, and she’s sticking to it. I know this about her, so I should’ve known better than to ask.

  Anyway, that night, I chose my own outfit and went on my not-weird-at-all drinks date. Although my date’s choice to order a bottle for the two of us was perhaps ambitious—by his third glass, his eyes were droopy, and he was repeating himself. I was bored. Didn’t see him again.

  But it’s no big loss. I’ve since started seeing someone I like much better—not that that makes it any easier. My girlfriends and I have an inexhaustible tolerance for discussing the delicate, early weeks of a new relationship. Our war room strategy sessions can last upwards of an hour. So I don’t know what I was thinking when I asked my civilian mom the question:

  “Should I call him?”

  “Do you want to see him?” my mom said.

  “Well, yeah, but we texted yesterday, and he told me he might be free tonight, but we didn’t make plans. Since I haven’t heard from him today, I don’t know if I should make other plans. I could ask him, but I don’t want to seem like I’m waiting around with nothing to do, you know? Because he clearly has other things to do, otherwise he wouldn’t have said the ‘might’ in ‘might be free.’”

  “I have no idea what you just said.”

  “Mom!”

  “Do you want to see him tonight, or do you want to do something else?”

  “See him.”

  “Then call him.”

  “It’s not that simple. I can’t just call him.”

  “Yes. You can.”

  “No, it needs finesse. I don’t just want to see him; I want him to want to see me.”

  “It isn’t your job to control what he wants. Your job is to figure out what you want.”

&nbs
p; And just like that, she’ll say something that makes perfect sense.

  So it’s not that I’m wrong to ask for my mom’s advice.

  But every so often, I should listen.

  Home, Sweet Gym

  By Lisa

  Everything in my home office is at my fingertips, and I’m gaining weight. I sense these things are not unrelated.

  I’ve set up everything in my life so I don’t have to move around too much, with the completely foreseeable result that now I don’t move around too much. And five pounds later, it turns out it wasn’t one of my better ideas.

  It started last year, when I stopped working in my home office, which is upstairs. It’s a converted bedroom that has a desk, TV, and bookshelves, and one side is covered with framed covers of my books, like my wall o’ self-esteem.

  Correction.

  If I had self-esteem, I wouldn’t need a wall.

  But when Daughter Francesca moved out, I didn’t need to stay upstairs to have quiet, and even before then I used to come downstairs and work in the kitchen, which I called my summer office.

  And in my summer office, the laptop is right next to the refrigerator, but I’ve mentioned that before and it’s not my point herein. Now I want to talk about how I’ve created a life that doesn’t require me to move around my house, so that now I need a home gym.

  Ironic, because my house used to be my gym. By this I mean when I worked in my upstairs office, I used to spend a lot of time running up and down the stairs.

  My staircase was my StairMaster.

  But now all I do is sit.

  Also, shoved in the corner of my upstairs office was an elliptical machine. I used it when I worked up there, because I practically had to trip over it to get to my desk. But you know what they say: out of sight, out of mind.

  Though I’m not sure they were talking about ellipticals.

  Still, the result was the same. I was thinking that I needed a home gym when I remembered that I already had one.

  Oops.

  So I had no excuses.

  And what happened next is that I said to myself, enough already. Get upstairs and work out on the elliptical. But I had to dress the part. I had some old shorts and a new white shirt of something called Under Armour. Actually I had bought one for Daughter Francesca, who really does work out and run, and an extra one for me, because I think about working out and running.

  But when I opened up the Under Armour package, I realized that Under Armour is Spanx for jocks.

  I had ordered a Medium, but this size was Postage Stamp.

  I could not believe the shirt would stretch out enough for me to put it on, but I tried, and when I got it over my neck, I almost strangled myself. I managed to pop through the neck like some superannuated turtle, then I wrenched it over my shoulders and felt like I’d bound my chest, which isn’t a good look for an A cup.

  Still, regardless of how I looked in my Under Armour, it imparted a generally athletic vibe that made me feel good about myself.

  Like a shirt o’ self-esteem.

  So I jumped onto the elliptical and hit the START button, exuberant until I had to plug in my weight. So I subtracted ten pounds and plugged it in.

  Yes, dear reader, I lied.

  To an inanimate object.

  Then I started pedaling, and within thirty seconds I had to hit PAUSE button to take off my Under Armour, because I was sweating profusely.

  Which must be why they call it Under Armour.

  Because it makes you sweat under your armers.

  Either way, in time I gave up and went down to the kitchen.

  Er, I mean, my office.

  The Right To Vote

  By Lisa

  I believe it’s important to vote. It’s our right and privilege, as Americans. That’s why I vote whenever I can, for Dancing with the Stars, The Sing-Off, and American Idol.

  I vote, vote, vote.

  I’m a votin’ fool.

  It wasn’t always thus. I used to watch all those shows and never vote. I felt silly voting, even though nobody would know it. I thought there was a dividing line between people who voted and people who didn’t vote.

  That dividing line would be age nine.

  But then, I thought about it. The person I wanted to win wasn’t winning. Plus I wanted my voice to be heard, which is what makes this country great. So now, I exercise my right and privilege, and vote.

  From the couch.

  I text my vote, which is an idea whose time has come, if you ask me.

  If we could text our votes in political elections, everybody would vote. No more worries about getting to the polls or bad weather. And texting can be made secure. For example, I can check my VISA card balance by text. And I’d rather somebody knew my vote than my VISA balance.

  We should start texting votes for political elections. We’d have a hundred percent voter turnout, and our politicians would be better singers.

  And better yet, you can vote more than once on TV elections. I like that. Why stop at only one vote? You can vote up to ten times, which shows you really really really meant it.

  Okay, that’s only three times, but you get the idea.

  As a rule, I vote for my favorite TV singer only once. This is my way of saying my piece, but not trying to sway the election. I’m no control freak. I just want to make a record, even if it’s only for myself.

  Because my vote is secret.

  You don’t think I’d tell anybody that I vote for TV singers, do you?

  If they ask, I’ll deny it. And if they read this, I’ll say I made it up.

  I tell people I read at night.

  I have the same attitude for the political elections, even presidential. I don’t mind telling you that I didn’t vote for either candidate running in this past election. I wrote in my own candidate for president, even though I knew my candidate wouldn’t win. It was impossible, with only one cranky vote. But I really thought I had the best candidate, so I voted the way I wanted to, regardless of who was running. Officially.

  Why get technical? I made my point, to no one.

  Er, to me.

  And to the hapless poll person who had to help me figure out where to write in the name and also lent me a pen, as I didn’t know I’d be doing a write-in ballot until I actually got in the booth. This is what a good planner I am, which is another reason I’m divorced twice.

  Now, the only problem with voting on TV shows is that you get too invested. You really want your person to win. I guess this is like playing golf and betting on who wins each hole. I don’t play golf or bet, but I’m sure it ups the ante, and the anxiety.

  Either way, now that I vote, I’m nervous. What used to be entertainment has become a cause. For example, right now, I’m waiting for The Sing-Off finale to come on TV, and I couldn’t decide who was the best a cappella group, so last week, I voted for the two best groups. And I voted once for each.

  Again, not trying to sway, just trying to represent.

  Myself.

  I’m a cappella, after all. I can relate.

  But now I’m worried that my candidates may not win, even though they’re the most deserving. I can tell they’re not the judges’ favorites, though they should be.

  I hate it when voting gets political, don’t you?

  The Einstein Workout

  By Lisa

  Einstein discovered that time is relative, and I bet I know where he was when he figured that one out.

  On an elliptical machine.

  Five minutes never seemed so long as when I’m on the elliptical, which I started doing again because it’s too snowy to walk the dogs. The dogs don’t do the elliptical. They watch me, and laugh.

  Ruby holds the stopwatch.

  There’s nothing I can do to make time go faster on the elliptical. I have the TV on while I shuffle my feet and pump my arms, but my eyes keep straying to the glowing digital numerals of the clock on the console. I start watching the time around two minutes in, and as the numbers change from
2:36 to 2:37, it feels as if a second lasts twenty minutes. Sometimes I play a game with myself, where I cover the clock with a towel, but that drives me nuts, because I want to know how much torture I have left.

  Er, I mean how much time I have left.

  When I remove the towel, the time is always the same: More than I thought. Way more.

  The other day I tapped the lighted clock with my finger, just to make sure it was working. It worked fine.

  I didn’t.

  It reminded me of the time I was giving a speech and nobody was laughing. I would’ve bet that the microphone was off, but it wasn’t.

  I was.

  Or another time, when I was trying to establish myself as a writer and I thought that the way to do that was to write a screenplay. So I did, and I sent it to a hundred agents in LA. I’m not joking or exaggerating, for once. I sent it to a hundred agents. How many replies did I get?

  None.

  I felt sure something was wrong with my mailbox, my zip code, the postal service, or the universe in general. But no, I was just failing.

  Same thing with the elliptical.

  Failing, failing, failing.

  I’m good at failing. I take failure well. You can, too. Just practice.

  I try to do thirty minutes on the elliptical, but I’m theorizing that the time you spend working out is like dog years. If you do it for half an hour, it will be the same as seven years.

  Relatively speaking.

  On the other hand, the new year just came and went, and I feel as if 2010 flew by. In fact, if you had asked me which was longer, a half an hour on an elliptical or the whole of 2010, you know which I’d pick.

  Right.

  Birthdays work this way, too. For example, I suppose that in some technical sense, I’m 55 years old. But it seems like I’m 25, in my mind.

  Wait. I just got an idea.

  I’m going to live my whole entire life on the elliptical. Then it will seem like I’ve lived seven lifetimes.

  What a concept!

  And I would never embarrass myself, as in did the other night when I was out to dinner with Daughter Francesca, Best Friend Franca, and her daughter Jessica. Franca and I were in the same law school class, and we were talking about our upcoming class reunion. I couldn’t remember which one it was, so I said: