Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank

by Celia Rivenbark

  Marlena—Doc to us—has counseled all of Salem at one time or the other, and now she’s,ick, stabbing them with a letter opener to the carotid, outsmarting her buddies who spend much of every show saying, “We’re going to get the killer. This won’t happen again,” but before we even go to a commercial break, oopsie, there’s another body.

  Truthfully, most victims have been, well, expendable. I was mildly miffed when she killed her ex-husband, Roman Brady, on his wedding day. I was hoping Roman would find true happiness with reformed whore Kate Roberts, but no.

  After murdering him at his wedding reception, Marlena even comforted the grieving sorta-widow, patting her and offering the earnest-faced consolation we’ve come to expect.

  Marlena’s especially good at killing the goodhearted, dull ones like Caroline Brady and Doug Williams.

  Doug was one-half of the famous Dougandjulie, long-time annoying Days soul mates. I think they signed their checks just like that: Dougandjulie. (True story: Back in the ‘80s, I entered a contest to win breakfast with the actors who play Dougandjulie and won! They were lovely and boring just like on the show. I think I asked Doug if I could have the rest of his hash browns, and he said, “I guess.”)

  I know Doc’s going to get caught, but it won’t be anytime soon. The only one who’s figured out it’s Marlena is nineteen-year-old Sean, who’s dating Doc’s daughter, Belle, Salem’s only virgin.

  “Let the police handle this, son,” said Sean’s idiot cop father. But his cell phone crackles alive: “Oh, no! Another body!”

  And time for another doughnut.

  Sadly, I was forced to go cold turkey for two weeks without seeing Days when it was preempted by the Olympics.

  Sure, you think that’s pathetic, but that’s just because you don’t watch it. Otherwise you’d know that you can’t expect people to just go on with their lives like normal when the last episode was a cliffhanger with Jennifer out there having a baby in the wilderness, Sean busting out of the house where he’s been held prisoner by a psychotic wannabe girlfriend, and don’t even get me started about Marlena and Roman (miraculously alive again!) making out in the jungle while his foot gets more gangrenous by the second. On top of that, Mimi thinks she’s got cancer, Uncle Mickey, 106, is gettin’ some from a barmaid, and Sami just found out that her mama clawed her way out of her coffin. (You gotta love a show where the character says with a note of superiority and utter calmness, “See? I told you that Mom was buried alive, and you didn’t even believe me. )

  I get that it’s unspeakably shallow to miss Days to the point of tears when the real heroes were over there in Greece, sprinting and wrestling and fencing and underwater-checkers playing and whatnot.

  So I tried to really get into the Olympics and after I finally, sort of, succeeded, they ended. My life could resume, and I need never hear the painfully earnest preachings of the Rev. Bob Costas or see serious journalist Katie Couric giddily pretend to master the balance beam.

  Low moment of viewing? When I simply didn’t get the pole vault miscue and saw the woman sprint under the pole and told my husband, “Heck, I could do that?

  Because I’m not a guy, I won’t miss the barely there bikinis worn by the Olympic volleyball chicks. My husband says it has to do with wind resistance and improving their aerodynamic jumping abilities. He is so full of sand.

  I think it has to do with them being hoochie mamas. Talented, sickeningly fit hoochie mamas, but hoochies nonetheless.

  I came to the Olympics embarrassingly late and so missed the big ruckus caused by the American who won the gold, although it was later discovered, after the judges sobered up, that the guy from Taiwan was the rightful winner. There’s a fascinating debate about this, but it’s not nearly so fascinating as watching Bo Brady of Days try to decipher signals his kidnapped family is trying to transmit from a mysterious island.

  Now that’s gold-medal TV.

  Vanity Flares

  16

  This Blonde Isn’t as Dumb as You Think

  Online IQ Test Proves I’m a Visionary

  (Whatever the Hell That Is)

  Probably the last people who are unapologetically joked about and ridiculed in public are blondes. People think we be stupid just because our hair is yeller, and they’re not too shy to say so. Most folks think the average blonde doesn’t know the difference between come ‘ere and sic ‘urn.

  If you don’t believe it, consider that there are entire Web sites devoted to collecting and distributing dumb blonde jokes. Which reminds me, how many blondes does it take to change a lightbulb? Two. One to hold the Diet Coke and the other to call “Daaady!” I love that one.

  Or this one: What do you call it when a blonde dyes her hair brunette? Artificial intelligence.

  Har-dee-har-har.

  The stereotype of the dumb blonde is as old as that, uh, really dark stuff that grass and trees and stuff grow in.

  I started out blond. Then something strange happened in my thirties, and my hair started getting darker and darker. Call it hormones, call it genetics, call it really bad luck, but I knew immediately that I couldn’t accept not being blond.

  A trip to my beloved hairdresser, Brenda (pronounced “Branda” in the South), remedied the problem. It wasn’t painless, my hons. No, far from it. Brenda tied a plastic rain bonnet tight on my head, then used what looked like a crochet hook to pull wisps of formerly blond hair through holes in the cap. I cried and flapped my hands and endured the pain, all in the name of being blond again. Finally, she zapped the wisps with purple goo, and two hours later, I was blonder than ever.

  Naturally, I was ecstatic, but as y’all know, a few weeks later, I was Roots: The Next Generation. It was horrible realizing that this would have to be an ongoing process. So, for the past fifteen years, I’ve faithfully trotted to Brenda, who now, mercifully, uses little foil strips.

  All that said, imagine my shock when Britney Spears, our national spokesmodel for all things blond, decided to go brunette, literally and figuratively returning to her roots. One week, she’s blond as God and Preference by L’Oreal intended and doing things like marrying and divorcing in a day, and the next, she dyes her hair, becomes a brunette, and starts studying Jewish mysticism.

  On behalf of blondes everywhere, what up?

  Oh, Britney, must we turn to Christina Applegate or—horrors!—Courtney Love as our leader now?

  As a blonde in mind, spirit, and bottle, I’m not worried. The ability to do math and chew gum at the same time is highly overrated. Britney’ll be back.

  As if losing my blondeness isn’t bad enough, lately something strange has been happening with my eyeballs.

  For a year or so now, I’ve gotten lots of snickers from friends who think it’s odd that I read my menu at arm’s length.

  “Arms too short?” Heh, heh, heh.

  “Isn’t it time you got some reading glasses?”

  “The same thing happened to my eyes when I turned fifty.”

  Fifty?!

  I’m not fifty, although I can sort of make it out as a blurry image in the not-so-distant future. Yes, yes, I realize that “getting older beats the alternative,” but I am a vain creature.

  When I recently asked the waiter at a fancy restaurant for a pair of “house reading glasses,” he looked at me with the same disdain as if I had asked for a foam doughnut to sit on.

  My friend who is a little younger than me recently had a miniature nervous breakdown after a department store clerk cheerily deducted an extra 15 percent “because today is Senior Day!”

  “What does that have to do with me?” my friend asked innocently, still not understanding the full horror of what had been bestowed on her forty-two-year-old self.

  “Well,” continued the smiling and clueless clerk, “see, on Tuesday, everybody fifty-five or older gets an additional discount!”

  “You think I’m fifty-five?” she asked, an edge of hysteria creeping into her voice.

  “Well, uh, uh, well.”

&n
bsp; Although I haven’t been offered the Senior Day discount, I have experienced a sad, nostalgic tug as the grocery store clerk doesn’t even bother to look up to okay my wine purchase.

  Oh, of course, I don’t look twenty-one, or even double that, but it would just be so much fun if she would falter, just for a nanosecond, before punching the override key.

  When it’s time to write the check and I fumble for the reading glasses that now live in the bottom of my purse in complete denial, I could swear she sighs and rolls her eyes.

  Not long ago, as I stood in the grocery line, a nice man in his seventies, I’d guess, noticed my giggling six-year-old as she completed the joyous task of choosing between Gummi Savers and Nerds.

  “Lord-a-mercy, don’t we love our grands!” he said with a kindly chuckle.

  I thought he meant the biscuits, so I nodded enthusiastically. I was halfway to my car with the bag boy (“Ma’am, do you need help with that? I mean what is your bone density these days?”) before the full impact hit. Grands? Grands? Bring on the Botox, hons. I’m not going down without a fight.

  The awful truth is that, if I have to choose between being a dumb cute blonde or a smart mousy brown, I’m going with cute every time. Fortunately, I don’t have to choose. Although I’ve always thought that smarts-wise, I’m somewhere between the two Simpsons—Jessica and Marge—it turns out I’m a genius.

  At least that’s what the on-line IQ test I took said.

  It turns out that there are like a million of these on-line IQ tests out there in cyberspace. (That’s ten hundred thousand to the rest of you.) Some are sponsored by Mensa, the worldwide organization of smart people. In my experience, Mensans tend to be a bit belligerent about how smart they are. (I say belligerent, but I could also have said haughty, pugnacious, or quarrelsome. See how smart I is?) They’re also disproportionately fond of medieval fairs and Star Trek conventions and living in their mamas’ basements.

  So, anywho, I took the IQ test, and guess what? I’m, like, a genius! Right. I already told you that. Okay, technically, they didn’t use the G-word once my score was computed, but they did say that I fit the profile of a “visionary philosopher.” Well, roll me up and call me curly! Who knew?

  I was so excited with my score (it’s tacky to brag, but let’s just say it was in the, ahem, 140s) that I shoved the printout under hubby’s nose at breakfast the next morning.

  “Read it and sleep,” I said triumphantly.

  “You mean weep?” he asked.

  “Whatever.”

  So he read the analysis and damned near choked on his Cheerios when he read the part about me having “a powerful mix of skills and insight, like Plato.”

  “You sure they don’t mean Pluto?” he joked.

  Now wasn’t that an odious, repugnant thing to say?

  I suppose the reason he questioned my test results was a single sentence that referred to my “exceptional math and verbal skills.”

  This phrase did not have the ring of verisimilitude because I am famously bad at math. If I’m in charge of tipping at a restaurant, the waiter will either fall to his knees in gratitude or slash my tires. There ain’t no Mr. In Between.

  The results of my IQ test said that as a visionary philosopher, I can “anticipate and predict patterns.” It’s so true. Don’t I know, instinctively, every time the clearance at Stein Mart is going to jump from 50 to 75 percent? It’s God-given; you can’t learn it.

  You’re probably worried that, from now on, I’m going to write about just boring visionary stuff, but I’m not. One must bloom where one is planted. I think Pluto said that.

  17

  The Butcher’s Great, the

  Baker’s Suffering

  But How Is the Anti-Carb Frenzy Affecting

  the Candlestick Maker?

  It’s official. Every human being I know is now on the Atkins Diet. Sure, they look kind of silly, sitting there eating puddles of spaghetti sauce without the noodles underneath like God and Emeril intended, but they’re serious. No side of garlic bread for them. But, yes, please, another eight-pound meatball!

  Like most women my age who eat a lot of fudge and don’t exercise, I’ve gained a bit of weight recently, and so I decided that the Atkins Diet was worth a try. Any diet that encourages mass consumption of T-bones and kielbasa sausages can’t be all bad, right?

  Wrong. I lasted exactly thirty-two hours on the Atkins Diet and have no intentions of ever trying it again. Without carbohydrates—and lots of them—I discovered that I really did have the capacity to take another’s life. And enjoy it.

  Particularly if the “other” was eating a big, fat yeast roll in front of me. In which case we would, once again, trot out the “but, Yer Honor, he needed killin’ “ defense so popular in our South.

  Carbohydrates, from the Latin, carbo which means “yummy” and hydrates which means “cinnamon bun,” are not something I can eliminate or even drastically cut back on.

  There is no joy in a steak without a baked potato, a hot dog without a bun, a casserole without noodles, a movie starring Jimmy Fallon.

  The late Dr. Atkins believed that restricting carbs would cause the body to burn up its stored fat faster. Ha! That might work for most people, but I can assure you that my body, in thirty-two hours, was already plotting new and more embarrassing places to store fat.

  I don’t dispute that the Atkins Diet works for most people. I’ve seen women shed fifty pounds in a matter of weeks using this diet. The only bad part is that if you slip up and eat, say, a single French fry or a saltine, you will wake up twenty pounds heavier. It’s cruel that way.

  Weight Watchers makes more sense to me, and that would be my first choice of diets except they assign “points” to food, and this involves a lot of math, calculating the dietary fat grams divided by the calories and then converting it all into these “points.”

  According to WW , I am entitled to a measly 23 points a day but I’d use up 18 of them in just one order of Taco Bell’s Nachos Bell Grande, or, as I like to call it, heaven on a cardboard plate.

  The South Beach Diet is similar to the Atkins Diet in that carbs are a huge no-no in the beginning. Bill Clinton lost lots of weight on the South Beach Diet, but then he had heart bypass surgery, so I’m not so sure about it. Also, South Beach has a lot of rules. The book weighs, like, eight tons or so. I think most South Beachers lose the weight not by following all the instructions so carefully but simply by lugging that stupid book around.

  The Zone delivers steady weight loss that’s not so quick or so visible as Atkins and South Beach, but it also has a lot of rules, and the supplements and exotic Zone-sanctioned meals (fillet of froufrou with a side of pistachio-encrusted doodahs) ain’t cheap. The Zone believes that you can best lose weight if you balance protein and carbs in a 40–30–30 mix. That’s 40 percent protein, 30 percent carbs, and 30 percent of something else that I can’t remember, so just substitute fried Snickers bars for that one.

  With all these diets around, we’ve all become completely carb-phobic. The other day, I was in Subway eating my favorite Jared-sanctioned six-inch veggie on whole wheat when a rather portly total stranger walked up and asked, “Do you realize how many CARBS are in that thing?”

  He couldn’t have looked more horrified if I’d been sitting there eating a shit sandwich. He then took a seat across the aisle from me and unwrapped what appeared to be turkey, bacon, ham, pepperoni, and a leg of lamb all wrapped up in a strange little scrap of brown crepe so thin you could read your Atkins Diet book through it.

  One after another, customers came in and ordered “Atkins sauce” on their “sandwiches.” I can only imagine that this is actual blood from a meat-producing animal.

  The thing about Atkinsians is that they are a trifle high and mighty, aren’t they? “Oh, I can’t eat that. I’m doing Atkins!” Don’t get so uppity, fool. It’s not like you’re becoming a missionary or something.

  A waiter friend says he’s regularly berated by women who scream
“Get that out of here!” I mean it’s hot bread, not a rabid possum, he’s bringing to the table with cute little shell-shaped butter pats on a doily.

  The stranger who had criticized my veggie sub finished his whatever-it-was and stopped by my table to tell me that his mother—his mother—was about my age, and she was losing a lot of weight with Atkins.

  Okay, here’s the thing. Don’t assume that a woman is on a diet. My husband likes me just the way I am. He points out that he doesn’t have to “shake the sheets to find me,” and that’s the way it’s going to stay.

  The Atkins lingo is confusing, too.

  “We’re in the induction phase now,” a friend confided over two pounds of bacon the other morning.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, missing her meaning. “But y’all can try again or even get a surrogate.”

  What the hell are they talking about?

  Carbohydrates have become the new embodiment of evil. Did you know that if you rearrange the letters in the word Carbohydrate, it spells “Cameron Diaz can’t act”? Yeah, I know I made it up, but that’s what we crazy carbmonsters do. We lie! Don’t blame us: It’s the gluten. Makes a girl do strange things.

  Men and women both diet, of course, but men don’t take it as seriously as we do. My friend Lisa came home from work the other day to a horrific sight.

  There was her loving husband, still wearing his suit and tie from work, holding a just-opened bottle of Miller Lite and . . . weighing himself.

  That’s right. Standing on the scales in front of God and everybody,casually checking his weight at the end of the day.

  “What are you doing?” Lisa shrieked.

  Her husband looked at her curiously, as if she were, somehow, the crazy one. Then he cocked his head a bit, which as every woman knows, can actually make you weigh three ounces more.

  “I’m checking my weight,” he said. “Something wrong?”