Rude Bitches Make Me Tired: Slightly Profane and Entirely Logical Answers to Modern Etiquette Dilemmas

by Celia Rivenbark

  “Uhhhh, no, sir, Officer, sir, no disrespect intended, sir, but no, no clue here. Respect.” I sounded like Ali G.

  He said I ran a red light.

  I most certainly did not. The Princess would back me up on that.

  “Tell him! I would never run a red light with you in the car. Or just me. Or anyone! Never!”

  The Princess just shrugged. “I wasn’t looking. Sorry.”

  What the what?

  Several minutes of groveling went on, in which I heard myself swear “on my Tivo and everything that’s season-passed on it” if he would just give me a warning ticket.

  Which he did.

  “Thank you, Officer! You rock!” I said while the Princess slumped farther down in her seat. Just like a miscreant.

  As you can see, politeness was the key here. I treated him with the utmost respect. Also, I was completely innocent.

  Now, for the flip side, consider the extraordinary poor etiquette demonstrated by an Ohio schoolteacher (what’s in the water in Ohio lately?) who was arrested after she sprayed sheriff’s deputies with breast milk when they tried to remove her from a car.

  The teacher, thirty, and apparently lactating to beat the band, was attending a wedding reception when she got likkered up, had a big fight with her hubby, and locked herself in their car.

  When the cops tried to remove her, she advised them that she was “a breast-feeding mother.” This is usually an idle threat that I only employed one time to get ahead in line at Target. It went unsaid that if I didn’t get to my baby soon, my breasts would explode all over the Doritos end cap, and nobody wanted to see that.

  But “Ohio” made good on her threat and doused the deputies with a breastly weapon, as it were. She also sprayed their car with her breast milk, calling to mind those wands at the self-service car wash that can be set on “suds” or “pre-wax.”

  I have a grudging, weird respect for this woman who had no resources to fight “the man” except what she could come up with on her own chest. In a way, it was the ultimate MacGyver moment, except that MacGyver never had breasts, and if he did, he would’ve used them only to defeat true evil, not hose down some well-intentioned Midwestern cops. What do you think they told her? “Put your hands up and your tits down?”

  On the other hand—woman, please. You know how people get all nervous about breast-feeding. How many times have we seen protesters picketing restaurants and malls where breast-feeding is banned? I’ve never gotten how some grown-ups could be threatened by such a natural act of simple nutrition, but then I don’t get how some grown-ups could think that Michele Bachmann would make a better president than, say, a rutabaga.

  The Ohio sheriff who investigated and milked the moment, so to speak, was a master of understatement when he said, “This is a prime example of how alcohol can make individuals do things that they would not normally do.”

  You think?

  Alcohol does enable all sorts of bad behavior. Just look at those mug shot magazines, and you can always tell that many of the accused are wasted. Some are baked, but most are wasted. It’s a fine distinction.

  Either way, it’s rude to be drunk in public. And even ruder, still, to be arrested and photographed with a big sloppy grin on your face. Getting arrested is a solemn event, and your mug shot should reflect that.

  My girlfriends are addicted to these mug shot magazines and love the “frequent fliers,” who mug for the camera like they’re at a social event.

  Do these criminals keep an album of their mug shots to be shared with friends and family? “Lookit, here’s where I face-planted on that sidewalk downtown ’cause of too much tequila. Again.”

  Also, and I really can’t stress this enough, if you are going to lead a life of crime, don’t commit the error in judgment demonstrated by one mug shot magazine star. The one with the Olde English tattoo reading Fuck the Law! scrolling across his forehead. At this point, I can only give him one word of advice: bangs.

  Question: I hate to admit it, but I’m addicted to those mug shot magazines like Cuffed. Why do so many people read this junk?

  Sorry, what? I was just at the convenience store, and I don’t know about y’all but I like a little drunked-up prostitute mug shot with my gas fill-up and strawberry Mentos.

  It’s America’s pastime, and it might very well bring families together. My friend likes to play the mug shot game with her teenagers, matching the face with the crime. Meth addicts are easy to spot with their sunken cheeks and bad teeth.

  “This is a teachable moment,” said Brandi Sue (not her real name because, well, she’d kick my ass). “It’s important to see what can happen when you do drugs like meth. Thousands of dollars in orthodontia wasted like that? Now, that would be a crime.”

  Question: I always look at the mug shots on my newspaper’s Web site, and recently I spotted a mug shot of my next-door neighbor. This is awkward because it was for assault. Should I act like I don’t know?

  Well, he could be innocent, you know. It’s possible he was provoked into responding in an unmannerly way to defend someone’s honor. I know. I crack myself up. Of course he’s guilty. Give him a wide berth at the neighborhood potluck. You don’t want to get him riled by asking him to “pass the ah-salt” or some such. Tempting though it is to just give in to the easy pun.

  Just the Facts, Ma’am

  • Be respectful when stopped for a traffic violation, no matter how idiotic it seems at the time.

  • Never use your breasts as a weapon. Use them as God intended, to wangle your way into the rave for free.

  • Do not smile in a mug shot. It makes you look like kind of a dick.

  chapter 22

  Gossip Girl: How to Steer the Conversation to Higher Ground Without Pissing Everybody Off

  You remember the game Telephone? It’s the one where you’d whisper a message into a kid’s ear and then they’d whisper it—just once—to the kid beside them and so it went around the room. It was an easy kids’ party game back in the day and usually good for a laugh when you heard how much the original message had changed by the time it went through a bunch of little ears. Thus: “We’re going to have strawberry birthday cake in ten minutes” morphed into “We’re going to crawl behind the lake with ten midgets.”

  I felt like I had been at the end of that game when I recently repeated to several friends that I heard that Martha Stewart’s daughter, Alexis, wrote in her book that Martha routinely pees on the bathroom floor.

  In fact, Alexis Stewart’s “tell all” actually reported that Martha sometimes peed with the bathroom door open.

  Which is a hell of a lot less interesting than my version. I didn’t mean to spread gossip; it’s just that I heard a review of the book on National Smart Person Radio and was paying only a little bit of attention.

  So, to anyone I told that Martha Stewart pees on the floor, I was wrong. And to Martha, I apologize.

  The point of all this is that Alexis Stewart is kind of a bitch.

  No, sorry, that wasn’t the point, although I do suspect it’s true. The point is that gossip is usually false, often hurtful, and always bad manners.

  I’ve noticed that, over the past couple of years, I’ve stopped gossiping as much as I used to. This has led my friends to say things like, “Wow, you sure aren’t as interesting as you used to be” and “You know stuff but you’re not sharing and it’s starting to freak us out.”

  Sadly, they’re right. Gossip, like the perfect vodka martini, just makes everyone more interesting. But the truth is, I’m getting too old for this stuff and I’m tired of being gossip’s bitch.

  I didn’t stop gossiping overnight. I didn’t even do it consciously. It’s just that one day, I woke up and realized that I was pausing ever so briefly before I casually trashed somebody’s character. Sometimes the pause was so long, it never even happened. I know; scary, right?

  Now, you should know that this new gossip avoidance is just for real people, not actors, politicians, and the like. I am a
ll in on spreading malicious gossip about malodorous celebrities. I don’t even feel guilty about it, because you know people like Kim Kardashian—who will go so far as to get married just for the publicity and millions of dollars in product endorsements—deserve what they get. Let me be clear: When I say we need to stop gossiping, I’m talking about Regular People, here.

  That’s why I feel free to talk about Alexis Stewart, who complained that she grew up with a “glue gun pointed at my head.” Too bad it wasn’t her mouth.

  Because I hope to be famous one day, I immediately summoned the Princess to my office and asked her if she planned to write a gossipy tell-all about me one day.

  “Who would buy it?” she asked.

  “Okay, good point. But still. I just want to make sure you don’t have any horrible bits of gossip that you’ll share like Alexis Stewart did. Sharper than a serpent’s tooth is an ungrateful child. I believe Martin Sheen said that.”

  After seeing her puzzled look, I explained who Alexis was: a whiny, spoiled Manhattan rich lady who had accomplished nothing without her mother’s help and financial backing.

  “That sounds a little one-sided,” mused the Princess.

  And a little child shall lead them.…

  Question: I don’t gossip, but I listen in when others do. If I don’t repeat it, then I’m all good in the karma department, right?

  Not really. The true stand-up move would be to hold up your hand and say: “Stop right there, Cissy Rae. I don’t want to hear anything bad about Bobbie Jean, because I don’t think it’s nice to spread stories about people.”

  When steering the convo away from malicious gossip, you want to avoid sounding sanctimonious and judgmental so it’s better to just change the subject to something that involves less character assassination and more fashion and pop culture. You can have a delightful girls’ night out just with those topics alone. Fill in with genuinely caring questions about somebody’s dotty old relative, and you’ll leave the table feeling like a better person, I promise. Sweet tea? Yes, please. Hater-ade? Pass.

  There is one exception to your new no-gossip policy that is universally approved: If the subject of the gossip is your ex (I mean a serious ex, someone you’ve either been married to or shacked with) who “done you wrong,” well, yes, pull up a chair and enjoy a slander cocktail with a chaser of venom.

  Seriously, why should you be the only one who knows he has only one testicle?

  Question: What if I’m not gutsy enough to call someone out for spreading gossip? Is there an easier way to deal with this without alienating everyone at the table?

  Silence is your friend. While the others are trashing away, you can simply keep your mouth shut except to sip and nibble. After a while, someone at the table will notice this and say, “You’re awfully quiet, Misti Dawn. What’s wrong?”

  At this point, you can simply say, “Oh, nothing. I was just hoping we could talk about…”

  They’ll know what you’re doing, but you’ve done it in a subtle way that lets everyone off the hook.

  Sometimes you can make your point gently. The other night, I was having dinner with some close women friends who began to say some pretty nasty things about a mutual friend. I just said, “She’s never acted like that around me. In fact, she’s always been extremely kind to everybody, as far as I’ve seen.”

  Standing up for someone who really doesn’t deserve to be trashed will elevate the entire conversation. When I said that, another woman at the table said, “You know, you’re right. She’s never done anything like that before. This is probably not even true.…”

  Question: My best friend is a horrible gossip. Every time we go out, she points to someone and starts telling me how they cheat on their spouse, lie about their income, brag incessantly about their children, et cetera. Then, when the person walks over with a friendly greeting, my friend positively lights up and is super nice to this person she just spent ten minutes defaming. What’s up?

  What’s up is that you can believe with absolute certainty that when your best friend has lunch with another friend next week, she will be throwing you under the bus. It will be something along the lines of how you don’t love your husband, your kids dress funny and have a “thrown away” look, and—what else? Oh, yes, did she know that you had an abortion in high school? What? You thought you could trust her? Don’t make me laugh.

  I have an acquaintance who does this routinely, and it’s a sight to behold. After skewering a colleague from her workplace for a good hour, she lavished air kisses on the same colleague that very night at a formal event and went on and on about how pretty she looked.

  My advice? Give people like this a very wide berth. They are unrepentant low-road assholes. And that’s not gossip; that’s fact. Hypocrisy is always bad manners.

  Question: My daughter goes to a dance studio where the kids are extremely competitive. Some of the dance moms like to drop little snide remarks that aren’t even true to make their kid seem better. For instance, they gossip about the oldest girl having sex or how one of the girls is a lesbian. I’d confront them about all the malicious gossip, but I think they’d eat me.

  Ah, yes, the dance mom. Having been one for twelve years now, I know of what you speak. While I’ve never observed the kind of horror you see on Lifetime’s Dance Moms reality show, I don’t doubt that it exists in the real world. Today, the Princess attends a kinder, gentler studio where the students genuinely support one another, and the moms stay in their cars in the parking lot, where they belong. No one’s going to bring home a five-foot-tall trophy (and where the hell would you put it, anyway?), but she’s learning a lot. My advice is to pick your studio carefully. Get away from that toxic dump of a dance school and find a better match.

  Question: Do you ever miss those really juicy, down-and-dirty, not-a-smidgen-of-truth-to-any-of-it gossip sessions with your friends? Isn’t life on the high road a little dull?

  Yes and yes. But I swear to you, as corny as it sounds, I sleep better at night and I like myself more in the morning, now that I’m not gossiping about real people. As much.

  There were times when the gossip was so vile that I felt like I needed a Silkwood shower (ask your parents) when I got home from a night out, but I don’t feel that way anymore. Well, not usually. Naturally, I backslide occasionally, but the slips are coming less often, I promise.

  As Southerners, we are taught to embrace that famous line from Steel Magnolias: “If you can’t say anything nice about anybody, come sit by me.”

  It’s hilarious every time to me, still. And what of the tenderly held belief, taught from the cradle, that it’s okay to say any awful thing about someone as long as you preface it with a “bless her heart” or “bless his heart”?

  Have I turned my back on my Southerness? Of course not. I’ve just been doing a little fine-tuning, is all. Bless my heart.

  chapter 23

  Space, the Final Frontier: How to Get Some, How to Give Some

  The well-dressed woman at the neighborhood Christmas party approached with a warm smile. Despite her friendly demeanor, I instinctively tensed up. She’s someone I know in only the most casual way. Our daughters are roughly the same age and we have a few mutual friends. She’s friendly; oh, precious Lord, is she friendly. She is, in Seinfeld-speak, a “low-talker.” She seems to know this about herself, and perhaps this is why she is also a “close-talker.” She can’t seem to help herself.

  She approached to say hello, and before I knew it, our faces were exactly three inches apart. When she laughed, I could see a tiny residue of Goldfish cracker bobbing up and down on her uvula.

  Now, it should be stated that this close-talker has marvelous breath, so that’s not an issue. No odor, just the sensation of a wind gust as she forces the words out in a disconcertingly sexy half whisper.

  I have no idea what “CT” is saying because by now, I am, quite literally, against the wall, head back at a ninety-degree angle, while she maintains the three-inch distance. It’s f
ace rape.

  She continues chatting and laughing while I just nod my head up and down, excruciatingly aware that if I open my mouth, she will realize that I have spent way too much time with the garlic dip.

  Finally, Duh Hubby realizes that I have been face-pinned by this repeat offender and walks over to rescue me. She immediately shifts her gaze and close-talks him while I smile, skip away, and head back to my own kind at the dip table.

  Close-talkers and people unaware of the rules of Personal Space aren’t doing this to aggravate us. They simply don’t know any better. Perhaps it’s a genetic problem. For all I know, this otherwise lovely and impeccably mannered woman comes from a long line of close-talkers and hoverers. I picture her sturdy pioneer ancestors hoeing a field, all working within about four inches of one another. They probably made shitty farmers.

  There is simply no polite way to deal with a close-talker. You can’t very well tell them what you’re thinking: “Back off! You’re freaking me out!” No, the only true solution is Vigilant Avoidance. As soon as she or he approaches, gives the “I’m coming for you” wave, and heads in your direction, just knock over a couple of chairs and make your escape, just like in the movies. Apologize to the host for the broken furniture in a lovely note the next day.

  I’m kidding, of course. No need for a note, because you’ll never be invited back after making that nasty little scene. Vigilant Avoidance just means you very discreetly slip away after returning a friendly wave.

  Close-talkers are the most serious violators of personal space, but there are plenty of others. You know who you are.

  Question: I’m not a hugger. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not gonna go all Temple Grandin on you if you try it. It’s just that I think that casual hugging is unnecessary and awkward. Last night was the final straw. My husband introduced me to his boss’s wife, and she flung her arms wide and I realized I was expected to respond. I don’t even know this woman. Isn’t this kind of forced intimacy inappropriate? Will she expect me to do the “hug and air kiss” combo next time? I could hardly rebuff her because, as I mentioned, she is my husband’s boss’s wife. But I was extremely put off by the whole thing.