Don’t get me wrong. I’m a lot wiser than I was in my twenties, but wisdom, my friends, is overrated. Now I know that I’m on the slippery slope of deteriorating eyesight and memory thanks to lunches with women friends that are dominated—I swear—by discussions of the benefits of regular colonoscopies.
I could snap Katie Couric’s perky little neck for getting us all started on that. I haven’t been able to watch the Today show ever since a tiny camera went into her celebrity colon on live TV while I was trying to eat my apple-cinnamon Waff-Fulls.
I can’t have a ten-minute conversation with my women friends lately without somebody dragging their colon into it. It practically needs its own chair at the restaurant (“Will your colon be having anything or is it just along for the ride?”). Ten years ago it was the importance of having regular “mammy-o-grams” as elderly Southern women insist on calling them, making it seem as if some kindly, kerchiefed Aunt Jemima is going to be the one that squishes our dinners (that’s Southern for breasts) in that X-ray gizmo.
Mammy-o-grams? Colonoscopies? What ever happened to mindless gossip and trash talking over a plate of overpriced arugula? I mean, this is still America, the last time I checked.
When I was growing up, menopause was pointedly ignored in polite company. How I pine for those days when everybody instinctively knew to tiptoe around cranky Aunt Hettie because she was going through “the change.”
The first time I heard the expression, I asked in my nine-year-old innocence, “What change?” and was told what every decent grown-up should say at times like this: “You’ll find out one day.” Asked and answered, I returned to the task of trapping lightnin’ bugs in a Duke’s mayonnaise jar. No one of any age dwelled on such personal matters.
Instead, Aunt Hettie took to sitting on her front porch in nothing but her slip, anxiously fanning herself with one of those church fans that has the praying hands on the front and the name of the funeral home on the back.
It wasn’t a pretty sight.
But that’s the point; menopause isn’t pretty. It’s— from what I’m told—night sweats, diminished mooneygooney, sleeplessness, irritability, pure hell. Sure, some women might have an easier time of it than others, leaving fantasies about plunging the Fiskars into their husband’s ears all the way up to their orange handles to the truly whacked-out meno-chicks.
While I’m not technically “changing” just yet, I know it won’t be long. I’ve slipped into a she-who-must-be-obeyed mindset for a few months now. Okay, years. Little things that have no business bothering me drive me nuts. Like how, no matter how often I ask, my husband never shuts a cabinet or closet door. This means I must systematically go through the entire house slamming doors like Joan Crawford on crank and sobbing: “How (slam) inconsiderate (slam) can one (slam) person (slam) be?”
I shouldn’t wonder that he can’t shut doors because he can’t see things right in front of his own eyes. Why else would he ask me where his shoes are (in the closet) or the eyedrops (tee-hee, in the oven) as though my ovaries are endowed with superhuman powers allowing me to see behind closed doors and drawers?
My friend Michelle swears that the worst thing about being a man is that you’d have to be married to a woman, and while we always laugh at this because it is so deliciously eat-your-young mean, she may have a point.
We women do go through the change, but it’s not just with menopause, it’s when we have kids and we give up any attempt at being calm or practical, and become, overnight it seems, screaming, horror-tale-spinning banshees.
My friend Terri sings in the church choir, speaks softly and sweetly to everyone she meets, and doesn’t allow her children to watch cartoons in case they’re violent. Yet, when pushed by the sight of her toddler straying a little too close to the highway, she quickly mutates into a bellowing lunatic, weaving tales of terror that would make Stephen King clutch his binky and sleep with a night-light.
One afternoon, as our kids played together, this gentle mom suddenly paused in the middle of a story about a canned food drive.
“Hey!” she shouted to the kids. “If you two get any closer to that road, an eighteen-wheeler is going to hit the both of you and turn you into hamburger and it’ll take a dozen paramedics using Rubbermaid spatulas to scrape all your guts off the highway!”
The kids moved closer to us, their faces drained of color. Turning to me, my friend said brightly, “You know we’ve started our food drive for the homeless if you’re interested….”
I couldn’t really hear her because I was still in shock at the mental picture of hamburger guts and spatulas. Plus, I think I wet myself.
Another friend smugly recalled that when her older child kept darting across the street in their subdivision, apparently without looking both ways, she purchased the biggest pumpkin she could find—a twenty-six-pounder—then called her son outside and proceeded to gun her engine and run over the pumpkin with her minivan, back and forth, back and forth, creating a mass of stringy orange goo in the middle of the road.
“There!” she called to him triumphantly. “That’s your head after you’ve been hit by a car. Any questions?”
He plays indoors a lot now.
You could ask if this is a good idea, this notion of scaring kids into being more cautious. But then we’d know you don’t have kids. Because when you have ’em, you do what you gotta do.
It doesn’t matter if you’re the biggest natural-fibered, hairy-underarmed granola head on the street, sooner or later, you’re going to say—as I did when my daughter decided to hop on one foot on the arm of the sofa—“Hey! You fall off that couch and your brains are going to start pouring out of your ears and the cats will have to lick them up!”
She silently lowered herself from the perilous perch and announced that she was “saw-wee” and would only do such dangerous things on her “birfday” from that moment on.
So, no, we don’t always wait for menopause for the profound changes to our personalities; they begin, for many of us, the very moment that the nurse’s aide in the flowery top and crisp white pants locks the wheelchair and helps us, pink or blue bundle in arms, into the car and our new life.
Menopause? Bring it on. I’m a mommy and I don’t scare easy.
7
BIRTHDAY GREETINGS
from the Insurance Ghouls
Just Count the Rings Around My Stomach and Mail Me a Kate Spade Purse
The thing I dislike about birthdays is that, ever since I turned forty, the life insurance ghouls send me “birthday greetings” every year.
Disguised as a cheery “Congratulations!” I only have to read as far as the third paragraph to discover that, amazingly enough, I can still qualify for life insurance (“No salesman will call!”) even as I must surely be lining up for earlybird specials at 4:00 P.M. and calling all the men I know “Mr. Bob Barker.”
There’s something depressing about the fact that I have to remind my husband that my birthday’s coming up at least two months in advance, yet someone I don’t even know, sitting at a computer in Globe Life Insurance’s Oklahoma City headquarters, is all too glad to send me birthday greetings, right on time.
I am told, in this “birthday card,” that I can—oh, joy!—take out life insurance on myself. In their words: “Give yourself and your family a birthday present that won’t break, go out of style, or wear out.”
Well, who the hell cares about them? Isn’t this my birthday? Isn’t this a time when we should be thinking about me? I’m thinking good books, nice-smelling lotions, a few CDs, maybe a Kate Spade purse. If my husband gives me burial insurance for my birthday, I can assure you he’ll need it a hell of a lot sooner than I will.
The Globe Life “birthday message” continues: “When you die, this protection will go a long way toward meeting the debts you leave behind.”
When you die?!?
Excuse me, Mr. Mark McAndrew, president of Globe Life, but when your wife has a birthday, I’ll bet you’re loads of fun. Here’s poor Mrs
. McAndrew, all dressed up and just praying you’ll take her out to dinner at one of those Japanese restaurants where the table chef only knows enough English to call everybody “Joe” (even the women) but can catch a tossed lemon on the tines of a fork held behind his back. And here’s you, cheerfully telling her, “Dear, when you die…”
This most recent birthday message, in which I’m led to believe that Globe Life’s entire staff has been laying awake at night worried slam to death about my poor bereaved survivors, informs me that a “Birthday Life” policy can pay for my entire funeral. Now, there’s a picker-upper! It’s almost as wonderful as discovering ear hair.
Birthdays should be indulgent and splendid. A day where you vow to not answer a single question beginning with “Honey, where’s my…?” Sure, my husband will go to work wearing his swim trunks for underwear, but that’s not my problem.
Birthdays are the time to shop in the Juniors department because you can’t stand being a Signature Woman, Today’s Woman, or Big Fat Hag Woman. (My definition of total frustration? Cher in Talbot’s. Think about it.)
It’s a day to use bath products without the first name “Mister” or a cap shaped like Tigger.
Insurance companies in general are irritating entities, which leads me to share with you a letter I wrote, which you might want to adapt for your own use.
Dear Mr. or Ms. Insurance Person:
I realize that you are, by the very nature of your job, a Very Busy Individual and you probably just want to grab some lunch and watch All My Restless Children in the break room before spending the afternoon rejecting more claims, so I’ll keep this brief.
Mr. or Ms. Insurance Person, I would just like to say that, unlike most of the disenchanted American public, I hold you and your ilk in the highest regard. How frustrating it must be to sit, day after thankless day, reading claims detailing so-called “illnesses” and “accidents” and having to deny payment for the selfsame reason a dog licks his naughties—because you can.
Sure, eventually you will probably pay some, if not all, of the claim, but what’s the fun in doing so in a timely manner? You know for a fact that, more often than not, we’ll just give up and pay the bill out of sheer exhaustion. Like trying to find a gas pump that doesn’t have the thingy broken off or a fat-free salad dressing that doesn’t taste like joint compound, some things will just never be within human grasp.
Yes, you are right when you say, “Duh, that treatment stuff costs money, buddy-ro,” but, and I mean this in the most respectful way possible, isn’t that why we’re paying premiums? Isn’t that why they call it insurance?
I apologize. I’m on a rant here, but ever since you decided that I no longer needed my anti-anxiety medication, things have been a bit tense. Even you must admit that it’s a tad peculiar that the only medications on your “approved” list anymore are corn pads and snakebite kits.
Truly, not many folks appreciate your diligence. While the untrained observer might think you’re being cruel to demand “prior approval” before you pay for an emergency-room visit, I believe that if you’ve got time to go get yourself a burst appendix, you’ve certainly got time to call your company’s handy toll-free number and ask, between spasms of debilitating pain, if it would be okay to have some life-saving surgery.
Take your time; we’ll wait.
What’s that? If we want to hear the options menu again, we must press 2? No, we don’t want to hear the menu again. We just want to talk to that nice, be-sweatered man in your commercials who is playing in piles of leaves with his kids and saying how much he values his clients. Put him on the line.
Uh-oh. You say we’re not covered because there was a “preexisting condition” that led to the appendix problem, that weren’t we warned back in Miss Mallard’s third-grade that we should not eat peanut shells because one day they would all collect in our appendix and cause it to burst?
And didn’t we continue to eat peanuts, and therefore, minute bits of shell, at ballparks and moviehouses across the land, thumbing our collective noses at our appendix, which was, at that very second, a ticking time bomb swelling to the size of an enraged calzone? You’re right. It’s all our fault. Forget we mentioned it. And have a nice day.
And let’s not forget the homeowners’ insurance companies who have lots of nifty slogans (“Nationwide Is On Your Side,” “You’re in Good Hands with Allstate,” “Your Policy Doesn’t Cover Jack, Jill.”).
That last is on my mind because an eighty-year-old sewer pipe exploded in our basement smack in the middle of our neighborhood Candlelight Christmas tour and we were told by all insurance companies concerned that two feet of swirling raw sewage isn’t covered because it’s considered an Act of the Devil.
Allow me to set the scene: hundreds of holiday revelers dressed in cute Christmas sweaters and gleefully consulting their homes-tour guidebooks turned onto our street and, well, lost their appetites.
Hons, this was no aroma of baking gingersnaps or bayberry candles. This was, well, shit. And it was coming from our house. In our basement.
Yes, Virginia, there might be funnier things than having the fire department arrive in full, buff splendor (the only bright spot) to make sure it was safe to light the hundreds of luminaria lining our street, but I’d be hard-pressed to think of any.
As it turned out, a city sewer pipe that had been buried twenty-five feet below the alley beside our house had ruptured and the, er, contents had found their way into our basement.
After weeks of wrangling with our insurance company and the city’s, we were told that we’d have to eat the $6,000 in expenses. The city’s insurance company actually told us that it was denying our claim because we failed to notify them that there was a leak in the pipe.
Considering it took twelve men five hours to dig under the alley and find the pipe, this was pretty damned funny to us. (“Honey, did you check for possible faults in the old sewer pipe buried deep beneath the alley beside our house? You didn’t? Oh, that’s right, it’s my night to check it.”)
On the other hand, it wasn’t an altogether bad experience. We got to live in a motel for six weeks, a cheap one, where my favorite eavesdropped conversation was when one maid was telling another a long tale about being in a fight and ended it with “And that was the second time I got stabbed with a cheese knife.”
Now, I’m wondering here, what are the odds? Most of us live our entire mundane little lives without getting stabbed by a cheese knife even once.
The other bright spot was learning about plumbers. Oh, insurance companies, if you had done your job in a timely, efficient, and humane manner, we might have missed out on meeting so many plumbers.
We called five of them.
“Whew!” they all said. “What’s that smell?”
You’d think they’d recognize it by now. Anyway, we quickly learned that when you live in an old house, you discover that there are two types of plumbers. The first is fresh-faced, wears many cell phones and pagers, and drives a new truck with no pipes on it. These plumbers will run screaming back to their laptops and time-shares when they see octogenarian plumbing.
They only do “new construction.” They take early lunch breaks for things like foccacia sandwiches and chai. They are weenies.
The second kind of plumber arrives with three days’ stubble, scary-looking stains on his shirt, dirty boots, and a rusty truck loaded down with all manner of hoses and pipes. He never answers the cell phone buzzing away in his truck. It’s a Christmas present from his wife, who dutifully charges it every night in hopes that one day he might actually answer it. These plumbers take no lunch at all most days because they’re mucking around in the basement of a house on the coast, elegantly cussing the long-dead idiot who decided that was a good idea.
A friend summed it up thusly: “When it comes to plumbers, no butt crack, no good.” To that wisdom, I’d just add, “When it comes to insurance companies, they’re just all butt cracks.”
These are the bottom-feeders, frien
ds, the ones who are right down there with telemarketers who sucker gullible idiots into buying property in exchange for some cruddy three-night stay in a roach motel and a busted 35-mm camera that cost them about 23???.
Makes me want to curl my fingers around a cheese knife and just let nature take its course….
Part 5:
THE GRAVY ON THE
Grits
Boobalicious Speaks Out!
1
STAMP OUT
Gossip?
My Best Friend’s Mama’s Sister’s Hairdresser’s Cousin Won’t Like This a Bit
A bunch of Hollywood celebrities have joined a new movement to—and it’s almost too horrible to put the words into print—stamp out gossip.
In these times of hyperpatriotism, this is bad news indeed. Gossip, like grilling in silly aprons and whining about our cable bill, is as American as it gets. Without it, we’d all wander around talking about the weather or, worse, one another’s root canals or inflamed bunions.
Bor-ing.
I’ll tell you something else. Celebrities, most of whom are a bunch of Vicodin-addicted wife swappers, have no business getting involved in causes. They just look silly. Just because one has great pipes (Babs Streisand) doesn’t qualify one to do much of anything except lounge about the pool between bookings and ponder the wisdom of marrying a man who brags in public about shopping at Big Lots (Jim “Tan in a Bottle” Brolin).
It’s very trendy to slam gossip these days, but let me be the first Brave American to stand up at the metaphorical water cooler, and say, “Hooey!”
Gossip is the very foundation upon which this great country was built. Who knows where we’d be if a certain G.W. hadn’t slept around in every little B&B on the eastern seaboard, wooden teeth happily soaking in a glass beside the bed?
We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier Page 13