Best Friends, Occasional Enemies: The Lighter Side of Life as a Mother and Daughter (Reading Group Gold) (19 page)

Only problem is, I figured out then, I can’t do.

Rather, I can do lots of things, but I know, as sure as shootin’, I can’t do
that.

Consider the men behind me, on the plane. They weren’t engineers or anything, and they weren’t friends before the flight. I know this because I heard the whole conversation, from takeoff to landing. I always eavesdrop, especially when I fly. In fact, nobody’s secrets are safe from me, anywhere. I’m nosy. I listen when it looks like I’m reading. If you see me in a restaurant and you think I didn’t hear your conversation, you’re wrong.

And if you ask me if I overheard and I say no, I’m lying.

The men on the plane struck up a conversation that started with how-about-that-oil-spill and turned into a brainstorming session about plugs, cantilevers, sleeves, gloves, and valves.

My head was spinning.

These were normal guys. I won’t tell you what they do for a living, even though I know, in case they read this. Also, it’s against my rules. Even though I listen to your secrets, I don’t repeat them.

I keep secrets secret.

Anyway, not only did these guys try to solve the oil spill, they were fascinated by their own conversation. I know this because at the end of the flight, they exchanged business cards, which is something men do when they like each other.

Bottom line, I was happy for them, but I’m not like them.

If I think about the things I can talk about for three hours and be fascinated, there are many. Kids, family, friends, dogs, cats, food, ponies, carbohydrates, and food.

Did I say food?

Food.

But not levers. Ever.

I mean, some awful company punched a hole in the Earth and now it’s leaking. How do you repair a planet?

I don’t know.

Why not?

I’m no Einstein.

Or Oprah.

Most of the time, the only thing floating around in my head are jingles from TV commercials. I never forget a jingle. I even remember, “See the USA in your Chevrolet.” And, “My baloney has a first name.” Plus I would still like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.

There are current jingles stuck in my head, too. The Kindle song about “I love you” and “You stole my heart” and “1, 2, 3,” runs on a loop in my brain, probably in the jingle lobe. In another mood, I can sing the Subway “Five, five dollar, five dollar foot long” song. I sing it all the time, wiping my kitchen counter, washing my hair, unloading the dishwasher.

I even know what number to call for Empire Flooring.

I bet you do, too.

So here’s what I’m thinking:

You know who’s smart enough to plug the hole in the ocean? The people who write jingles.

That would be my only idea to fix the oil spill.

Call Empire Flooring.

I bet they cover it with a nice carpet.

Aha!

Toys in the Attic

By Lisa

I just read about the people who found a vase in their attic, which was sold to Chinese buyers for $86 million.

How does this happen, and why is my attic so inferior?

I don’t understand stories like that. They make me totally crazy. It happens all the time. People find stuff in their attic that turns out to be worth a fortune. Like a map that has a Rembrandt underneath. Or a calendar that covers the last copy of the Declaration of Independence.

Who are these people? Where do they live? And how do they get the best attics ever?

Here’s what’s in my attic: Old books, but not so old as to be worth money. Old clothes, but not so old to be worth money. Old chairs, but not so old to be worth money. In fact, I’m older than anything in my attic, and even I’m not worth that much money.

Evidently, only inanimate objects acquire value as they get older. People just get called seniors.

Curse you, other people’s attics! Also the social security system, ageism, and society in general!

See how I get, from these attic stories?

Crazy!

I have an idea. Maybe if we take the seniors and put them in the attic, they’ll be worth something when they come out.

Let’s find out.

Try this at home. Go, quick! Hustle Mom and Dad upstairs, right now. Push their sorry asses into the attic. Slam the door, lock it, and set the timer for 300 years. Then take them out and sell them.

Too dark?

Let’s go back to the aforementioned vase. I looked at a photo of it online. It’s cute, as vases go, and if I’d found it in my lame and inferior attic, I wouldn’t have thought it was anything special. It’s blue, yellow, and green, and has two fish on the side.

That’s 42 mil a fish.

My guess is they’re goldfish.

Of real gold.

The vase in the attic was from the eighteenth century, and to be precise, the Qianlong Dynasty.

Who knew? If I’d looked at that vase, I would have said Ming. Definitely, Ming. As in Ming a Ding Ding, which was the favorite dynasty of Frank Sinatra.

But it was Qianlong, which I’d never heard of. I only know Qianshort.

Still, I shouldn’t feel bad about not identifying the vase correctly. After all, the people who found the vase in their amazing attic took it to an auction house, where they were told by the experts that it was worth $2 million.

Chump change.

But later, in an auction that lasted half an hour, the bidding went up to $70 million. That’s over 2 million bucks a minute.

Time really is money.

By the way, if you’re wondering how the number got from $70 million to the final $86 million, the difference was the commission that went to the auction house and the tax on the commission.

That’s a good commission, no? I can’t divide that fast, but it sounds like 393,838 percent. Which I suppose is reasonable, for underestimating the value of the vase by $84 million.

You get what you pay for.

Reportedly, the auctioneer was surprised at the final selling price.

Ya think?

He said that there had been indications that the buyers, who were from China, had lots of money to spend, but “nothing like this.”

Really?

This auctioneer has to be the most clueless person on the planet. Last time I checked online, our federal government had borrowed about $2 trillion from the Chinese.

And I’m sure we can pay them back, no problem.

If we just find the right attics.

Hardwired

By Lisa

There was an article in the newspaper the other day that scared me. No, it wasn’t about carbohydrates.

It was about our brains, and the gist was that by going online and cruising lots of different websites, we’re actually changing the wiring in our brains, and this will result in an inability to concentrate and …

Huh?

Where was I?

What?

Uh oh.

This is bad news. Five minutes ago, I was supposed to be working, but I took a break to go online. I stopped at all my favorite gossip websites, like
perezhilton.com
,
people.com
, and the
superficial.com
, then I moved on to
gawker.com
and
gofugyourself.com
.

I’m not making that last one up. It’s about fashion, as you would guess if you knew how fussy I am about which sweatpants to wear.

I also visit work-related websites, like
galleycat.com
and
publishersweekly.com
, and I post on Facebook and Twitter, too.

Friend me. Follow me. This way we can get to know each another without changing out of our sweatpants.

I make lots of other local stops on my train ride through the Internet, and my track winds around and around in circles, does a few loop-de-loops, zooms around a cloverleaf and spells out CALL ME, GEORGE CLOONEY before it returns to the station.

And this will mirror the wiring in my brain?

I’m tempted to say it’s mind-blowing, but that’s the point.

Plus it’s unfair, because the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. Everybody deserves a break from work now and then, according to federal law and McDonald’s.

You deserve a break today. At least six times today.

So how can it be fair that what you do during your break can break your brain?

That’s like making a funny face and having your face freeze that way. And if you ever wished that on anybody, I hope you’re happy now. Our brains are all messed up because of you.

The article even had a Test Your Focus interactive, so I took the test, which involved red and blue bars in various formations. I went with my best guess between Yes and No, and scored a -.33 percent, which seemed pretty good to me, considering that I didn’t understand the directions.

I couldn’t concentrate.

To make things worse, imagine you’re a middle-aged woman.

Stop screaming.

It’s not funny.

It takes a real man to be a middle-aged woman.

If you follow.

Anyway, all middle-aged women know that something happens to the brain after fifty years of age. I even read an article about it, but I can’t remember where. Or someone told me, what’s-her-name. And I think the article said something about declining hormone levels causing a decrease in brain function. It talked about menopause creating confusion, a wandering mind, and “brain fog.”

Or something like that.

It was hard to pay attention. At the time, I was daydreaming.

About you-know-who.

Also I like my fog in the air, not between my ears. Weather, stay out of my head.

To return to topic, all I know is, menopause is bad news, brain-wise.

Consider the implications.

What this means is that those of us at a certain age have a double whammy, when it comes to the computer. In other words, if you’re cruising the Internet without estrogen, you should stop right now.

Step away from the laptop.

You won’t understand anything you read. And even if you did, you won’t remember it.

You’re a goner, cognitively speaking.

You’ll fare no better, offline. One of the articles said that brain fog can roll in at any time, and “women find themselves often worrying whether or not they have forgotten to turn the iron off.”

Heh heh.

Silly women, who forget to put the butter churn away, or leave their darning needles all over the floor, where the unwary can step on them, getting a hole that needs … darning?

Darn it!

Well, I, for one, never worry about turning the iron off, because I never turn the iron on. In fact, I don’t own an iron. And between the iron and the laptop, I’ll choose the latter. In a pinch, you can press your sweatpants with a laptop.

Don’t ask me how I know.

Bank Angst

By Francesca

As a young writer starting out, my number one fear in life is not having money. Money for rent, money for food, money for my dog’s food, and occasionally money for those boots that make my legs look four inches longer than they are.

I can stand to skip a few meals anyway.

But you know what my number two fear is?

Managing my money.

And I don’t even mean fancy stuff like investing in mutual funds or something. I don’t have money for that sort of thing.

Not after those boots.

I get nervous and intimidated by the easy stuff. Just walking to the bank gives me the willies. Even tasks that should ease my mind are anxiety-inducing, like depositing a check. When I got my first major check after moving to New York, I took it to my local bank, met with an employee to open an account, and offered the check as my first deposit into my savings.

“Oh, let me show you our new check deposit function at the ATM,” he said.

“We can’t just do it now?” I asked.

“I could, but the ATM is much faster and easier. And no envelopes!”

What’s wrong with envelopes? I like the security of an envelope’s embrace. I even like that it’s sealed with a spitty kiss.

I would seal it in my blood if it made my money any safer.

But I was too submissive to object, so I allowed myself to be marched over to the ATM machine. Following his instructions, I obediently swiped my card and punched in my pin. The machine prompted me to insert my check.

I looked at the banker for reassurance, still clutching my check.

“Just put it in!”

As soon as the check’s perforated edge touched the ATM’s steely lip, it was sucked inside the hungry mouth of the machine.

I was surprised it didn’t burp.

“Confirm the amount,” he said, pointing. “Is that right?”

I don’t know, is it? Was that the right cent amount at the end? If I couldn’t remember the precise cent amount, why did I think my memory was correct about the dollar amount? I was thrown into a tailspin of doubt, and the only paper to confirm it was now within the beast’s metallic innards.

“Cool how it eats it up, huh?”

Cool?

I felt queasy.

The other source of
agida
? Online banking. But I survived the journey of setting up my manifold security settings, so I figure I might as well use it.

Still, I’m terrified of messing up. Whenever it’s time to pay my bills online or transfer funds, I become neurotic. I clear my table of everything but my laptop, I turn up the lights, I turn off any music or TV. Environment conditions must be optimal for my uninterrupted focus as I slowly read each page and deliberately click on each command.

Everything about it is too instantaneous for my comfort level. For example, why is my online banking site the only website on earth that does not have a confirmation page before paying money? I can’t buy lip-gloss from
Sephora.com
without it confirming the contents of my cart, my Beauty Insider Rewards points, and my shipping preference. With online banking, I can mistakenly pay my cable bill an amount with an extra zero in a single click.

That’s never actually happened, but it could!

Certain online features are just needlessly threatening. Right at the top of my account page, it says, “INSUFFICIENT FUNDS” in big capital letters, and I always think, also in big capital letters, “OMG MY BANK ACCOUNT HAS BEEN EMPTIED!” before I read below where it says, “To help prevent overdrafting your account, we automatically send you an email when your account has insufficient funds.”