Recently, there are four very specific types of men who are interested in me. And because of that, I had to banish myself from Taco Bell and invent a fake person to carry out conveniently-timed conversations with in case I'm not strong enough to follow through with the terms of my own banishment. (Spoiler alert-I'm not.)
How many links exist in this terrible, terrible chain that led to my inescapable self-banishment from a less-than-mediocre restaurant that may or may not be serving gerbils disguised as taco meat? Four. Four gigantic links. And here they are.
Link 1-These are the four types of men who are currently interested in me:
1) Homeless and sassy Fig. 1.1 "Marry me! We'll take my spaceship to the reception!"
2) Creepy and married Fig. 1.2 "See this hair gel? All of it is for you."
3) Truck drivers who have a significantly reduced number of teeth Fig. 1.3 It was surprisingly difficult to find a real picture for this. So I drew you a diagram. Also, this diagram features a great white shark.
4) Men who work at drive-throughs (that's right. "Through". Because "thru" isn't a real effing word.) Fig. 1.4 I'm just assuming he works at a drive through. And also, he wants your wallet.
Link 2-These are the four ways I avoid conflict 1) Pretend like there's not a conflict at all-because what are you even talking about because this is totally not happening. 2) Pretend like there's something very interesting going on behind the person I'm talking to-because really? Are they moving office furniture outside? That is so interesting! 3) Pretend like I have to leave to get gas in my car-because I've just remembered that all of the gas stations close in 15 minutes and I'll run out of gas on the way home. Yes, they close at 6:15 on Thursdays. All of them. 4) Pretend like I have a phone call-I'm sorry, I have to answer this because it's my friend who needs a thing.
Link 3-These are the four ways I say "no" to people 1) Maybe 2) We'll see 3) Hahahahaha. I don't know. 4) Next time!
Link 4-The Situation So here's The Situation. There's this Taco Bell by where I live. Because I come home very late (and because I have a blatant disregard for my health) sometimes I stop there on my way home. Until a few months ago when the sassy drive through man started asking for my number every time I went through. Let me pause here and tell you that this isn't one of those fake complaints designed to make me look awesome. I'm 99 percent sure he asks for everyone's number. Because I'm pretty sure that's standard operating procedure for someone that has no concept of his lazy eye, no self-awareness that making kissy faces at customers is disgusting, and an over-inflated ego from being Head Sassy Drive Through Man at Taco Bell. Take the fact that he asked me four times and divide that by the four ways I say no to people and you can see, if you're as good at math as I am, how this quickly went awry. Here are how those conversations went:
Conversation 1 Sassy Drive Through Man: Hey Beautiful. Why don't you give me your number? Me: Maybe! Sassy Drive Through Man: ... Me: ... Sassy Drive Through Man: So is that a yes? Me: Bye!
Conversation 2 Sassy Drive Through Man: Hey girl. You giving me that number now? Me: We'll see! Sassy Drive Through Man: We'll see? Me: Mild sauce, please.
Conversation 3 Sassy Drive Through Man: What's up. You have beautiful eyes. Did you forgot to give me your number last time? Me: Hahahahaha. I don't know! Can I get a raspberry tea?! Ok!
Conversation 4 Sassy Drive Through Man: Hey, sexy. You're back. It's been awhile (I was clearly trying to avoid this situation.) Are you going to give me that number yet? Me: Next time! Sassy Drive Through Man: Next time? Why not now! Me: Because I'm classy! (he bought this. which is another reason we could never work as a couple.) Sassy Drive Through Man: Well, good. Then I'm looking forward to next time.
That's when panic set in. I hadn't come up with a Plan E. What would happen next time? I'll tell you what would happen next time. I'd be forced to give him my number. Then we would talk and then we would go out and then he would take me to play bingo and drink warm beer or watch a dog fight. Then we would get married. Then we would have babies. Then I would be stuck at home watching Roseanne reruns while he worked the Taco Bell drive through and cheated on me. That's not an educated guess. That's what would happen.
Does he pressure everyone like this? I'm assuming so. Would it break his heart if I told him no? There's no plausible way. The statistical probability of him caring about actually having my number is about the same as the likelihood that he's not a serial murderer. So tell me why, after banishing myself from this particular Taco Bell and then immediately realizing that I must not actually know what the word "banish" means, did I decide to implement one of my conflict avoidance techniques, making sure that I'm talking to my "co-worker", named "Veronica" about the "reports that are due" every time I go through the drive through to avoid giving him my number? The same reason that, after I have my order, have successfully avoided the conflict and am already past the drive through window, I always tell "Veronica" goodbye and that I'll see her tomorrow.
When I asked everyone about a month ago which of three stories you wanted me to write about, your response was overwhelmingly in favor of “The Three People in the Universe that Hate Me and Why”. (By the way, guys, rude.) And I am going to write that one. I promise. But first, I have to tell you about a situation that happened last month in which I proved to be more irresponsible and aggravating than a petty thief.
First, let me preface this by saying that I am responsibly irresponsible. I went to school. I got good grades. I have a career (in a dying industry, but quit focusing on that! Stop being so negative!). I am a relatively morally and ethically sound person that makes generally good decisions.
Fig. 1.1 Yes. I think listening to MC Hammer is a good decision. This is why I said generally good decisions.
But ultimately, I am not an overly responsible person.
Here are some examples: • I don’t check my mailbox. Ever. On the rare occasions that I do check my mail box, there is usually an angrily scrawled note from a postal worker about how they had to take my mail back to the post office because the box was so full. They give me some terrible deadline to pick it up (only 11 days! Who has the time?!) and then threaten to send it all back. There are usually three or four of these in my mailbox at a time. Whose mailbox is that full? So full that the postal worker has to take out all of the mail they presumably put into the box? But here’s my argument. It’s really far away from my apartment. And no, I’m not going to go pick up my mail. I have no desire to go to the post office where a picture of my overflowing mailbox is probably posted on the wall with bullet holes and blood and knife-stab wounds in it. In this vision, my name is under the mailbox and there are people snarling at it like the moment they figured out who the villain was in The Happening.
Fig. 1.2 So…plants?
No thank you. You can keep my mail. In that same vein:
• I do not know where the post office is. I do not want to talk about it. • For roughly three months, my refrigerator has contained two bottles of margarita mix, one half-consumed 24 pack of Lone Star (that I didn’t even purchase), one bag of flour that got wet and can’t be used, two bottles of Blue Moon, a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20, some Yellow Tail wine that most people would cook with but I fully intend to drink, a container that I think had potato soup in it at one time, and, for some inexplicable reason, a bottle of bleu cheese dressing that expired in 2009, which insinuates that not only have I had the expired dressing for two years, but I moved the expired dressing from one apartment to the other. • I’m supporting Britney Spears’ comeback.
You get the idea. Now that you know the truth, I’m going to tell you about how a thief broke into my car and how it caused them more aggravation than me.
Near my apartment, there is a bridge that an awesome bat colony lives under. Did I say “bridge that an awesome bat colony lives under”? I’m sorry. I mean “bridge that a totally awesome bat colony lives under”. They fly out about dusk every night to eat mosquitoes and scare crybabies and turn into Freemasons or whatever.
Because my brother hadn’t seen this mass exodus before, we went down to the bridge to look. I parked my car across the street, in a lot that has signs that say something to the effect of “I hate you, you’re stupid, don’t park here or I will literally skin you alive and sell all of your organs on the black market. And then we’ll tow your car”. So I took my chances. Of course, I was nervous, so I kept glancing back over to see if there were pygmies with knives driving tow trucks ready to skin me alive and tow my car away. There weren’t. After about fifteen minutes, there was, however, an enormous diesel truck parked next to mine. My internal dialog went something like this:
Oh! Another truck! They’re probably watching the bats too. It’s so weird they parked right next to me! There are so many other parking spaces…I guess they think NEITHER of us will get towed that way. They’re probably really sweet. I wonder who it is! Maybe they’re standing right next to me! (Then I smiled at the person standing right next to me.)
The theme of incurable optimism keeps reoccurring throughout this blog. You can find it here and here. This situation is no different. As it turns out, the person who owned the enormous diesel truck was not standing next to me.
After the bats were finished being awesome, my brother and I walked back to the car. On the way there, I looked up and saw the enormous diesel truck. I then looked down for precisely half of one second to make sure I didn’t trip over the curb, fall into the street and get brutally crushed to death by oncoming traffic. When I looked back up, the enormous diesel truck was gone.
Man! They left fast!
Where have we seen this kind of naïveté before? Fig. 1.5 Here.
Fig. 1.6 Here
Fig. 1.7 And here.
That’s right. In Buddy the Elf, who loves Christmas and whose father is a Christmas elf, Navin Johnson, who was raised a poor, black child, and George Bush, who I am convinced thought he was playing the part of a lovable rascal for nearly a decade. We see this kind of sweet, child-like naïveté when the world is about to be a douchebag and rob people blind of their innocent nature. Which is exactly what was about to happen to me.
My brother walked to the driver’s side door and looked at me with an expression that, I think, is similar to one Al Gore would make if you told him that you didn’t know what “the internets” were.
Fig. 1.8 “Bitch! I INVENTED the internets!”
(On a slightly more hilarious side note, if you Google image “confused mad Al Gore” you not only get a confused, angry Al Gore, but Al Gore’s head photoshopped onto a showering woman’s body, a monkey with his tail tied in a knot, a zombie, and the Three Stooges. Just throwing this out there.)
The entire driver’s side window was shattered. There was glass everywhere. And my purse, which was under the passenger side seat, was gone. An extra slap in the face, my iPod, which is FULL of excellent artists like Huey Lewis and Paula Abdul, was sitting on the center console where I left it.
I immediately changed my mind about the person who owned the enormous diesel truck.
How COULD he?!
You know that feeling you get when you can’t find your keys? And you know you had them, and you know they were in your hand, but you put them down somewhere to play one very fast level of Super Mario 3 and now they’re probably in the refrigerator or the dog’s kennel? And if you don’t find them fast, you’ll NEVER get to the Super Troopers quote-along in time, and you’ll miss out on the syrup chug and maybe they’ll also be out of fake mustaches? That’s exactly how I felt as I tried to run through what was in my purse and what I lost. And this is what I came up with:
• One packet of instant Quaker Oatmeal-Peach • One expired driver’s license that also had the incorrect address on it (yes. this is the license I was using.) • One very tiny screwdriver, possibly either to use on glasses or for a mouse to use for making sardine cans into very tiny beds • One Power Ranger action figure-Rocky • One small bag of ear plugs • One melted MAC lipstick • One menthol Chapstick, capless and full of dirt and, for some reason, a sticker burr • One spark plug gapper • Three pens, two broken and one out of ink • Business cards for my makeup artist work, most of them crinkled, others with gum in them • One empty roll of Bubble Tape • One gas station receipt, which revealed that I once (more than once, but this only documented one time) put an entire $4.34 in my tank before I got bored and decided that was enough to get me to work • One pencil, unsharpened • One camera, filled with pictures I took of myself, and pictures of my foot. I don’t have time to explain. • One debit card, half eaten by my dog, connected to an account with precisely $17.12 in it
• My purse, which is an ADORABLE corduroy leopard print purse that came from Old Navy and cost $3.50.
But here’s the thing. Who sees a PT Cruiser convertible and thinks to themselves, “jackpot”?
So I called the police and then called my bank and told them to cancel the card. And that’s when the lady that answered laid this on me. They had already tried to use the card, for $170 at a Chevron, and it was declined. Do you know what that means? They tried to make ME pay for $170 in gas for their enormous diesel truck and they had to pay for it themselves because I am so irresponsible. And the best thing they got out of my purse was a packet of instant oatmeal. (And my purse, which I was most upset about, because it was leopard print AND corduroy, clearly making it a fashion one-two punch).
I got the window fixed, which was an irritating $110, (which, if you’re a scientist, you’ve figured out is still less than the $170 they had to pay in gas) and just lamented the loss of my very cute purse that even a homeless person could afford to purchase.
And here is where things get amazing. About a week later, I got a phone call from a number I didn’t know.
It was a woman. Who found my purse. On the street.
And here is where things get really amazing.
The only thing missing was my camera.
So here’s what I imagined the thieves’ day went like after they stole my purse (I don’t know why I envision that there are two, working in tandem to steal my purse from my very unsecured car, but it is what it is): Scene 1: Driving away Horrible person 1*, on the way to the gas station: This purse has oatmeal in it. And a power ranger. Horrible person 2**: I have a shard of glass in my hand.
*From here on out, Horrible Person 1 will be called Marcel, and **Horrible Person 2 will be called Jeff. Because in my head, that's what their names are. Mostly because I don't trust people named Marcel or Jeff.
Scene 2: At the gas station Gas station attendant: That’s $170, please. Marcel: Here’s my girlfriend’s card. She’s in the car. Her name is…Jennifer? Gas station attendant: This card has been declined. Marcel, who has just given gas station attendant his card: God damnit. Gas station attendant: I’ve lost my pen, do you have one to sign the receipt? Marcel, who tries to use any writing utensil in my purse: God. Damnit.
Scene 3: Leaving the gas station Marcel: This woman needs to get her life together! I need some gum! Jeff: There was some Bubble Tape in her purse. ::Marcel opens the empty Bubble Tape:: Marcel:GOD DAMN IT!!!!!
::Marcel grabs my camera out of my purse, throws the purse out of the window in a fit of rage. A nice lady picks it up, finds business cards that don’t have gum in them, and calls me.
Fig. 1.9 Not a Dramatization.
Scene 4: Later that night, in the thieves lair, which I imagine is very lair-like where there are drug dealers and marauders wearing eye patches and lots of other stolen items like bicycles, the original Mona Lisa, the CD’s that were stolen out of my car when I was 18 and King Tut’s treasure. Marcel, crying hysterically, talking to his girlfriend: …And then, all she had in her purse was some disgusting lipstick, some oatmeal, an action figure, business cards with already chewed gum in them, an expired license with a bad address —and we know it’s a bad address because we went to the apartment on her license to beat the shit out of her, but the only person home was an old man who didn’t know her—a credit card with nothing on it, an empty roll of Bubble Tape and a camera. And all that’s on this camera is some chubby chick and pictures of her foot. (sobbing—like that kind of sobbing where he’s just sucking in air and making weird honking sounds)…Her iPod was seven years old and all she had on it was some John Stamos song and New Kids on the Block and Huey Lewis (one final choking sob)...And Jeff cut his hand, and I’m pretty sure it’s infected… (aaaaand scene. fade to black with Marcel, who is inconsolable, with his head in his girlfriend's lap.)
And that is how irresponsible I am. More irresponsible than a petty thief.
And I got my purse back. I think we all know what the lesson here is.
Fig. 1.10 Fashion 1-2 punch. With a pen for size reference.
Do you have a sibling that is ferociously loyal? I mean, so loyal that if someone hurts your feelings, that sibling will literally rip out their eyeballs and feed those eyeballs to them?
Fig. 1.1
Eyeballs: They’re what’s for dinner. If you hurt my feelings. And my sister hears you.
Because that’s my sister. She has avenged me when ex-boyfriends have misbehaved. She has stayed up all night after a car accident that caused her SO much pain to make a photo album for me for my birthday. She has left a friend’s house in Pearland and made it to my apartment near downtown Houston in about fifteen minutes when I called her crying about the end of a relationship. When I got some bad news last Wednesday, she drove out to my apartment, six months pregnant and probably tired after working all day, in rush hour traffic to make sure that I would be ok. That’s my little sister.
But if there’s a possibility that there is a murderer in your house and you look to my sister for help, your ass is on your own. This is the harsh lesson I learned when I was about ten.
First, you need some background on how my brother, sister and I were when we were younger to appreciate the story I’m about to tell you.
I’m the oldest child. When you’re the oldest child, the responsibility often falls on you to watch younger brothers and sisters because your parents assume that, as the oldest and most responsible, you’re not doing things that might scar your younger siblings for life. Some of the things parents do not think an older sibling is doing while they are at work include:
-Making them play Mama Cat Baby Cat, wherein the mama cat, while lounging on top of the bed and pretending to purr, tells the baby cat where to put toys back that were previouslystrewn about the room. The baby cat then picks said toys up in her mouth, meows, occasionally chases invisible string and puts the toys back where they belong. Is it my fault that baby cats like to clean shared bedrooms? Is it my fault baby cat thought this was a fun game?
Fig. 1.2
My sister enjoyed Mama Cat, Baby Cat most of the way through high school. We didn’t even share a room anymore.
-Telling your younger brother you possess the magical power to turn anybody invisible, and you are choosing him to showcase that power. So with one wave of a sparkly baton and reciting some kind of poem you heard on Pee Wee’s Play House, the kid’s invisible. Then, the “only way you can see him sneaking around the house is by the footprints he’s leaving in the carpet”. And then you tell him that you don’t know how to make him visible again. And then he cries. A lot. And then your mom comes home. And then he tearfully asks your mom if she can see him. And then there’s a lot of judging going on even though it was JARRETT who loved the game so much.
Fig. 1.3
Couches: They make lousy hiding places. Also, my brother had a sweet bowl cut.
-Singing very loudly and obnoxiously at the top of your lungs any time your younger sister tries to talk, causing the sound of your singing (beautiful and songbird-like as it may be) to turn her stomach nearly 16 years later (she needs to let this one go.)
Fig. 1.4
Paula Abdul was incredible. But not as incredible as my voice.
These are just a handful of the things my parents probably did not think I was doing after school and over long summer hours when they were very hard at work trying to pay for things like mortgages and cars and cheerleading and soccer and baseball and piano lessons and karate (which promptly ended when I accidentally poked my instructor in the eye while trying to balance on one foot)and other things, like purchasing replacement fuses when my brother blew out all of the electricity in the house (I’m not actually sure they had to buy replacement fuses, but he did throw all of the breakers when a screw “accidentally” fell into an open light socket).
Don’t be fooled though. Younger siblings dish it out in less manipulative but possibly more damaging ways. Like the time my sister thought she saw a tiger awake under my bed, and instead of warning me, she ran to my parent’s room and never said anything to anybody. I’ll repeat that last part. SHE THOUGHT SHE SAW A LIVE, MAN-EATING TIGER UNDER MY BED WHILE I WAS ASLEEP AND DIDN’T TELL ANYBODY. Was it a real tiger? Is that really the point?! She THOUGHT it was a real tiger!
Fig. 1.5
If you’re worried about being “the girl who cried tiger” and it’s my life that’s at stake, risk it.
Now that you have the background, you’ll fully understand why I was always left in charge and why, if you think murderers are breaking into your home, you probably don’t want my sister there as your only backup.
Let me preface this story by explaining that children do not believe in abstract things like fate or Eskimos or physics. They believe in very scary monsters, Santa Claus and murderers, in that order.
Fig. 1.6
If you pick the wrong mall Santa, sometimes very scary monsters, Santa Claus and murderers are all the same thing. Also, this was the beginning stages of my brother's sweet bowl cut.
That being said, we were home alone one day over the summer. My brother, sister and I were all in my parent’s bedroom watching Hey Dude (that’s right, Hey Dude. What’s up, 1991?), with the doors and windows in the house open. Then the bedroom door slammed shut. It didn’t just slam shut. It slammed shut with precisely the amount of force it would take for someone who was not the little cartoon version of Arthur in Sword and the Stone to try and pull the sword out of the anvil.
Fig. 1.7
This guy: Not King Arthur. Also, your hat is stupid.
Remember way back, when I said that kids don’t believe in abstract things like fate, Eskimos or physics?
We assumed that the reason the door slammed was NOT that with all of the doors and windows in the house open, a vacuum effect was created when the wind blew, thus shutting the bedroom door. I mean, my science fair project up to this point was making toothpaste out of baking soda, for which I substituted powdered sugar because it tasted better.
We were absolutely 100 percent positive the door slammed shut because there was obviously a murderer on the other side, and that he shut the door to corral us in and would bake us in the oven and eat us after he was finished going through all our stuff. And all I could think about was how this murderer would definitely steal my Jem doll. And probably Teddy Ruxpin, even though I had accidentally poked one of his eyes out, thus rendering him a terrible, blinking cyclopean monster. And that he would leave the Fob, because fobs were only minor characters in the world of Teddy Ruxpin, and no one wants a backup dancer unless you’re Britney Spears.
All of this took place in about half a second. We sat there staring at the door, hoping that one of our parents would come through it and say something like “just joking! no murderers here!”, but they didn’t. I scrambled off the bed and my sister was already gone. I looked up just in time to see her LOCKING HERSELF IN THE BATHROOM WITH MY BROTHER AND I ON THE OTHER SIDE SEPARATED FROM THE MURDERER BY ONLY A THIN BEDROOM DOOR. I tried reasoning with her.
Me: Meg, let us in.
Megan: NO.
Me: Please?
Megan: NO.
Me: How about Jarrett?
Megan: I SAID NO!
Me: Why not?
Megan: There’s not enough room.
In her defense, it was a small bathroom, but when there’s a murderer afoot, you’re supposed to come together as a family and squeeze into the bathroom.
The situation was immediately compounded by the fact that my brother was five, and was going through a phase. At different points in my little brother’s young life, he went through phases that made him aspire to do out-of-the-ordinary things. For example, for a while after Happy Gilmore came out, he wanted to be a golfer. He went through a MacGuyver phase that resulted in all kinds of electronics being shorted out. After Ace Ventura came out, he walked around like Jim Carrey for a while. At one point, he wanted to be a clown.
On this particular day, in this particular setting, my little brother wanted to be a ninja. This was coupled with a toy he had gotten from Little Caesar’s. When he was about five, if my parents went to Little Caesar’s, my brother would lose his mind to go inside and say “please, please”. If you said “please please” to a worker at Little Caesar’s, they gave you a plastic toy that some six-month-old child in China made for exactly half of one cent.
Fig. 1.8
I mean, the toy thing is at the very end, and it’s really not important, but do you REMEMBER this commercial?!
The toy he had in his possession the day the murderers tried to kill us was a plastic pan flute that made no type of discernable music whatsoever.
So I had just finished trying to negotiate with my sister, who had locked herself in the bathroom, to open the door and at least let my brother in, and she was clearly not going to give in. I turned around to find my brother, because I was going to stick him the closet or under the bed or something, and I didn’t see him.
I didn’t see him, because he was crouched down in a very threatening position near the bedroom door peering under the crack.
Me: What are you doing.
Jarrett (who is whispering conspiratorially): I’m setting a booby trap.
Me: What kind of booby trap. That’s a bad idea.
Jarrett(still whispering): I put my toy I got from saying pleaseplease under the door. When the killer tries to steal it, I’ll open the door, and karate chop him in the face.
Me: That’s a dumb idea. No one wants that stupid toy. (because their arms would be full of Jem and Teddy Ruxpin, and if they had enough room left, ALL of my Sweet Valley High books. Also, that’s not a booby trap, it’s just misdirection, but I let it slide because he was five.)
Jarrett (who, all of a sudden, is absolutely not concerned with whispering anymore): IT IS NOT A DUMB IDEA. THEY WILL WANT MY TOY.
Me: Shut UP! They will KILL us! And Megan is NOT letting us in the bathroom!
So now, not only is the murderer sure that we’re in the room, he’s mad that Jarrett’s trying to bribe him with a stupid toy that the murderer could get for free just by saying “please, please”. It was about then that I decided it would be a good idea to call my mother at work. I had learned from Miss Richardson, a terrifying counselor in elementary school, that if you called 9-1-1 and didn’t need it, your parents would be arrested, you would be shipped off to an orphanage, you would never see anyone you loved ever again and eventually you would end up working sound for Milli Vanilli or something horrible like that. So calling the police was out.
Fig. 1.9
Girl you know it, girl you know it, girl you know it was NOT going to end like this for me.
I called my mom. She explained how doors can shut by themselves to me, but all I heard was “there is a murderer or a monster in the house. Get into the bathroom or you and your brother will die”. I also remember telling her that Megan wouldn’t let us in the bathroom. Looking back, my mom didn’t sound surprised. I guess some parts of our personality are ingrained in us from birth, and my mom was aware that my sister would leave us and never look back if a murderer were in the house.
So while my mom called our neighbor to come over and check on us, I tried to reason with my sister, the original cut-and-run-er.
Me: Megan, please let us in.
Megan: No.
Me: Meg. You have to let us in.
Megan: GO AWAY!
Jarrett (who is still ready to strike): Jennie! HE WILL TRY TO GET MY TOY!
Eventually my neighbor came over, called out to us, tried to explain that there weren’t any murderers in the house and that everything was ok.
We were able to (finally) coax Megan out of the bathroom, but obviously, if there had been a murderer (or a monster) in the house, it was definitely going to kill Jarrett and I.
