I've Got Sand In All the Wrong Places (5 page)

Dating apps are expectation-generating machines. They invite you to project wildly onto the person.

It's the projected version of me that I'm really afraid of. Who is she? Who is the Tinder version of me that the real me will have to compete with when I actually meet a guy? She'll be different every time, depending on the man. She's in his head, I can't control her.

But now that I'm writing this, I'm changing my mind. What am I afraid of? My silent, un-photogenic, two-dimensional self?

 

Requiem for a Meal

Lisa

One man's ceiling is another man's floor.

And one man's entree is another man's pet.

Today I'm talking about one of my chickens, who just died.

And yes, I had it cremated.

Rather than barbecued.

I can't decide if this makes absolute sense.

Or is completely crazy.

You be the judge.

To give you some background, I keep a flock of about fifteen hens, of different varieties. There are white Wyandottes, a shiny black Australorp, a few Rhode Island Reds, and brown Ameraucanas, which lay greenish-blue eggs.

At my house, there
is
such a thing as green eggs and ham.

Without the ham.

I've become a vegetarian, and it was the hens that turned me into one, because they're so damn cute and smart.

In other words, I used to love chicken.

But now I love chickens.

My hens are all named for Gilbert & Sullivan characters, since Daughter Francesca and I love Gilbert & Sullivan, and she performed in their musicals in college, at the Agassiz Theatre.

So our coop is named the Eggassiz Theater.

I know, I need to get a life.

The standout hens are leading ladies like Yum-Yum and Princess Ida, but the docile Plymouth Barred Rocks tend to flock together, happily clucking away, so they're collectively called the Women's Chorus.

By the way, I don't have any roosters. I'm not discriminating against men, but I don't want to live with anything that wakes up earlier than I do.

I've had the hens for eight years, and in their early days, they laid about seven or eight eggs a day total, which was awesome.

I heartily recommend having a pet who feeds you, rather than the other way around.

In those days, I had so many eggs that I handed them out to friends, brought them to New York for Francesca, or even gave them as a hostess gift.

Luckily, I have the kind of friends who think eggs are a good gift.

I'd say my friends are good eggs.

But I'm above that sort of pun.

Anyway, my hens are getting older, and nowadays, they lay only one egg a day, if that. I'm no biologist, but I think they're in menopause.

Or henopause?

Either way, they're running out of eggs.

And so am I.

And unfortunately, the other day, one of the Women's Chorus looked like she was ailing, so we went to the chicken vet.

Yes, there is such a thing as a chicken vet.

Thank God.

The vet said that my hen was basically dying of old age since eight years was elderly for a chicken, which meant that my entire flock was ready to join AARP, if not headed for that great chicken coop in the sky.

Sadly, he also said that the hen was suffering and recommended that I euthanize her, so I said yes, and she passed away peacefully.

Moment of silence.

After which I had to deal with a dead chicken.

To back up a minute, I've lost one or two other chickens, but that was a different time of the year, so I buried them in my private little pet cemetery. But this time of year, the ground is too frozen for digging, and when I mentioned that fact to the vet, he suggested that I put her in the freezer until spring.

I rejected that option.

I know a lot of people have chicken in their freezer, but I don't think it's precisely the same thing.

My other options were two. I could have her cremated and the ashes disposed of by the company, or I could have her cremated and have the ashes returned to me.

I chose the latter, because if you care enough to cremate something, you should care enough to keep the ashes.

And the ashes just arrived, in a small cardboard box, with a sympathy card that reads, “This is to certify that CHICKEN, the beloved pet of LISA SCOTTOLINE, was individually cremated.”

Which made me think I should've given the hen her own name, not just a member of the Women's Chorus.

I mean, when I go, I hope my urn says more than, HUMAN.

I put her ashes in my office, which already contains one chest of horse ashes, five boxes of dog ashes, and one box of cat ashes.

It's not an office, it's a mausoleum.

And you know what?

I'm fine with that.

My animals are with me forever.

Rest in peace, little CHICKEN.

 

People of Earth

Lisa

Recently, actor Harrison Ford was in the news because he had a plane crash, which he survived with “minor trauma.”

This is a news story I can't even begin to understand.

First, who walks away from a plane crash with only minor trauma?

I got minor trauma
reading
about the plane crash.

Second, Harrison Ford is such a skilled pilot that when his engine failed, he managed to crash his plane into a golf course, instead of somebody's house.

I'm betting he got a hole in one.

I give props to Harrison Ford.

Or maybe a propeller.

Third, he was flying a single-engine airplane, described as a “vintage plane from World War II.” So many things about this sentence confuse me, that I don't know where to begin.

I'm trying to understand why anybody would want to fly a single-engine plane anywhere. I like my planes to have as many engines as possible. This way, if the first five fail, the last twenty-seven won't.

That's just common sense.

You don't have to be an airplane mechanic to have that opinion, or even be good at numbers.

You just have to know that there's something about engines that makes the plane stay parallel, and as long as you're parallel, you're not perpendicular.

It's geometry, only life or death.

In fact, if they asked me at the ticket counter if I wanted extra engines with that, I would answer, “yes, totally.”

I wouldn't even mind if they didn't put the engine on the side, but just mixed it in with all the other engines.

Bottom line, when it comes to engines, more is better.

Remember that.

Then we come to another confusing thing about the sentence, which is the word “vintage.”

To be clear, I love words, and “vintage” is one of my favorite. I'm fine with “vintage” when it describes wines and cars.

But not when it describes an airplane.

I'm trying to understand why anybody would want to fly a vintage airplane.

Because it was built almost seventy years ago.

Try to think of something else that was built seventy years ago that still works.

Did you get the answer yet?

Of course you didn't.

Do you know why?

The answer is nothing.

Toasters are good for six years.

Televisions are good for four.

Cell phones are good for two.

Marriages, we're talking five to seven, tops.

Just kidding.

I was talking about my marriages to Thing One and Thing Two.

Yours may last longer, depending on the mileage.

But even beyond the vintage aspect of the plane Harrison Ford was flying, I'm trying to understand why it's fun to fly around in the air, at all.

I love it here, on Earth.

Admittedly, there's things going wrong on the planet, but I generally like the way it feels underneath my feet.

Especially my bare feet.

Earth is simply the best, for foot support.

Also for jumping, running, or riding a bike.

Nothing in the air beats anything on the land, and that's why I don't get these people who want to go to Mars, either.

You may have read about them, a group of people who bought a one-way ticket to Mars, a flight which will take seven to eight months, and once they get to Mars, they will settle there, forever.

How many things are wrong with that sentence?

I stopped counting at 3,938,282,849.

Because I have better things to do.

Like walk around.

 

The Quitters Club

Francesca

The first almost-warm night after a long winter, I found myself on the roof of an apartment building on the Lower East Side with a group of people I didn't know very well. Two were friends of mine, but the others I had only met that night. It was still a little too cold for a roof hang, but no one would admit it. We huddled close around an electric lantern, warming ourselves with beach towels for blankets and whiskey for everything else.

The girl who lived there was our drunken leader. She started it.

“Let's go around, and everyone say something that they're proud of, or something that scared you, or whatever. Something real.”

A nervous laughter spread around our circle. I zipped my jacket all the way up to my chin.

“No, seriously, don't be shy. I don't know half you guys, so who cares? Say it, and take a drink, and pass it around. Say something real.”

My friend started. She had just given her two weeks' notice at her job in marketing to pursue comedy full-time. She wasn't sure how it was all going to work out yet, but she had decided if she was going to make it in the improv comedy world, she needed more time to create, to audition, and to write.

The next guy had quit his PhD program in English literature, after completing all the requirements but his dissertation, in order to focus on running his start-up company that makes generosity more convenient, by enabling tip-jar gratuity and charitable donations via credit card.

Another had moved to New York City for a job in a company that folded two months after he arrived. But instead of moving back home, he changed career tracks, developed Plan B on the fly, and found he liked it better than Plan A anyway.

All the stories went like this. One had left a law office, to her parents' chagrin. Another had a playwriting residency that fell through.

Finally, the girl hosting shared how she had decided to quit labels and embrace the ambiguity of her attraction to men and women. She had fallen in love. And that was all that mattered.

All through school, kids are taught the mantra, “quitters never win, and winners never quit.” I guess it's true that if you're quitting because you're afraid of failure, it's a mistake.

But what if you're staying because you're afraid of success? Maybe a different success, or one that takes a bit of experimenting? Or one that defies definition?

My mother always allowed me to quit. She emphasized that I had to
try
, but once I tried something, I was free to make up my mind. Sometimes, it was good that I didn't quit at the first sign of trouble. I was terrified on my first day at horseback-riding camp, but my mom told me I had to stay for three lessons to give it a fair try.

More than twenty years later, I consider horses part of my DNA.

But then, I also hated my first day of ballet lessons. The teacher was mean, and they wouldn't let me wear a tutu. Again, my mom made me stick with it for a couple of weeks.

I quit.

I have no regrets. Toe-shoes look painful as hell, and I don't need anyone's permission to wear a tutu.

When you're an adult, the stakes are raised. Quitting doesn't look great on a resume. Change brings risk. Risk costs money.

I myself was feeling particularly vulnerable at the moment. I had very recently made the decision to leave an agent with whom I had been working since I graduated college. That this agent believed in me had been the touchstone I returned to whenever self-doubt threatened to derail me. But as time passed, I began to feel that while I respected this person enormously, she wasn't the person to help me realize my vision for my career. I didn't know what I would get as an alternative, but I knew what I had didn't feel right.

After a phone conversation I had drafted and rehearsed, we parted ways on amicable terms. But I remember saying to my boyfriend at the time, “I either just made a defining decision to start my career, or I made the biggest mistake of my life.”

I was terrified.

But when it was my turn to say this all out loud, I felt something else.

I was proud.

These new friends reminded me that sometimes you have to quit to create who you really are. Sometimes the parameters someone else sets for you aren't the ones to build your life upon. Life's a gamble; make sure you're risking it all for the right reward.

I felt lucky to be in the company of such brave, ambitious, determined people.

Quitters who just might win.

 

Spanked

Lisa

You can't keep a good woman down.

Or rather, in.

I'm talking, of course, about Spanx.

If you don't know what Spanx is, let me tell you.

It's a girdle.

But it's called a “body shaping garment,” in that it compresses your flesh, nerves, and internal organs, so that you look thinner. In other words, Spanx is a great idea if you don't like oxygen.

Anyway, you might remember that about six years ago, I wrote about how much I hated Spanx. I got introduced to them when I bought a pair by accident, thinking they were tights. I got my size, which is B.

For Beautiful.

I took them home and put them on, which was like slipping into a tourniquet. I actually managed to squeeze myself into them, then I put on a dress and looked at myself in the mirror.

From the front, I looked like a Tootsie Roll with legs.

From the back, instead of having buttocks, I had buttock.