Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor ...

Having just finished reading a blogpost from a competitor, I am reminded of my own dating mishaps. First of all, I didn't date anyone. I was too homely/annoying/smart [pick one ... or two - what the heck, pick your nose!] to get my own dates, but instead ended up date-sitting instead. What is "date-sitting" you ask? It's the act of occupying the time of someone a friend of yours is trying to pry themselves away from. I was telling my husband an old war story recently about the second time I had done this when it occurred to me ... that I had done it more than once. Hence, the "second time." And there was more after that.

This is like that "Always the bridesmaid, never the bride" thingummy. Three and a half decades later and this guy is still hankering after the one that got away instead of the one that had to listen to him sigh on the phone for hours at a time. Another one, in describing his nightmare blind date, deftly describes the woman he spent months with and that I date-sat him for, which only shows what an impression she made on him that he can't let go. He still asks me about her when I see him. I suppose he doesn't have words to describe me because after he got drunk and passed out, I decided it was safe to go home. For all I know, he just thinks I was a pink elephant with a slightly smaller nose.

Like the male equivalent, Mr. Right Now, I was Miss Right Now. No one bothered to ask me if I really wanted to go out with these guys. Well, except the first one. While I was in high school a friend of mine in college tried to palm her boyfriend off on me and ask if I would mind. He was just too needy. "He needs a hamster, or something," she wrote me, "to lavish his affection on." I had little or no dating experience so I agreed to go out with him. We had one date. He was affectionate. It was good experience for me, sort of training wheels for dating, and he probably went back to pestering her. I don't blame him, I loved her too. She wrote the best letters.

Yes, I love my girlfriends and I will do anything for them ... except ... except ...

No more date-sitting (I have my own permanent date now - whee!) and please, please, please stop calling me when you're drunk. And, I just haven't got the nerve to say this to your face - you need to stop drinking, or at least stop drinking so much ... or so often ... and stop going out with or shacking up with unsuitable guys that are so hard to get rid of just because you think you need to have somebody. I have my own problems now - I can't solve yours.

By the Footprints In the Jell-O!

Derby Day upcoming, "I am always remember the day I first meet" the parents of a very good friend of mine. He had won me in my first annual "Win A Marf Contest" by submitting many pages of what he would do with me when I got there, letters of recommendation, and an 8" x 10" glossy. My fingers are drumming the keyboard now as I try to remember why my then boyfriend had not won. I think I recall a letter saying, "If you want to come visit, why don't you just say so?" That was not what I was looking for, but says a lot about that relationship.

My friend had me for a week of my vacation from the library. As a house-warming gift, I brought him a glass mug on which I had had etched "I've Been Sacked By" and the name of his employer. To be fair, he'd argued his way back into the job ... for the satisfaction of quitting. The sentiment, though, was appreciated. This was the first time I spent any extended time with this, one of my best friends. It was definitely the first time I stayed over. I hadn't thought much about that, what it entailed. He was renting a part of a house that had two bedrooms (one occupied by a roommate who was even more slovenly), a bath with a tub, and a kitchen. The kitchen was fairly roomy and had a table with chairs, so it was the social point of the ménage.

His bedroom consisted of a mattress on the floor, and a floor covered in loose change. Apparently, when he undressed at night, the change fell out of his pockets and he never bothered to pick it up. I spent each morning lying next to his slippers and desultorily picking up the coins and putting them in the slippers.

I thought it odd that such a young man would have bedroom slippers until I made note of the state of the floors in the place. Each morning he would rise, attempt to put on coin-laden slippers, swear, pour them out, and go on as if nothing unusual had happened. I asked him about it later and he had apparently not been awake enough to register the addition of the coins.

Slippers were a wise choice. Neither of these guys was big on cleaning and the bathroom had dust woofies in it that were about 3 or 4 feet long. Every zephyr that ran through the house and under the door caused these ephemeral caterpillars to ripple. I had this terror of being in the tub and someone opening a door to the outside, causing a woofie to raise its head over the edge of the tub and attach itself to my wet body. Bleagh bleagh bleagh!!!!

I would stay in bed until I ran out of small change to put in the slippers and then get up and cast about for something to do. The kitchen was a disaster. My friend had tried to make rice the week before and lost tract of time. The rice had burned to the bottom of the pan, and about an inch and a half up. He'd scraped out most of it, but just filled it with water and left it in the sink. That pan was the worst of it. I cleaned all the other dishes and worked assiduously on the rice pan.

I was up early one morning, probably a Sunday, when there was a knock at the door. I opened it and saw this very surprised looking middle-aged couple standing outside. They were his parents. They asked to see him. He was still in bed, so I had to let them in and go get him. This was the awkward part for me. I was going to have to wake him up, which was not an easy task. It was embarrassing for me that he was still slug-abed and his parents had come. I didn't realize until a little bit later that they didn't know I was visiting.

Hearing that his parents were there helped to wake him a bit, but not totally. He had to get up, dump the coins out of his slippers, swear, and get dressed. Eventually, we all sat down at the kitchen table for what I expected to be the typical semi-awkward cross-generational conversation.

My insouscience probably made me come across as a shameless Jezebel. This is nice, I thought, I get to meet his parents, who were a bit younger than mine, but I had always gotten on well with older people. I really had totally the wrong attitude and I'm sure they left thinking the worst of me, little realizing the relative innocence of our relationship. If anything embarrassed me, it was my friend using a credit card to wine and dine me ... which his parents apparently paid for him.

Anyway, we had a wonderful time other than the parental visit. I laughed myself sick quite a few times while he told elephant jokes, which he normally would not consider to be funny. It got to the point where he could just say, "Shoehorn!" to set me off again. We would sit at the kitchen table and talk and just enjoy each other.

He was making brownies one night, and almost proudly showing his self-sufficiency in opening the box and handling the whole deal himself. In an unusual fit of tidiness, he not only threw the box away, but decided the trash can was full, closed up the bag, and took it out to the bin. He was quite carefree in the process, and I started wondering if he had made note of the time or how long the box said they needed to cook. No matter, I was a brownie expert.

His roommate came into the kitchen, having smelled the brownies.
"Wow, brownies! When will they be done?"
"I don't know," my friend said.
"How long are they supposed to cook?"
"Dunno."
"When'd you put 'em in?"
"Don't remember."
"Where's the box?"
"Threw it away."
"Oh." Pause.
"I took it out to the bin."
"Ah."

Soon they were both gathered around the oven door, peering inside.
"How do you know when they're done?"
"I think you put a knife in and see if it comes out clean."

His roommate lost interest and wandered off again. My friend returned to the kitchen table where I was biting my lip and my shoulders shaking.

"Wha-at?" he said.
"You know how you can tell if the brownies are done?" I asked.

He paused and considered it. "By the footprints in the Jell-O?" And I lost it. I was laughing so hard and he kept asking, "No, really - how do you tell?" And somehow, "When they pull away from the sides" sounded even funnier. Okay, you had to have been there.

"No, really. Tell me! How can you tell when the brownies are done?"

Why It Took So Long for Me to Get Married

Serial Fiancee and Mother Superior, partners in crime

Had a nice chat with the chiropractor today (after killing myself doing die-cutting) after all his patients left. Mentioned how Christine Baranski (since "Cybill" and now in "Momma Mia") reminds me of my dear friend NamelessHussy. I'm not allowed to talk about certain aspects of our time together. If she wants to tell stories on herself, that's up to her (ask me to remind you, Dear). But in "Momma Mia" they actually call Baranski's character a "serial fiancee." I'm just sayin'.

NamelessHussy used to say she liked to go out with me, because when she went out with other women, they just used her to attract men. NH would tongue-lash them away, and the other women would provide these reprobates with a soft landing. I didn't operate that way. If we went out together and some creep tried to chat her up in some obnoxious fashion (and NH particularly disliked the braggarts who tossed out their resumes as if they meant something), we operated like a well-drilled volleyball duo: she set 'em up, and I spiked them - wham!

Example: Oxford cloth shirt and power tie started in on NH with a "Why won't you go out me?" barrage and she finallly wheeled on him. "I won't go out with you because you wear those Euro-fag tasseled loafers." He was now dead to her, but he's still hanging in mid-air. He turned to the fat girl with the pleasant but dull face and tried the sympathy angle. "I had to wear these. I fell out of bed and hurt my foot," said leeringly as though there was something more than sleeping going on. "If you were doing it right, you wouldn't have fallen out," I pointed out cheerfully. "Jeesh!" he said, "Jesus!" and left both of us alone the rest of the evening. High fives, teammate!

I didn't do this just when NH was around. I also had a running game going with a male friend who continually tried my patience with innuendo along that same line. "Why aren't we sleeping together?" "Is that why we don't sleep together?" We don't sleep together, dear one, because it ruins friendships, just see if it doesn't. "I'd like to test that theory." And I kept count. "That's 37." It was more a game than anything, and one that I wasn't really winning (but he wasn't getting laid, either, so maybe it was a tie). It did, however, hone my skills. That and several years of back-and-forth with gay men gave me a competitive mouth. I'd like to think that I didn't start anything. I only volleyed back when it came into my court and I only go for the joke, not really the kill.

Still, it does keep the gene pool at a distance, dunnit? In the end, I had to be approached by someone gently. I then gave back the same way. I'm just a parrot, repeating what I hear. Y'all keep that in mind when you go a-courtin'.