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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Earlier this week, I ran out of deodorant. I found myself standing in the bathroom, with one underarm appropriately anti-perspirated and smelling of fresh mountain air, and the other… not. My trusty stick of Mennen was rubbed down to the plastic nub, no longer able to protect me from the tense and sweaty rigors of daily life.
So, I set off to the hall closet — gingerly, so as not to break an asymmetric sweat — to find another stick of deodorant. Which I found, sort of. Specifically, what I located was:
“I can’t personally vouch for all of my wife’s activities over the past few weeks, but I assure you I would notice a round of sudden and excessive panting.”
Now, my wife does most of the grocery shopping, which includes keeping our antiperspirant arsenal stocked. It’s certainly her prerogative to buy herself something nice and delicately scented for her pits. That’s my lady there. Nothing’s too good or too pH-balanced for her.
But I’ve never seen this sort of glaring disparity before. It’s remarkable enough that I have to believe one of two things have happened:
Possibly, my wife has recently stopped perspiring — not sweating, as ladies don’t sweat, she tells me — and I haven’t noticed. Maybe at some point, we each had seven sticks of deodorant, and I’ve simply used mine up while hers are collecting dust. As opposed to mine, which mostly collect sweat and odor and little curly hairs.
Hopefully, she doesn’t have some sort of medical condition or ‘perspire gland’ blockage. It seems fairly unlikely, though. I mean, my dog can’t sweat, and she sits around the house all day with her tongue hanging out. I can’t personally vouch for all of my wife’s activities over the past few weeks, but I assure you I would notice a round of sudden and excessive panting.
)Notice it, and be oddly excited about it. Especially if she also could scratch her ears with her feet or sniff my crotch at inappropriate times. Perhaps that’s asking too much.)
The other explanation is that she’s suddenly started sweating perspiring a lot, and now needs all seven of those deodorant sticks. Certainly, her job can be stressful — and she’s been pretty busy at the office lately — but if she’s going through three sticks of Secret a week, it might be time to think about a vacation. Or at least taking a towel to work. And maybe a mop.
In any case, I did the only thing I could do at that point. I found the stick of deodorant she was currently using, and glommed it all over my previously unprotected underarm. Then I wiped away any evidence from the top of her Secret, and nonchalantly walked away from the bathroom. It’s ‘strong enough for a man’, right? So why does it have to smell like lilacs and roses? Give me a fighting chance, already.
On the way to work, I bought myself some deodorant. Lots of deodorant. And when the drug store clerk commented on my ‘summery scent’, I went back to my car and rubbed on roll-on like a smelly, sweaty son of a bitch. Which I was, at that point. Yet still, I smelled like flowers and fluffy pillows.
You know, sometimes I wonder whether it’s just easier to let them see me sweat. Jeez.
Permalink | 3 CommentsTonight, the missus and I went out with some friends for tapas. We’ve tried a few of Boston’s tapas restaurants over the past few years, and I’ve discovered that the only thing I enjoy more than eating tapas at a tapas joint is saying tapas at every possible opportunity throughout the evening.
“It’s not straightforward, for instance, to split a pizza or samosa into three hundred teeny pieces. And you can’t charge nine dollars for three tater tots and a glob of Hunt’s ketchup. So Spanish food it is.”
(It’s not my fault. It’s just that I took Spanish in high school and tapas is one of the few words you can say en Espanol without having to make that ‘*hhhwyuh*‘ sound for a ‘j’, or the motorboat rolling ‘r’ noise. I don’t like to work too hard with my foreign verbiage.
In conclusion: tapas!)
If you’re not familiar with the concept of tapas, it’s really quite simple. It’s the restaurant’s job to offer thirty or forty kinds of tiny little dishes, and give them names that are largely unpronouncable for anyone born north of Juarez.
(Yes, I said *Hhhwyuh*uarez. You heard me.)
The restaurant then sprinkles a few crumbs of each dish onto a plate, and charges about half an entree’s price for each. It’s the customer’s job to order enough dishes to clog the table full, eat those, and order another round. Then it’s ‘order, chow, repeat’ until satisfied.
An accompished tapas patron can drag the process out for well over three hours, and a couple of hundred bucks. But a real tapas expert can walk in hungry for lunch, and emerge after dinner with a full stomach and a second mortgage.
I used to wonder why the tapas concept seems to be limited mostly to Spanish food. Gradually, I realized that many other styles of cuisine don’t lend themselves easily to the model. It’s not straightforward, for instance, to split a pizza or samosa into three hundred teeny pieces. And you can’t charge nine dollars for three tater tots and a glob of Hunt’s ketchup. So Spanish food it is.
The tapas place tonight was a good time. Our dishes were tasty and plentiful, and the glasses of sangria weren’t nearly as small as the portions of food. The ladies in our party even split an order of churrrr-urrr-urrr-urrr-os for dessert, and reported favorably thereon.
The only odd event of the evening had to do with the parking situation. I arrived first, alone and early, and staked out a spot a couple of blocks past the restaurant. After a quick walk around the area, I decided it might be just a bit shadier a place than I’d prefer to leave the car. And I’m not talking about it having too many elm trees, either.
So, I moved the car to a marginally closer spot. My trip from and back to the car was entirely unaccosted, mind you — I just felt the new parking spot was in a somewhat safer, more respectable, and overall classier area. Call it a hunch.
As soon as I’d reparked and stepped out of the car, a man walked up to me, pulled a watch out of his jacket, and said:
‘Yo man, you wanna buy a Rolex? Stupid cheap, bro.‘
I got back in my car, moved it to the old spot, and made a note that my hunches are just frigging stupid.
My hunches are little stunted tapas of actual ideas, and this one almost cost me forty bucks for a broken ‘Bolex’ or ‘Polex’ or ‘Casio Time-A-Lot’ or whatever the hell it actually was. All I know is it wasn’t genuine, because I know I didn’t hear my man say, ‘Rrrr-urrr-urrr-rrr-olex‘. You an’t foot this gringo.
Permalink | 1 CommentAs an avid reader, an aspiring writer, and a nitpicking OCD-afflicted freakjob, I have a bit of a pet peeve about substandard grammar, spelling, and syntax. I’m not sure exactly why — maybe my English teachers in school smacked me around a little harder than the other educators. Or maybe the ‘l33t sp33k’ I encounter every day on the web has finally gotten to me. Possibly, my parents beat me with a Webster’s unabridged during my formative years. I can’t say for sure.
“It’s the same reason we remember what happened to Jack and Jill, or Old Mother Hubbard, or that adventurous young lass from Nantucket.”
Whatever the origins of my obsession, in the end I’m here to help. So rather than rail and complain about our populace’s seeming indifference to the rules of proper English, I decided to contribute to the cause, in my own small way. It’s my contention that most people only remember one rule about grammar or spelling:
‘I’ before ‘e’
Except after ‘c’,
Or when sounding like ‘a’,
As in ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh’.
We remember this not because it’s the most important rule, nor is iit the one used most often. Unless your job involves something like, say, printing ceiling frieze receipts, you probably rarely use the rule at all. So why do we remember it?
Because it rhymes. It’s the same reason we remember what happened to Jack and Jill, or Old Mother Hubbard, or that adventurous young lass from Nantucket.
So the answer is simple: we need more mnemonics like the one above. More rhymes, better grammar. Once the epiphany hit, I got to work immediately on a new set of memory aids. I delivered the first set over two years ago.
Then I forgot about them for a while. When you live the way I do, epiphanies have a way of getting buried under the clutter on your desk. Or mangled by the dog and forgotten in the dirty clothes basket.
But just a few months ago, I managed a new set of mnemonics. And since those have had the same null effect as the first set, I’m back again for round three. Honestly, if we could just get a few of these ditties into the kindergarten classrooms, I’m convinced the literacy rate would skyrocket. Like this one, for instance:
‘You may say that your stripper’s
‘Not hardly filling that bra’;
But you’ll still have to tip her,
When she corrects your faux pas.‘
A grammar lesson, and a tip on boobie bar social etiquette. Eat that, Reading Rainbow! Let’s try another:
‘If you’ve lost your pencil
Somewheres around here,
Let me know when you’ve found it,
So I can cram it in your ear.‘
This is why it’s unlikely I’ll ever be allowed to teach these rhymes in schools myself, of course. And probably why no one ever lets me borrow a pencil. Moving right along:
‘You might go ‘on the lam’,
Once the fuzz is alerted;
But if you’re ‘on the lamb‘,
Ewe’re shearly fleecing perverted.‘
Like I always say, it’s not a proper English lesson until the bad puns and beastiality innuendo start flying. How about one more, to take us home:
‘When comparing two things,
Never claim one is ‘best‘;
Unless they’re Super Bowl rings,
Or boobs on a chest.‘
Close your lesson books and put down your pencils, students. You can study quietly or put your heads on your desks until the bell rings. Just don’t disturb the teacher while I get started on my ‘liquid recess’. Class dismissed.
Permalink | 3 CommentsI find myself in an awkward position.
There’s a girl in my office who I think may be pregnant — but not obviously so. Yet. Unless she’s not actually pregnant, which is a very real possibility.
So now the timer is ticking. You only have a certain window of time once a woman starts showing — or, maybe, simply ‘enfattening’ — to say something nice about the joys of motherhood and how special this time is, and something something ‘positively glowing!‘ something something.
(What is it about impreggerated ladies that makes people believe they want to be called ‘glowing’, anyway? It’s bad enough that they’ll soon look like amateur beach ball smugglers; do we really have to point out how shiny they’ve become, too?
Eventually, it just crosses over into ‘cruel’. Haven’t these poor women been through enough already?)
“It’s one thing to share in the joy of a pregnant woman’s girth with a hug and a soft pat; it’s quite another to yank up some husky woman’s shirt and fondle her navel because you want to ‘feel the heartbeat’.”
At some point, that ‘compliment timer’ dings, and if you haven’t yet mentioned to the mother-to-be how beautiful and courageous she is for feeding a half-baked fetus from her insides until it shoots out her hoohah nine months hence, then you’ve lost your chance. If you hang around waiting for her water to break before saying, ‘Oh look, you’re preggers; hey, good luck with that!‘, then suddenly you’re the insensitive jackass. It hardly seems fair.
On the other hand, there’s the risk that this girl’s just plumping up a little. There’s no shame in that; it happens to the best of us. Maybe she’s been cramming nuts in preparation for the long, barren winter ahead.
The point is, I can’t be certain that the extra lumpiness under this girl’s blouse is a burgeoning fetus, and not a growing mountain of triple lattes and Twinkie cream. So I can’t risk commenting warmly on her newly-knocked-upedness, for fear of being wrong. It’s one thing to share in the joy of a pregnant woman’s girth with a hug and a soft pat; it’s quite another to yank up some husky woman’s shirt and fondle her navel because you want to ‘feel the heartbeat’. That’s when you’ll find the one situation where the distinction between ‘with child’ and ‘beer-bellied’ is mostly irrelevant — when you’re being sat on and squished into the shag carpet.
So I’ll be keeping a close eye on this woman and her expanding torso. In another week or two, it should become glaringly obvious whether she’s birthing a baby, or binging on bonbons. At some point, the appearance of maternity clothes — or a Weight Watchers’ muumuu — should give it away.
Or I could just ask one of her friends. But jeez — where’s the fun in that?
Permalink | 2 CommentsSure, there are times when I wish I were a superhero. I’m guessing a lot of people feel that way sometimes. But unlike most, I have no delusions that it could ever work out.
Not because superheroes don’t exist. Instead, because I’m an idiot.
“But you’ve never seen my commute. Frankly, I’m surprised with every day that goes by that it doesn’t erupt into a bout of granny flinging. Maybe I’m driving too close to the retirement homes.”
I’ve read the comic books, watched the shows and cartoons, and even seen the movies which were adapted from cartoons which were adapted from shows which were adapted from comic books. I’ve seen every super power ever dreamed up, and I’ve witnessed the awesome and formidable power those powers have conferred to various do-gooding dandies.
And I know just exactly how I’d accidentally hork each one up. Observe, fair citizens:
Super Strength: Stopping speeding tall buildings sounds great on paper. And I might think I’d like to have the strength of ten men — or nineteen badgers, thirty-one schnauzers, or one hundred and six chinchillas, if you’re doing the conversions at home.
But if I were suddenly endowed with sinews of steel, it would likely lead to some rather nasty shortcuts. Stuck in traffic again? I’d probably throw a few cars out of the way. Out of quarters for the meter? Toss old ladies around until one of them ponies up some change. Cops hassling me for assaulting the elderly? I might smack them with the parking meter. It’s not only useful — it’s wryly ironic, given the circumstances.
You might think the reaction a bit out of kilter with such a common, everyday circumstance. Perhaps. But you’ve never seen my commute. Frankly, I’m surprised with every day that goes by that it doesn’t erupt into a bout of granny flinging. Maybe I’m driving too close to the retirement homes.
X-Ray Vision: Would it be useful to see through walls and floors and lacy undergarments? No doubt. But those X-rays are dangerous waves, medically speaking.
And it’d be mighty inconvenient to get hit with a class action lawsuit by hundreds of women with nipples singed from radiation exposure. I don’t need that kind of hassle.
Unless there’s boo-boo kissing. Can you be sentenced to boo-boo kissing? I’m guessing no.
Conjuring Fire: Clearly, this would never work for me. I can barely see without my contacts; the first time I tried lighting the fireplace and accidentally set the dog on fire, I’d have to swear off using my power forever.
At least, that’s the way it’s worked with matches. And lighter fluid. And propane. And Roman candles. At this point, the dog runs frantically away at the sight of the fireplace logs.
Super Speed: See, here’s the thing about super speed — nothing else around you is super speedy, just you. So waiting for coffee to percolate, or sitting in that commuter traffic, or zipping through a bunch of TiVoed commercials is just going to seem to take that much longer.
I’ve always thought super speed was the undersized runt of the super power litter, for just that reason. In a pinch, you can whisk some jerk out of a burning building, or dash halfway across the world to deliver a message. But all that scurrying still takes effort, and how many shoes would you go through careening around all willy-nilly like that?
That shit costs money. And Nike and Reebok don’t do sneaker deals with superheroes. Not unless they can hit a jump shot or throw a sixty-yard spiral. You’d have a better shot with Buster Brown.
Invisibility: No chance. My record for being completely naked and staying entirely quiet is roughly seven seconds. There’s no way in hell I could tiptoe around au naturel without arousing suspicion, bumping into someone, or making a ruckus.
Where ‘ruckus’ may include running circles around the ladies’ changing rooms at the local GAP shouting, ‘Giggity giggity goo!‘ Just as a for instance.
Telekinesis: I’m lazy enough as it is. If I could actually control the forces of nature such that objects would come to me, it would only get worse. Forget never leaving the house; I’d never get my ass out of bed again.
Within a week, I’d be stuck in the sack, four hundred pounds and growing, with the television hovering over the foot of the bed and bags of Chee-tos slowly emptying themselves into my mouth. The only exercise I’d get is lifting my head to watch the neighbor who dumps his leaves in our yard get his daily telekinetic wedgie as he leaves the house.
Oh, sorry. I guess I said each of these would have a downside. My bad.
Communicating with Animals: My dog knows seventeen commands, from ‘sit’ and ‘down’ to ‘if you don’t come here right now, I’m selling you to the circus, you miserable bitch’.
And when I give those commands, she ignores every. Single. One of them.
So what use could I possibly have for the ability to let all of the critters and fauna in the area give me the cold furry shoulder? I can just see that now. Maybe I drop my wallet on the street, and ask friendly Mr. Squirrel to bring it over to me.
‘Hug a nut, biped. I got trees to climb.‘
Or maybe I politely request that the bird who sings outside my window at five freaking thirty every damned morning maybe shut it down for a day?
‘Up yours, wingless. You just bought yourself three turds on the windshield.‘
Yeah, no thanks. The less animals that actually listen to me, the better.
Yep, that tears it. Best that I remain my average, mild-mannered by-day self, lest my dog and local grannies and nipples and neighbors be put in peril. I guess being a superhero in my world isn’t as easy as it looks.
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