the chicago dispLAcement ®

Eavesdropping on other people’s conversations is fun. Though I have never tapped anyone’s home, I have on multiple occasions put my ear to a wall or door to get better acoustics. The best is when you catch random bits and pieces while standing in line at the airport or waiting for your drink at a bar. It’s a win-win situation. They don’t know me. I don’t know them. I will never see them again, so no matter what they say, I can’t hold it against them in the future.

Phone conversations are entirely different. Though people are just as likely to say ridiculous things over the phone, I’m amazed by how many people have uber private conversations via cell phone in completely public spaces. To make it all about me, it’s super awkward to listen to them. Last Halloween, my boyfriend and I had to suffer through a convo that some dude was having on the phone with his girlfriend in Party City. Because everyone was desperate to buy whatever cheaply made and overpriced costumes were still in stock, we were stuck in the checkout line for more than a half-hour as this guy professed his undying love for some chick. I’m all for being a lover and not a fighter, but I’m also an uptight American who would rather you keep in the bedroom.

Even worse is when someone’s arguing over the phone. You’d be surprised by how many of these conversations I’ve witnessed in Starbucks. Apparently paying $5 for coffee can make someone irritable. It’s hard to really know what’s going on in these conversations because both parties are working overtime to cut each other off, so all you really ever hear is “would you let me talk?” or “you’re not listening to me!” Perhaps the person on the other line isn’t listening, but I can guarantee you that everyone else is. The absolute worst, though, is when you are privy to a breakup happening over the phone.

Breaking up via phone is on my top five list of douchebaggery actions. Probably because it happened to me. If you don’t want to date someone anymore, that’s cool. But then man up and tell her face-to-face. Don’t call on a random Tuesday night and say, “My feelings for you have plateaued.” Not that that’s how it went down with me or anything.

Now most of the womenfolk I know are in complete agreement with me, so you can imagine my surprise when I overheard a chick doing the breaking up over the phone. I wasn’t at the airport, nor was I in Starbucks. I was simply jogging down my own street… and I could hear her a block away. You see, this lady wasn’t just ending a relationship; she was ENDING A RELATIONSHIP.

“WE ARE OVVVVVVVVEEEEEEERRRRRR!!!!”

I could hear her screaming this single phrase over and over and over again. At first, I thought I was hearing a Lifetime movie through someone’s open window. When I pinpointed the real source of the drama, I then became concerned that perhaps she was in trouble. (It was dark, so I couldn’t tell at first if another person was in the car.) But once I ran past her, I finally understood what was going on. She was a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

I tried to slow down to better hear what horrible things the guy on the other end of the line obviously must have done to deserve such rage, but her voice went all Charlie Brown “mwa, mwa, mwa” once her car was behind me. As I jogged on, I pondered the possibilities. Did he cheat on her? Did he steal money from her? Did he cheat on her with a hooker that he paid for by stealing money from her?

Then I felt bad. No matter how awesome you might feel in your moment of fury, breakups suck. I’m sure that underneath her wrath, she was silently mourning the end of her relationship… Nope. About forty-five minutes later, I was again heading toward her car. She was still there and still raging. In fact, I think she had gotten louder. And if I’m being really honest… it impressed the hell out of me.

Go on with your crazy self, girl.

Image courtesy of digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Working retail is awful. I say this because I know. I’ve enjoyed an illustrious retail past and have enthusiastically sold everything from garbage bags to showerheads to makeup remover. But by a long shot, working women’s retail is the worst of the worst.

I love my gender and have no plans to change it anytime soon. But let’s call a spade a spade… Women can be a neurotic bunch. I suppose the men folk might get weird about their appearance, too, but women take the cake. You can’t really blame us ladies, though. Once Photoshop was invented, it was over for most of us. Now you can’t turn a corner without finding a billboard or magazine with a gorgeous and totally fake female plastered on it. What that woman looks like in real life, I don’t know and nobody else cares. It’s the finely crafted perfect body you see before you that counts.

Now imagine working in women’s bathing suits.

It was hell. Every 15 minutes or so, I would walk into the fitting area only to find a mountain – and I do mean mountain – of bathing suits piled high in each abandoned room. Though the store had a limit on how many bathing suits a person could try on at a time, I worked the seasonal department by myself, which meant that I was usually outnumbered by women on the edge carrying no less than 40 suits with them into a fitting room.

Women get cray cray when it comes to bathing suits. Fellas, if you want a sneak peek at just how scary your lady can get, offer to go bathing suit shopping with her. Odds are she’ll turn you down quicker than you can say “I’ll buy,” because why would anyone subject themselves to the horror of showcasing her pale and dimpled body under fluorescent lighting no less, but if she happens to say yes… If you make it through the afternoon, you’ve become a man, my son.

I think my straw-camel-back moment occurred the day I realized that someone had tried on two-dozen or so bathing suits during the one time of the month when no woman should be trying on anything that isn’t already in her closet… if you catch my drift. Horrified, I finished my shift and simply did not return the next day. I’m not proud of the fact that I just bailed on my job with no notice, but I draw the line at bodily fluids. I still remember my manager’s voicemail message, telling me that I wasn’t in trouble and could come back at any time. The desperation in her voice made it clear that I wasn’t the first employee to unceremoniously bequeath the seasonal department to a soul braver than I.

So my point with this trip down memory lane? I have mucho respect for those that do work in retail. Because people are awful to you all the time. They don’t care if you’re already waiting on four other customers. They don’t care if you’re two hours overdue for your lunch break. And they certainly don’t care if they hurt your feelings. (I’m looking at you, Robert Schuller.)

Most of the time when I go shopping, I like to fly under the radar. I’m an able-bodied person and can usually find what I need on my own, thank you very much… until I do need help. Like when I was looking for a dress that I had found on a store’s website. Just one look at the overcrowded department, though, and I knew I’d never find anything in that chaotic mess of cotton and polyester. So I walked up to the nearest salesperson, “Could you please help me find a dress that I saw online?”

I took her bored look to mean that she had some time to kill, so I continued to describe what I was looking for.

Her: “I don’t know anything like that.”

Me: “Oh, okay…”

Her: Exaggerated sigh. “Let’s look online.”

She led me to the cash register.

Her: “Find it for me.”

Now I spend pretty much my entire day sitting in front of a computer, but I’m a Mac user. I have as much ability to operate a PC as I do a spinning wheel, Morse code machine, or anything else obsolete.

I looked for an external mouse. Nothing. She then directed me to a two-inch by one-inch mouse pad. I tried in vain to navigate it. She then casually mentioned that it was a touch-screen computer. I began to wonder why she hated me.

Finally I found the dress.

Her: “Yeah, I don’t know anything like that… I gotta go to a meeting.”

And off she went.

I never saw her again, but I don’t blame her. Retail is awful.

Image courtesy of digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Rarely do my shopping adventures take place beyond the confines of Target or Ralph’s. However, after three years of literally running them in to the ground, I decided that it was finally time to get some new kicks for my neighborhood jogs.

I was long overdue, but I blame the economy; the place where I got my last pair of running shoes shut down. I had only once patronized their store, but found myself oddly saddened by the news. They had recommended such an awesome pair of shoes… And even though my knees were now begging for mercy after each run, I was reluctant to put my Asics out to pasture.

After Yelping for five minutes, though, I came across a store in Brentwood that seemed to know the deal. None of this Lady Footlocker business, yo. I wanted my gait analyzed, my pronation inspected, and my shoes to fit like a glove. Or sock.

Upon entering the store, I was completely overwhelmed. It was a Saturday afternoon, so the place was packed with both people and shoes. I don’t do brand loyalty, so literally every single shoe on wall was a potential winner. Given shoe design nowadays, though, I wasn’t even sure if I was in the women’s shoe section as I perused my choices. I started doing that thing where you just pick up a shoe and stare at it with the hope that someone will see that you need help.

Enter Jerry.

For the record, Jerry at FrontRunners is awesome, people. Go say hi sometime. He immediately sat me down, then stood me back up, then asked me to walk, then even had me run a little for him. I was in heaven. Then off he went to find my next great pair of running shoes.

I had a few minutes to kill, so I turned my attention to the other customers in the store. Lots of moms. In fact, right in my line of vision was a mom and her 10-year-oldish son. All I could hear her saying was, “Are you sure? This is the pair you want? You’re positive? These fit you the best?” The kid giddily shook his head in affirmation. The mom then turned her attention to the saleslady: “How much are these?”

“$110.”

“$110?! No! No, no… We are not buying you shoes that cost over a hundred dollars! I don’t even buy myself shoes that cost $110!”

Awkward. I mean, on the one hand, I totally agree. I remember being a kid. Those growth spurts must be a b*tch for parents; I needed new shoes virtually every month. On the other hand, this mom was doing everything in her power to completely humiliate her kid. She even stood up to make her point a second and third time.

“Come on, we’re going. You’re not getting those shoes. What were you thinking?” I shifted my attention to the saleslady, who you know was silently fuming that she just wasted the last 20 minutes helping this chick.

Then Jerry returned. He had me try on a pair of shoes that truly made my heart skip a beat. So comfy. So light. I did a little test run around the store, weaving my way through the other patrons. Yep. These were my new shoes. I didn’t want to seem too eager, though, so I asked if I could try a few more pairs to compare fit. “Sure!” And off Jerry went.

I immediately scanned the store for cheap mom and her son. They were long gone. However, I soon became acquainted with TMI mom. I had noticed her while trying on my shoes, and now she demanded my full attention. Right as her sales guy sat down with a box of shoes, her phone rang. Strike one. I’m not fan of the peeps that try to keep a call going as they’re ordering their Starbucks, paying for their groceries, or engaging in any other activity where employees have to awkwardly accommodate their lack of manners. The store was full, this guy had plenty of other people he could help, but this chick thought nothing of making him wait on her.

Then she referred to the other person on the line as doctor so-and-so. Okay, I felt bad for a second. But then this lady launched into a detailed description of her infant daughter’s bowel movements for the last 36 hours. I didn’t feel so bad anymore. Instead, I stared in horror as she explained the consistency of her baby’s poop in front of me, the FrontRunners employee, and God. Strike two.

Look, I’m not a parent, but I can understand a parent’s fear that something might be wrong with her child. However, if you were truly worried that your kid is experiencing some kind of bowel movement crisis, would you be shopping for Nikes? Oh, and by the way, the only reason why she thought to contact her pediatrician is because her nanny informed her of Poop-Gate. This is Brentwood, after all. Strike three.

Thankfully, Jerry reappeared to distract me from hearing how zucchini can make for runny diapers. I tried on another pair of shoes, made my decision, and got the hell out of there.

But all is now right with the world. I have my new shoes. They are awesome. I run like the wind.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

As a kid, I didn’t much heed cautionary stranger danger tales, but now I take them to very much to heart.

It probably has everything to do with my days in Chicago. From the time I left my apartment to when I arrived at school, it was like my very own game of Frogger. But instead of trying to avoid cars and trucks – and for the record, drivers are trying to run you over – I was doing my best to miss the weirdos and creepers on the street.

Not to say that Chicago isn’t awesome. It is. In many ways, Chicago is like a big bag of jellybeans. Most of it you can devour and enjoy without worrying, except for those icky licorice ones. And if you happen to like licorice, that’s on you. Weirdo.

I’m sure this is no secret to anyone who has lived in a city, but the trick to avoiding oddballs is pretending they’re not there no matter how eccentric their behavior. There’s a fellow having an argument with himself on the bus? Keep your eyes on your book. There’s a lady petting an imaginary dog on the sidewalk? Check your voicemail like it’s an ordinary day. Because the moment you make eye contact, it’s over.

Now a Los Angeles resident, I’m not nearly as vigilant when roaming the streets of this great city. Probably because I never roam. No one does. We drive, which is highly effective at eliminating most instances of unwanted contact. It’s really nice. Not to say that LA doesn’t have its own oddballs. They hang out in Starbucks and Whole Foods.

But you can’t avoid all the people all the time, right?

So the other day, I was doing my weekly grocery shopping. (For the record, I’m a Ralph’s and Trader Joe’s gal. If I shopped at Whole Foods, I’d probably be hanging out there all day, too, because I no longer would be able to afford rent.) Now when I frequent Trader Joe’s, I prepare myself. First, you have the eager-eyed petitioners outside. Does anyone actually stop and talk to them? Then there are the uber-friendly workers, whom I used to think were oddly cool until someone told me that they’re required to be nice. It makes a whole lot more sense, though. But even the other shoppers will throw a smile your way if you accidentally look at them. However, today I was in Ralph’s, which is normally a contact-free zone. You can then imagine my surprise when I was accosted in the refrigerated cookie section.

Upon assessing the situation, I noticed that the dude in question had a kid, so I relaxed a bit. Though children do not automatically rule out the possibility of being weird, you can usually downgrade the terror alert level from red to a solid yellow. Plus, he had a package of sugar cookie dough in his hand. My initial instincts told me that this was simply a clueless dad.

“Excuse me, but could you help me with something?”

I noticed that this guy had a British accent, which put me into an internal tailspin. Normally I don’t think twice about being brusque with strangers, but this guy was a foreigner. And we all know the bad rap that America gets abroad. Time to turn on the charm.

“Sure! What can I help you with?”

As his little daughter looked on, British man proceeded to ask me about what type of dough would be best for molding into shapes. I enthusiastically indicated that he had already found the best kind for his needs.

“But can you dye this dough?”

The truth is that I had no idea. I was leaning toward no, but given that he had no intention or aptitude to actually make dough, and his daughter was listening to every word we were saying…

“Sure! I mean, you’ll probably have to work it in, but I think you can do it.”

This answer satisfied him. He thanked me with his British accent and quickly went on his way before his daughter could question the purchase. For my part, I felt very pleased with myself as a smug American would. I then inadvertently smiled at a woman examining packages of cream cheese. She immediately averted her eyes.

Image courtesy of digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I guess I have one of those faces.

On a regular basis, I’m asked, “You know who you look like?” to which I instinctively cringe. To be fair, sometimes their answer is not completely mortifying. Other times… oy. I have to put on a brave face and hide the tears. You think I look like who?! Inevitably, I realize that in their own mind, they think they’re giving me a compliment, which is why I feign gratitude. The only thing more awkward than getting told that you look like a fugly celebrity is letting the compliment giver know you think said celebrity is fugly. Even more troubling is when in the back of your head, a teeny tiny part of you can understand why they think you look like that celebrity. It’s not a very good feeling.

Other times, I’m simply baffled by my alleged celebrity doppelganger. It’s not about them being ugly or pretty; I just don’t understand how anyone in the world could think that I look like them. Imagine if you will telling Seth Meyers that he looks like Alexander Skarsgard. Personally, I think they’re both adorable, but never would I ever confuse one for the other. So there’s that.

I get the “you know who you look like” question so often that I’m beginning to wonder what the deal is. Do I seriously have that generic of a face? How can I look like Drew Barrymore, Alyson Hannigan, Allison Janney, Michelle Monaghan, Laura Prepon, Emma Stone and Kate Middleton all at the same time? I feel like I’m one of those freaks from a Conan O’Brien “If They Mated” skit. Or the compliment giver needs to take a second look at me, because while I have a healthy sense of self-esteem, not for a second do I think I look like the would-be Queen of England.

Sure, every once in a blue moon I too meet someone who makes me think, “Holy cow! They totally look like ______!” However, rarely do I vocalize my opinion. Why? Because I realize that everyone’s sense of physical beauty is different. While I happen to think that Jessica Chastain is gorgeous, perhaps someone else does not. Honestly, though, stopping myself from telling someone that they look like a certain celebrity is not my problem. I have an entirely different conundrum.

For the life of me, I cannot remember faces.

It’s horrible. Just as I have felt awkward and offended by being told that I look like so-and-so, I have definitely made others feel weird and annoyed because I flat-out didn’t remember them. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve said to someone, “So nice to meet you!” to which they replied, “Yeah, we’ve met before.”

Most of the time the people on the receiving end of my inadvertent slight are extremely gracious. Except for this one time… I was at a party with a bunch of old college friends. All of a sudden, someone tapped on my shoulder. I turned around to find a random dude with his arms wide open. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you!”

Uh oh.

I had no clue who he was. Of course, I couldn’t admit to that, so I just went with the moment and accepted his bear hug. All the while, though, my mind was scrambling to place this guy. Through the power of deduction, I reasoned that he must be a former schoolmate. After all, I was surrounded by a dozen other college peeps. Yet I couldn’t keep quiet. I couldn’t just smile and pretend like everything was cool. I had to say something… “Yeah, right? I haven’t seen you in forever! What class was it that we had together?”

His face immediately fell. The girl with whom I had been chatting – a bona fide college friend – quietly uttered, “Anna, Matt didn’t go to school with us.” That’s when I tried in vain to dig myself out of the embarrassment pit.

“Oh! I didn’t recognize you with the facial hair!”

He wasn’t buying it, and to make matters worse, he informed me that he was taking my chair because I didn’t remember him. We then proceeded to avoid eye contact for the rest of the evening.

So yeah… People don’t like being forgotten. Or in my case, people don’t like being told that they look like someone else. Don’t get me wrong. Some of the people to whom I’ve been compared are lovely women. More than anything, I think my inordinate sensitivity to such compliments stems from a rather unfortunate childhood incident that has scarred me for life. That’s how most of our eccentricities begin, right? Long story short, my mom chopped my beautiful, long flowing locks just days before I was to begin kindergarten. Even then, I was keenly aware of how a bad haircut can pretty much ruin your life. Anyway, one day my dad came to pick me up after school. As we were saying goodbye to my teacher and walking toward the car, she called out after us. “Anna, you look just like your dad!” I immediately burst into tears.

So now you understand.

Image courtesy of digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I love where I live. Frat boy neighbors aside, I’m pretty content.

In the five or so years at my apartment, I’ve come to an understanding of sorts with my landlord. Super nice guy, just a little too much at times. Back in the day, it wasn’t unusual to get a knock on my door at 11pm with him smiling on the other side of the screen, a bowl of some vegetarian concoction steaming in his hands. Though I desperately wanted to appreciate this thoughtful gesture, it weirded me out. He did this a half-dozen or so times. Finally, I refused his culinary advances on account that I was tired of secretly taking his untouched meals to work where I would promptly throw them away. I was way too paranoid to put them in my own garbage; after all, he puts out the trash containers every week. Also, while I wasn’t so paranoid as to think that he was putting something sketchy in my meals, I just couldn’t bring myself to eat something that was given to me unsolicited. That’s reasonable, right?

After two or three years of having my very own meal delivery service, he finally got the hint. Since then his attempts to feed me have been limited to platters of Trader Joe’s baklava on the major Orthodox holidays. Given that I love me some baklava – and that each platter comes sealed shut in a handy dandy plastic wrapper – I don’t mind this token of generosity. For my part, I make sure to put a smiley face on each check he gets every month.

To be clear, my landlord is not an icky creep. He just doesn’t understand the whole personal space thing. Since he owns the property in which I live, I get it. From his point of view, he’s not intruding because my apartment belongs to him. Plus, I’m a little weird myself. Perhaps more than most, I love my space and alone time. Don’t call me… I’ll call you.

Because my landlord lives on the premises, we have the occasional run-in. It’s usually when I’m removing my delicates from the washer and he scares the bejeezus out of me by walking past the laundry room and saying hi. As a matter of fact, this happened just the other day. Each time he surprises me, he then feels the need to apologize profusely for it. Yet during our most recent interlude, I realized something: my landlord was clearly wearing pants about ten sizes too big for him. That’s when it dawned on me that he must have dropped a good hundred pounds over the last several months. How I did not notice this before, I don’t know. I can be oblivious at times. However, not oblivious was that he was now drowning in his oversized clothing. I had to ask…

“Did you lose weight?”

Always tricky to broach the topic of weight, but more often than not it’s due to hypersensitive women who think you’re paying them a passive-aggressive compliment when you thought it was a nice-nice compliment. Regardless, I instantly regretted that I had said anything at all. It felt utterly and completely weird the moment the words left my mouth. Asking about one’s weight is a fairly personal matter, and I absolutely had no interest in getting personal with my landlord. But it was too late. You can’t unring a bell.

He was more than willing to tell me about why he lost the weight (his doctor wanted $3000 to put him on a diet, but he said no way), what he now eats (only steamed vegetables and broiled fish), how he’s been exercising (walking but wants to start running), and that he knows he’s wearing ridiculously big pants (but doesn’t want to throw them away). While I was truly happy for him, I was also dying to get out of there. Whenever someone talks about losing weight, you’re pretty much obligated to say, “You look great!” Otherwise, you’re a jackass. It’s like asking, “How are you?” when you greet someone. Odds are you have no real interest in knowing how they’re doing, but it’s something you say. The person to whom you’re speaking usually understands this rule of etiquette – unless they don’t. There’s nothing worse than asking someone how they’re doing and having to suffer through an honest answer.

Anyway.

I have no problem telling my girlfriends that they look hot. On occasion I’ll even make a point of complimenting a male friend’s attire or haircut. However, telling my landlord that he looked good felt all kinds of wrong. But what was I to do? You have to say it, right? Plus, he was obviously so proud of himself.

So as I have done many times with him, I embraced the awkwardness and sputtered, “You look g-awesome.” At the final second, I figured “awesome” was a decidedly less sexualizing term than good or great. Still, I could feel my face burning with embarrassment. I then booked it outta there without looking back.

I also forgot my bras in the washer.

Awesome.

I’m a dog person. Always have been. I fell in love with them the moment my family surprised me with a puffball of a Pekingese for my 5^th birthday. Leo was the bestest dog ever. We grew up together, though technically, I suppose I did most of the growing. He never weighed more than ten pounds and was barely a foot tall. Plus, most of that height was fur. Yet for a little dog, he had a lot of love, and to this day I can’t think of him without getting a wee bit weepy.

It would be great to have a dog again, but there’s always a good reason – aka excuse – why I can’t. First it was college. Then a cross-country move. Grad school. And now an apartment that doesn’t allow dogs… even though my landlord lets his sister have two annoying yappers that go Cujo on anyone who gets within a twenty foot radius. The only reason why I have yet to “accidentally” step on or kick one of them is because I’m afraid they might “coincidentally” raise the rent on me the following week.

But fo’ reals, I love dogs. That’s why I’m always happy to dog-sit for a friend if I can. Everyone I know has pretty awesome pets, so it doesn’t take much beyond a few slobbery licks and a look from those big puppy dog eyes to break down Auntie Anna. They get a responsible caretaker, and I get snuggle time… sometimes against their will.

Curly Sue* is one of those dogs that makes you involuntarily go “aww…” when you see her. She’s a rescue, so though her breeding is a question mark, most likely it’s Basset Hound mixed with Corgi mixed with adorableness. When I babysat her last weekend, not a walk could be completed without at least one person asking, “What kind of dog is that?” Curly Sue is also a big sniffer of things – trees, flowers, unidentifiable smells emanating from some unknown source toward which she would lead me – so often our walks would last upwards of an hour. This meant that I would many times be stopped long enough to have any and all passersby interrogate me as to her genetic background. Even though she isn’t my dog, I just pretended that she was and happily answered their questions. (Mostly with information that I made up.)

Moreover, Curly Sue is keenly interested in other canines. The moment she spots a dog, she freezes and stares them down for many, many minutes at a time. That’s not to say she isn’t friendly. On the contrary, while other dogs that we encountered would sometimes flip out when they saw her, Curly Sue would quietly assess the situation by sniffing their rears and then be on her way. The problem is when she sees a dog too far away to sniff. If she can’t get up close and personal, she’s not satisfied and will stubbornly stand there until the dog is out of eyesight… and sometimes not even then. Curly Sue also weighs sixty pounds, so once she zeros in on another dog, there’s no moving her until she is good and ready to be moved. No amount of coercion or leash tugging will get that pup to walk unless she agrees.

So naturally Curly Sue and I were in the middle of crossing the street when she spotted another dog two blocks down. Upon spying her fellow canine, Curly Sue simply stopped dead in her tracks and stared ahead. Uh oh. First I tried mild coaxing…

“Come on, sweetie. Let’s go.”

No response. Then gentle urgency. “Curly Sue, honey, we gotta go.”

No response. Then insistence mixed with fear. “Curly Sue, now! We have to go now!”

Realizing that if we didn’t move in the next five seconds we would both be at the mercy of an oncoming Kia, I had no other choice but to drag Curly Sue to the sidewalk. Given that numerous other dog owners were in the vicinity and watching us, I felt like the biggest jerk ever. After years of ridiculing them, I suddenly felt intimately sympathetic to parents whose children have temper tantrums in planes and restaurants.

Curly Sue followed, but she wasn’t happy about it. I barely got her to the curb when she turned around and once again stared at the dog that I could barely see anymore. To help repair my image to the dozen or so strangers that had witnessed me yanking this sweet dog across the street, I began to lavish her with praise and petting to make it obvious that I wasn’t a monster.

A few minutes later, Curly Sue was sufficiently satisfied with her stakeout and ready to move on. We had walked maybe another block when she stopped for a second time. I scanned the area and realized that she now had in her sights a Chihuahua about thirty yards away. I gave her a gentle pull. Nothing.

I think I’m good being just Auntie Anna for a while longer.

* All names have been changed to protect the innocent and furry.

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sometimes I wonder if I would rather be old. Granted, my nephew might say that I already am old, but I mean old, old. Like eligible for the Denny’s senior citizen discount old. Or in other words, like my parents old.

During the past few years, while my generation has been battling a weak job market, increasing living costs and an overwhelming atmosphere of gloom and doom in our society, my parents have been battling over whether they should watch Moonstruck or Gone with the Wind for the fortieth time. Or go to the library to pick up some new books. Or maybe just take a nap. Then they’ll treat themselves to dinner at Red Lobster before calling it a night at nine o’clock. Sure, they walk a little slower and get winded a little faster than they did thirty years ago, but overall I’d say that my parents have it pretty good right now. I, on the other hand, have another forty to fifty years ahead of me before I can take advantage of Medicare and the IHOP special. Yet curious to see what might be in store for me come 2062, I decided to do a little investigative work.

Upon arriving at the retirement center, I had no idea what to expect. Would I have to shout all day long? Would I be forced to listen to the same stories over and over again? Would I get pudding? (I assume all senior citizens eat pudding. Easy on the gums.) Instead, I was warmly welcomed by the administrative staff and quickly ushered into the recreational area. Several other volunteers had already arrived and were waiting for the activities to begin. That’s when a dozen or so residents began to slowly walk or roll themselves in and took their seats at the huge wooden table occupying the middle of the room. The coordinator then welcomed everyone, guest and resident alike, and asked that we each say a little something about ourselves. Nice, right? Not to mention, each time someone finished speaking, they received a warm round of applause from the residents. I was immediately charmed by the sweetness of this group.

However, a perceptible shift in the residents’ demeanor was felt the moment the coordinator revealed the bingo cards from his bag. These kind folks who a moment ago were smiling and chatting together had now gone silent and stone-faced as they focused on readying themselves for the competition. Half of them eagerly waved over the coordinator in order to get first dibs on the “lucky” cards while the other half dove their liver-spotted hands into nearby buckets of chips (aka bottle caps) and grabbed as many as their arthritic fingers could hold. Fascinated, I watched as the residents meticulously prepared their stations for battle.

Considering that I was certainly loud enough for the job, I offered to call out the numbers. However, I had only announced the second selection when I was told in no uncertain terms to pick up the pace. Apparently the elderly are not interested in dilly-dallying. Making matters worse was that I kept calling out number after number and yet no one was hitting bingo. I could sense the tension in the room mounting. In particular, the woman sitting closest to my left – the very same one who initially told me that I was going too slow – would let out an exasperated sigh each time I called out a number that wasn’t on her card. I was beginning to get a little nervous. Was I doing something wrong? Was it possible to screw up this game? Then much to my relief, I finally heard a rather defiant “bingo!” called out by a lady at the far end of the table. Before we were even able to confirm her numbers, she then instructed one of the volunteers to bring over the bag of swag. Aha! That’s why this game was such a big deal. These peeps wanted their prizes. While the rest of the group impatiently waited for the winner to make her selection – she finally decided upon a lovely picture frame – I was told that we would be shaking things up a bit.

“What does that mean?”

“We’re going to play birthday cake.”

Was that like patty cake? I didn’t understand. However, the coordinator told me that I didn’t have to change anything I was doing, so I just went with it. Though as the game progressed, I noticed that one of the residents hadn’t covered a number already called out. Upon gently alerting her to her oversight, she briskly replied that it didn’t matter because that number wasn’t part of the birthday cake formation. Oh… okay. I decided that it might be better if I just stuck to calling out the numbers.

A game later, I began to relax a bit. I even cracked a few jokes to my audience, and though no one laughed, I think it was more a matter of their deteriorating hearing rather than me not being funny. Either way, I was liking this whole bingo thing they had going on. I could get used to this. Plus, they had some really sweet swag. I wouldn’t mind a rhinestone-encrusted letter opener or another journal to add to my ever-growing collection.

Just as I was imagining what life could be like when I’m old and gray, the coordinator unceremoniously booted me from my announcer duties. He claimed that I was “great, really great,” but I wasn’t buying it. If I was so great, then why were they giving my gig to an awkward sixteen-year-old who lacked any kind of stage presence whatsoever? I suspected that the residents might have had something to do with this decision. Fine. Whatever. At least I can still chew my food with my original teeth… and I don’t wear adult diapers. Who’s the winner now?

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Trash talk is fun, right? Politicians do it. Athletes do it. Morbidly obese fifty-year-old men that live in their mothers’ basements do it. Just go to any sports site and you can waste an entire day – “waste” being the operative word here – reading the hilarious and sometimes crazy scary comments that are written back and forth between the super obsessed fans of any professional sport. Yet should my team lose, I can still save face because even if I secretly suspect that I have the He-Man power to will my team to win or jinx them to fail, I know in the depths of my mere mortal heart that I had nothing to do with either outcome.

But it’s a whole ‘nother ballgame when you’re playing the sport; then you have no one to blame but your unskilled self. I don’t usually trash talk about my physical prowess because, well, I don’t often have the opportunity. I run solo, so there’s no exercise partner to eat my dust, and it seems a tad inappropriate to ridicule the elderly man I see wobbling down the sidewalk in a full three-piece suit and cane everyday since I already scare the bejeezus out of him whenever I whiz by. I think he might be hard of hearing so my derisive efforts would go unappreciated anyway. And though I could kick some serious sun salutation ass, it seems wrong to brag about it given the whole namaste shtick they preach in yoga.

So I best I can do is trash talk about my pseudo skills in pseudo sports such as the fine game of bowling. Now before some of you out there start hooting and hollering that bowling is a sport… Calm down. I will retract my statement when bowling is added to the roster of Olympic events or a Congressional probe is launched to investigate the alleged doping of those who live and die by the pin. That’s when bowling becomes a real sport.

Anyway… I did a lot of bowling as a kid, yet have no idea why. I don’t know if my dad was banking on me becoming the next Ernie McCracken or it was simply a way to entertain me for a few hours; regardless, I was at the alley a lot. I also bowled quite a bit with friends. Some adolescents get their kicks swiping a bottle of whiskey from the old man’s liquor cabinet or seeing how cool they look smoking in the girls’ bathroom. My crew preferred a little pin action, and eventually I became cocky in my bowling clout.

But that was a long-ish time ago. Now I bowl maybe once every two or three years. Not often enough to keep me in my prime; however, though my actual skills may have deteriorated over the years, my bravado has not. So come last weekend when I had the chance to throw down, I was ready to obliterate my competition, and I let him know it. More than once in the days leading up to our bowling face-off, I warned my rival of his inevitable demise. I think the words “I am going to destroy you” might have even left my mouth at some point. His response? An amiable “okay.”

My first ball was a gutter.

Happens to everyone. I immediately shook it off and announced that I just needed to warm up a bit. Soon enough, I got into a groove and was consistently taking down eight or nine pins each round. I even got a couple of spares. Still, I knew I couldn’t make good on my trash talk until that elusive first strike.

That’s when my foe went ahead and got one before me. I could feel a thin layer of sweat beginning to form over my body, and it wasn’t from physical exertion. What was going on here? I hadn’t bowled a game without making at least one strike… ever. At least that’s the way I remembered it in my mind. Time to rally.

And I got one. Meaning, I got one pin. I was imploding fast. Though I had been leading throughout the game, my opponent suddenly overtook me in the eighth round, and I never recovered. Nor did I ever get a strike.

“Wanna play again?” he excitedly asked. Damn right I did. Now my pride was on the line.

The second game went a little like this: he bowled either a spare or a strike each time, and I continued down my spiral of shame and didn’t even crack a hundred. Needless to say, he won – by a lot – though I was put out of my misery fairly quickly because of his numerous strikes. So did he rant? Did he rave? Did he shout, “In your face, sucka!” while doing a happy dance around my humiliated self? Nope.

The best trash talk is when you don’t have to say anything at all.

Image: David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I’ve never been very good at learning foreign languages. Actually, I’ve been horrible at it. Terrible. Miserable. Awful. I even grew up with a mother who’s bilingual, yet never picked up more than a few words of her native tongue. Though nowadays it seems that kindergarteners are being taught Spanish or French, my option to take a foreign language didn’t become available until high school. Besides the standard Spanish, our second choice was Latin. That was it. No French. No German. No Mandarin. About 95% of our freshman class immediately signed up for Espanol. That made sense, right? You were bound to use Spanish at some point down the road, if even to place a proper order at Taco Bell… So of course I opted for Latin. Though I now have “carpe diem” forever seared into my brain, I certainly did not seize the opportunity to learn something that might have served me better in life.

Once I started traveling abroad, I relied on the kindness of strangers – and their English comprehension – to get by. I figured I would never go anywhere so remote that no one would speak English. If on the off chance they didn’t, I would break out plan B: speak loudly and gesticulate wildly. That usually did the trick. Once while in France, a woman came up to me and started to spew a firestorm of French. I knew immediately that she assumed I was a native. In some weird way, I took that as a compliment. However, I couldn’t understand a word of what she was saying to me. Embarrassed, I replied, “Je suis desolee. Je ne comprends pas.” Translation: sorry, I don’t understand. This was all I retained after three years of French in college.

French 101 was about as close as I ever got to having a nervous breakdown. Upon my first day of class, I had naively assumed everyone was like me: a French newbie who wanted to learn about another language and culture. Wrong. So wrong. Every other student but me had taken French all throughout high school and wanted an easy A. It was hell, but I kept going. Each semester, I would sign up for the next class, and though I managed grade-wise, it was becoming a situation of diminishing returns. As the lessons became more and more advanced, I was forced to spend more and more time on my homework to ensure that it was perfect. It was the only way to balance my in-class participation grade: a big, fat F. The moment I stepped into that classroom, the cold sweats would begin. Hearing everyone around me speaking French was like listening to birds chirping or dogs howling. I hadn’t the slightest clue what anyone was saying. No matter how much I studied, it never sank in.

So I quit.

Years later, I still haven’t earned that bilingual title, though I’m not too broken up about the French thing. I have my own theory why la langue Francaise never took; it’s because I grew up in Chicago. French is a beautiful language. Chicagonese is not. Your mouth learns how to say words in an entirely different way. I should have tried German.

And though it’s been a few years since I’ve visited a foreign land, now more than ever I’m frustrated with my stunted language-learning brain. I may live in LA, but that doesn’t mean a plethora of languages other than English aren’t spoken here. You can drive through many a neighborhood where all the store signs and billboards are in Spanish or Korean or something else that doesn’t make any sense to me.

Plus, I hate when you realize someone is talking about you in another language and you’re helpless to do anything about it. As a child, it happened quite a bit when I was in the presence of my mother, aunt and baba (that’s grandma to you). Most of the time they would speak to each other in English, but then suddenly switch over as swiftly as birds changing flight. I would study their faces and could tell from their self-satisfied grins that they were discussing me. It was infuriating.

Not much has changed since then, except instead of family members dishing behind my back – err, to my face – it’s my students and their parents. It’s an unsettling feeling when you’re thanking them for a bottle of water and moments later they’re laughing about something I can’t understand. Was it something I said? Did I dribble down my chin? What is it?! But little do they know that I now have a secret weapon: my iPhone. Did you know there are dozens upon dozens of applications that can translate any language into English? C’est vrai.

Voila!

Image: Kookkai_nak / FreeDigitalPhotos.net