The man with the tropical print tie sat in the meeting room, listening to a presentation about a new database. He was used to giving presentations, not sitting still during them, so he was busy thinking of clever things to interject. So far he’d only come up with “Oh, I bet!” and had used it a couple of times.

The man had a full head of thick black hair, which he wore over the ear — Beatlesesque, he liked to think — and parted on the side. He would prefer to use some old-fashioned hair cream, grease it up real good, but even a man with a tropical print tie and a short sleeve shirt knew that slick and greasy hair was not appropriate for database training.

Audibly yawning, coughing, shifting in his seat — the man was pulling out all his tricks. No one was paying him any attention. He tilted his cup of partially melted ice and Diet Dr Pepper dregs and tapped it for maximum volume. Nothing. No dirty looks, no angry whispers.

He leaned back in his chair, balancing on the back legs. He reached in his Dockers pocket and jangled his change. Jingle-jingle. He counted the coins with his fingers. That’s a quarter, now a nickel, another nickel, Jesus, why do I have so many nickels. Dime, lint ball, penny, another nickel –

The man stopped jingling. He’d fouind something in his pocket he’d forgotten about. What luck! His prayers had been answered!

He carefully pulled out the object, turning it over in the palm of his hand with his thumb.

It was time.

Ping! Ping! He started to clip his fingernails. Ping! A nail skittered across the table. He paused. And then, finally, he heard the sweetest sound coming from someone in the seat behind him.

“Gross,” the person whispered.

Yesterday during lunch I was in the Gap using up a gift card (in case you’re wondering, everything already marked down was an additional 40% off). At the register, a very tall lady was huffing and puffing over a return. They were waiting for the manager to arrive, but the woman didn’t move even when the salesperson started to ring me up.

When the manager arrived — a very calm, cool dude with dreadlocks — the woman proceeded to lose her mind immediately over the state of some clearly worn pants, which she wanted to return without a receipt. There was some hollering regarding OH HELL YEAH YOU’RE GONNA TAKE THESE BACK and WOULD YOU WEAR ‘EM? and THEY GOT A DEFECT ON ‘EM which was so entertaining my transaction took twice as long because I was just standing there staring at her. Apparently the defect was that they were linty. The manager suggested she acquire a lint roller.

The best part came when the manager said I’m sorry, but I just can’t take these back without a receipt and Freakout Jones yelled FINE. WHAT KIND OF CAR DO YOU DRIVE? I’m sorry? the manager asked. WHAT KIND OF CAR DO YOU DRIVE. I GOT SOMETHING FOR YOU.

I nearly wet my pants out of excitement!

The manager said, Oh, well, I’m calling security. You’re not going to threaten me. He really did say it like that, very calm and controlled. All of the labels on the cans in his cabinets probably face forward.

The woman then left, taking her pants from 1983 with her. When I left (with my pants and two sweaters for $7 after the discount and a $50 gift card), I looked for her in the parking lot but didn’t see her.

I wanted to tell her that her method was all wrong. You don’t start off being an asshole. You build to assholery! Start chatty and sweet! Get the person to agree with you, and THEN they will break Gap Rule 436.32 Re: Returns without Receipts. Was a store credit not good enough? Did she not know to at least iron the pants to make them look unworn/unwashed? I could really teach her a few things. And then she’d probably break my arm.

The sporty car in front of me had a vanity tag, so I sped up a little to read it. WOOOF, it said. It was a Miata. It changed lanes, and as I passed it I was able to see the driver: an older man, happily sucking his thumb. Not biting the nail, but sucking his thumb, 3-year old style.

Last week I accidentally bought applesauce with sugar in it and because I don’t want Spike to get used to it, today at lunch I went back to the grocery store to exchange it. I mean, come on, I’m going to return some applesauce? Dude, it’s a $1.99 6-pack of applesauce! Get over it. Throw it away, give it to someone, eat it, move on. But I really wanted to exchange it, and so I stood in line feeling mildly to moderately sheepish, and then the clouds parted and the angels sang, and any trace of “I am the kind of person who returns applesauce” vanished when I saw that the lady in front of me was returning a tube of Preparation H.

1. This morning while I was blowdrying my hair, I accidentally picked up a hammer instead of my brush. What? They both have handles, although the hammer was, unsuprisingly, ineffective.
2. I braved Wal-Mart on Saturday and could have submitted several things to People of Wal-Mart had I been quick or clever enough. I saw a 6 year old with a very pronounced mohawk (I mean shaved bald on the sides; totally not a faux hawk) and a lady with maybe 30 tiny bubbles and stars tattooed on the backs of each calf.
3. I’m reading Almost There by Nuala O’Faolain, which might be the weirdest memoir ever. She wrote a bestselling memoir, Are You Somebody? and a novel, My Dream of You, and this memoir is a memoir of writing the first two books. It sounds incredibly boring, and in a way it is, but she has a very easy voice to read, and now I am almost finished. I was going to write “I am almost there HA HA HA” but decided against it.*
4. Larry and I went to Oxford last weekend to see David Sedaris. Guess what: he is small and hilarious.
5. In a discussion where I had just told her I thought her line of reasoning was weird (weird being the nicest word to describe “ABSOLUTELY EFFING INSANE” that I could summon), my friend told me not to cry. People: I wasn’t about to cry. Apparently my about-to-cry face is the same as my your-line-of-reasoning-is-absolutely-effing-insane face. Who knew?
6. I keep having the urge to write inappropriate things as my Facebook status, such as:
Sally Nordan just realized she only peed once today. It was true!
7. I have a large amount of Christmas shopping already completed.
8. Spike has this awesome new habit of saying “ow,” then pinching me or Larry.
9. We went to the state fair on Saturday and I finally got to eat a fried Snickers! Years ago I saw an episode of Nigella Bites where she fried a Bounty bar and it was dark brown and crispy and made a satisfying crunching sound when the person bit into it. The biter also said it was like Christmas and your birthday all wrapped into one. That is what I wanted, but instead I got a warm Snickers wrapped in a thin, non-crunchy layer of batter. Sigh.

*I just Googled her to see if I spelled her name right (almost) and discovered that she died last year. It’s a bit of a shock to be reading someone’s memoir and imagining her alive the whole time, only to discover that she’s dead. I feel kind of weird.

Scene: a restaurant during lunchtime.

Man at table 1: Excuse me, can you pass the black salt?
Man at table 2: (pause) Um. You mean the pepper?
Man at table 1: I SAID “BLACK SALT,” MOTHERFUCKER!

This afternoon I talked to a gentleman who was looking for the side effects of a medication he is currently on. He talked and talked for several minutes, then said this:

Let me spail this at for you in semple terms. Ah maht’ve run mah mouth too much and you maht not’ve gotten it. AH WONT TO KNOW HOW MANY LAIGS THIS OCTOPUS HAS.

Wendy’s employee: Ohh, your baby is so cute!
Teenager with Incredibly Short Shorts and Chunky Highlights: Thank yew.
Wendy’s employee: How old is she?
Teenager with Incredibly Short Shorts and Chunky Highlights: Tew months.
Wendy’s employee: Oh, that why she have her ears pierced already! I try to get my baby ears pierced but they tell me she have to be two months cause she have to have her shots.
Teenager with Incredibly Short Shorts and Chunky Highlights She just got her shots last Tuesday. I got her ears pierced when she was six weeks old!
Wendy’s employee (kind of mad): Where you go.
Teenager with Incredibly Short Shorts and Chunky Highlights: The Wal-Mart in Flowood.
Wendy’s employee: Cause I go to the Wal-Mart in Pearl and they tell me no.
Grandmother with Large Fairy Tattoo on Calf: And it’s open seven days uh week!
Wendy’s employee: 24 hours?
Trashy Grandmother with Large Fairy Tattoo on Calf: (with pride) Uh-huh!

1. This girl I barely knew in high school filled out one of those “Firsts” notes (first car, first job, etc.)
2. One of the questions is “first prom date.” She responded with Fred, my husband.
3. I went to her pictures to see if I knew Fred.
4. She has lots of photos from various dances.
5. I knew some of her dates for said dances.
6. Several months ago, when we first became fb friends, I was looking through her pictures and commented on one of her photos.
7. In it, her dance date has the biggest, shaggiest mullet EVER.
8. I wrote “Oh my god. The dude’s hair.”
9. The dude was not tagged.
10. No one else commented on the photo.
11. A moment ago, when I was re-looking at those, I got a bad feeling when I noticed that out of alllllll of those dance pictures, there is only one prom picture. The one I made fun of the guy’s hair on.
12. I compared it to a photo of her husband now.
13. Same guy.

Should I even tell you, internet, how into American Idol I am this season? No? Ok, then.

Note to those who value every precious minute of sleep due to tiny baby in other room who likes to wake up and scream (but not so much so recently! thank god): do not read On Chesil Beach before bed. It’s a quick read, but if you’re approaching the end, save it for the next day, when you can brood about it in the light of day and will not have broody British dreams about it. Damn that Ian McEwan. He gets me every time!

I have recently — if by “recently” you mean “at work, pretending to be productive” — read this little self-helpyesque book called Seven Sins for a Life Worth Living. It’s sort of a touchy feely book about how you should eat chocolate and take naps and make mistakes and fall down a lot and stuff. There are some treacherous passages involving romance that I skipped, but overall it was sort of comforting. It would look cute on a shelf, if one were to buy it (I did not; I got it from the public library).

Here is a Facebook etiquette question: if you are friends with people with whom, 20 years ago, you shared some insanely embarrassing moments, are you supposed to ignore said moments or bring them up to clear the air? Sometimes I want to bring them up, but then I think that maybe they were not insanely embarrassing for the other person. Maybe they don’t even remember. But then I sort of feel like we are dancing around a turd on the floor and trying not to step on it.

Case in point: I had this friend in high school who used to like to pick me up and throw me onto soft, cushy surfaces, like his couch or bed or trampoline. It was fun. However, occasionally he would miss when he was tossing me around and I would get bruised up. My mother noticed these bruises one day and when she asked, I did not lie like I should have and instead told her about the fun times where JP would toss me around onto his parents’ furniture. This did not go over well. In fact, I seem to recall my stepfather calling JP and telling him he was going to stomp his ass into the ground. This effectively damaged our friendship — as it should have! — but now I am friends with JP on Facebook and we are sending emails back and forth and everything is super fun and much like it was in 1990 but without the trampoline. And yet, I feel as though the ass-stomping threat is looming over us and my fingers keep typing lame ass-stomping jokey references in my emails like HEY JP WRITE ME BACK OR I WILL STOMP YOUR ASS INTO THE GROUND and then deleting them. Am I supposed to reference the ass stomping? Help!

I am also Facebook friends with the tragic, puffy haired nerd who, my senior year of high school, arrived on my doorstep out of the blue on Valentine’s Day with a single red rose. However, that is a turd I will gladly dance around forever.

Some interesting words/phrases I encountered when reviewing applications for an open position:

In describing job duties: Destory records after one year
In stating job title: Libarian
In listing additional skills: Listerns carefully
Can’t remember why this word came up, but I wrote it down on my list: Larrge
In a response to the question, “Did you graduate?” 5

Whoo! I barely survived my holiday.

The flight, she was hard. I made the mistake of not really knowing how to fold up the stroller until the moment I was supposed to fold it up and cram it through the security detector thingie while holding a 25-pound child. Fortunately a nice bald man figured it out for me and also helped me off with my jacket as I sweated profusely under the stress of holding up the line. The security folk at the airport employ this technique when telling people what to do: tell them each step separately so when they get all settled they can start shuffling around again and panicking. Case in point: the unpleasant security dude said, “You need to take off your jacket.” Ok, after much wriggling and shifting of child, I got that done. “And the baby’s jacket.” Dammit! “And your scarf.” KILL ME. WHY COULDN’T YOU HAVE SAID PLEASE REMOVE YOUR JACKET AND SCARF AND YOUR BABY’S JACKET IT’S THE SAME NUMBER OF WORDS.

Besides the elevator being broken and me having to maneuver a stroller down roughly two thousand stairs at the Dallas airport, the only noteworthy thing that happened was that I sat in front of a talkative liar who, naturally, ran his mouth the entire flight. If I had been alone, I would’ve taken notes, but I was trying to entertain someone who had just peed up his pants and so I was just trapped listening to the dude talk.

His lying patterns were these:
a. Original story.
b. Pause.
c. Filler words.
d. Revised story.
e. Repeat of revised story.
f. Saying, “Yeah, I liked it when [revised story] happened.”

He was telling his seatmate about his high school football career (he played every position! offense and defense! he was always on the field! he was awesome! he won awards! he liked it when he won awards!), how he has a rare eye disease (if he mates with a lady without 20/20 vision, his children will be blind*), how his little sister cried and cried because he was going to go spend Christmas with his dad and wouldn’t be with her and so he had to let her sleep in his bed with him last night (his seatmate asked, “Aww, how old is she?” Answer: 19.). People three rows ahead of me kept turning around to look at him. Now look, you gotta talk pretty damn loud to drown out an airplane engine. But I guess rare eye diseased football stars with unhealthy relationships with their sisters are special in more ways than I was originally aware of.

The trip home was good, but it was waaaay too long. I got there on Sunday, Larry came on Wednesday, we went to my dad’s on Friday, and we left on Saturday. People. There is a reason I go home once a year. Please help me remember not to do this again.

*I am mean and just looked up his disease. Ok, fine, yes, it’s hereditary, but his children will only inherit said eye disease if his mater also carries a gene for it.

Have I really never told you about my freakout dreams, the ones where I see things in my room, panic, then realize I’m only dreaming? I’ve just spent several precious minutes scouring the archives and can find no reference to this phenomenon. Anyway, quickly: they started when I was 22 and I saw a spider on the ceiling. It was spiders for awhile, then I graduated to mice (one mouse wore a tutu once). Then I think there was a larger rodent for a few years, and then, oh god, I graduated to humans. There is nothing scarier than waking up to find a conquistador or a dude in scuba gear hovering by the foot of your bed. I actually called 911 once before I realized that I was just insane.

I guess because a strange man is like, the worst possible thing to find uninvited in your room and I survived those, my brain reset, and now, when I have a freakout dream, it’s some weird, benign object.

Case in point: Last night a black pageboy wig floated through the bedroom and into the hall as if an invisible person were wearing it.

So I was doing a little internet stalking, you know, the usual, and I Googled my ex-husband, Ted. His Facebook profile came up, and I felt dumb that I never searched for him there. So I click on it, and while I can’t see his whole page, I can look at his friends, and that is when I see it:

Ted is friends with my college boyfriend.

This would not be so weird had I lived in the same place my whole life. But the era of the college boyfriend was in Denton, Texas, and the era of Ted was in St. Louis. WHY ARE THEY FRIENDS. WHY WHY WHY.

I first imagine a self-absorbed universe in which Ted and the college boyfriend met in the Sally Nordan Broke My Heart Club chatroom. Then I think, wait, college boyfriend has a really common name. Let’s make sure this is really him. I am scrolling through his friends, oh, there’s his brother, there’s his old roommate — and then I see another crazy thing: he is friends with Ted’s wife, too! And that would mean that chatroom would’ve been really awkward.

I immediately emailed college boyfriend to ask in all caps why the hell he was friends with Ted. And he wrote back, thank god, that he had no idea. It turns out that they met last summer — IN ENGLAND — during some medieval seminar thing. When I emailed Larry to tell him this exciting news, he wrote: What is it with you and renaissance fair guys? I told him I was hot for the costumes: College boyfriend. Ted. Um, Ted’s costume would be in plus size.

1. MSSEXYS
2. EYEZOPN
3. On punch ladle at staff function:
PERSONALLY OWN
BY SUSIE BROWN
JACKSON, MS 39202
PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH

Let us discuss #3. “Personally own” is comedy gold, but the city, state, and zip with no actual address is comedy platinum studded with diamonds. And the addition of “please do not touch [this ladle you are currently touching]” sends this into the outer space of hilarity.