I Still Have It. . . I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It (14 page)

“I honestly don’t know,” I replied. “Maybe in a foot bondage competition.”

“Is this the price here?” he inquired.

I leaned over and squinted.

“Yes, they’re seven thousand dollars. If it’s any consolation, that’s for both of them.”

Instead of voicing dissent about the too-high cost of too-high heels, not only are women buying these shoes, they’re having their feet surgically altered to accommodate them.

I’ve recently learned that as women age the pads on the balls of their feet thin. There is now an operation that is becoming increasingly more popular: silicone foot implants. I swear I didn’t make it up. I saw it on an interview with a surgeon on the Discovery Channel.

“It makes sense,” he said. “Women want to look glamorous and this cushions the ball of the foot and keeps it bouncy. It gives the woman a younger foot.”

I knew the rest of me was too old, but I was fairly confident about the balls of my feet.

The man handed the magazine back to me.

“You women, you’ll buy anything,” he said.

He was partially correct. I will and I do, but I rarely buy any outfits I see in the fashion magazines.

I did once spot in a Chanel advertisement an evening gown that I thought would be fun to wear onstage. It was light pink and had a flared skirt dotted with bits of material that were so fine they appeared to be floating. I found the gown on Chanel’s Web site. It was haute couture and cost $35,000. I decided it would not be wise for me to have that much fun.

I was coming to the end of the June issue when I spied a pants suit that I coveted. It was made of off-white wool and the trousers flared slightly but not ridiculously at the bottom. The jacket was cut low enough in the front to reveal some bosom, but not an amount that I would consider inappropriate. It appeared not only stylish but comfortable.

“Lisa, look at this. Something I would actually wear.”

Lisa glanced over at the magazine.

“They’re not selling the pants suit. It’s an ad for that vitamin for women who are premenopausal.”

“Oh,” I said, closing the magazine. “My streak remains intact.”

Things I Never Thought I Would See in My Lifetime

1. A five-dollar cup of coffee.

2. Television commercials for erectile dysfunction.

3. Paul McCartney getting divorced.

4. A vice president shooting his best friend.

5. A ninety-year-old woman having to take her shoes off in order to put them through the X-ray machine at the airport security checkpoint to ensure they weren’t going to explode.

Television Envy

I
T HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION THAT THROUGH THE
years, in order to entice the public to keep on buying, companies have to make their products either bigger or smaller. The phones, for example, are now so small we can’t find them, and the televisions are now so large we need to create special rooms for them.

Forget penis envy and remember television envy. Every man has a friend who has a television that is bigger than his and he wants it. It is not, however, the simple purchasing of an enormous television that can make a man feel complete. The sound system, the blackout curtains, the theater seating, and the acoustic wall panels have to make all of his friends sick with jealousy for a man to really be happy.

When we moved into our new apartment in Las Vegas, my husband and I came to the agreement that I could have a lavender bedroom if he could have his own, very special, macho television room. The family den, which used to be a comfortable environment where children could play and people could eat, talk, and laugh, has now morphed into what is now commonly referred to as a “home theater”—a place that must remain as dark as a well and as quiet as a morgue.

Since we were moving to a new town and since we don’t like to reject anybody and since he came in with a very low quote, we went with the first person we interviewed to build my husband’s fantasy room. The media man was just starting his own company and his eyes contained a sadness that indicated he needed us. He also had a soft voice and a gentleness about him that prevented us from suing him.

My husband and It’sNotMyFault (as I shall call him) decided on a front-projection screen that was so wide it failed to go through the door that led into the room. Rather than compromise on the size of the screen, a new door was created and the old one was paneled over. It’sNotMyFault also made the decision to hire a family member to cover the walls with a special material that both absorbed and ricocheted sound at the same time. I don’t know how this man (whom I shall call IDidn’tDoIt) would know very much about material given that he had never owned a shirt with sleeves and most of his body was kept warm by tattoos. He was also put in charge of the all-important blackout curtains, intended to keep sunlight away from the screen. This task seemed as imperative as that of a bodyguard assigned to keep young boys away from a king’s pretty daughter.

“Are you sure these blackout curtains will make it dark enough in here?” my husband inquired worriedly. “Maybe you should double-line them? I don’t want any light shining on my projection screen. It’s very sensitive. A mark can appear on it even if you just speak badly about it.”

“I guarantee you, no light will make it through these curtains. Your screen is safe. I have these very same curtains in my home and they work perfectly in my home theater.”

It struck me as odd that a man who couldn’t afford a shirt would be able to spring for a home theater, but I guess many men would now rather be homeless than home-theater-less. Anyway, he was right about the curtains. The minute he put them up, I tripped over everything in the room. It is so dark in there that while trying to eat a sandwich I actually missed my mouth. I pointed out to my husband that even real movie theaters have some lights in them so you can see an aisle or an exit. He said it compromised the whole experience and that was exactly why he was creating his own home theater.

I became even more suspicious of It’sNotMyFault when none of the equipment he arrived with came with instructions, bills, warranties, or even boxes. The DVD player, VCR, CD player, and receiver were all top-of-the-line, It’s Not boasted.

“What do we do if it breaks?” I asked.

“Call me and I’ll…find…I mean, I’ll buy you a new one.”

It’s Not was a man of his word. Within the first six months nearly every component proved to be defective, and within weeks he arrived with an unwrapped, semi-new one.

“It’s not my fault,” It’s Not would say. “My supplier is letting me down.”

What is even more likely is that his “supplier” couldn’t find him. It’s Not’s home phone had been disconnected and he was now reachable only by a cell phone that he refused to answer. When we left a message the call was always returned within the month and a creative excuse was concocted to explain the delay.

“I lost it.” “Someone stole it.” “I was in the hospital getting a knee replacement.” That last one was my personal favorite. That took imagination.

No mechanical gadget was overlooked in my husband’s playroom.

“Why do we need a remote control for the curtains?” I asked. “We can just pull them closed. It’s not like we can’t reach them. I can simply walk to the window, the same way I do in every other room in the house.”

“It’s all in,” my husband explained. “We might as well get everything. It was included in the quote.”

The personal remote control box that activated the DVD player, VCR, CD player, curtains, and TV is in fact a triumph. It is so simple even a child can use it and so heavy only a professional wrestler can lift it. It also has to be left on the charger at all times or else it will run out of juice and have to be reprogrammed.

I have not yet begun to talk about speakers. Since we were building the room from scratch, the speakers were to be inserted into the wall. They would be as inconspicuous as they would be powerful. They would also be spaced unevenly the first time. The subsequent redrilling took place after the ultra-sensitive projection screen had been assembled. A mysterious scratch appeared on the screen, caused by either It’s Not or IDidn’t. We could never determine which one was the culprit. I only know it wasn’t their able assistant, INeverShowUp.

We disagreed on the seating. My husband wanted theater chairs that reclined, but because the door had been repositioned due to the size of the screen, large chairs that weren’t flush against the back wall would have made it challenging for even a gymnast to enter the room. So we decided on a large sofa that my husband is dissatisfied with to this day.

While the rest of our fairly large apartment took about six months to finish, this smallest room in the house took over a year. The wall covering needed special glue. IDidn’t chose to apply this glue on our balcony, leaving a stain that says a big hello to me whenever I slide open the door.

“It will disappear over time,” IDidn’t promised, neglecting to indicate which generation would finally walk out onto our balcony and not say, “What the hell is this?”

In the end, was it worth it? My husband says yes, and reluctantly I agree with him. The screen is fantastic, the sound is crisp, and when we rent a DVD it is a luxury to be able to sit in our own home theater and say, “Boy, this is a crappy movie.”

I was a boring kid. Whenever we played doctor, the other children always made me the anesthesiologist.

The Abbreviation Generation

O
NE OF THE MANY TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS
I didn’t see coming was texting. I was introduced to texting by Lindsay, my friend’s fourteen-year-old daughter. I didn’t know what she had to say to her friend that was so important, but there she was, in the corner by herself, typing madly into her phone. I sauntered over to try to understand.

“What does ‘LOL’ mean?” I asked, looking over her shoulder.

“Laugh out loud,” Lindsay replied with barely concealed derision.

“Makes sense. So I guess ‘cn u c me 2nite?’ means ‘Can you see me tonight?’”

“Yes.” She sighed.

I peered over her shoulder as she attempted to turn away, and caught a glimpse of her friend’s response: “Cnt w8t 2 c u 2.”

Lindsay typed, “Cnt tlk nw.”

“‘Can’t talk now.’ Why can’t you talk now?” I asked.

“Because you’re looking over my shoulder,” Lindsay said, stuffing her phone in her handbag.

“I c,” I said, taking the hint and sauntering back whence I’d come.

IM, or instant messaging, is for me the most irritating of the new forms of meaningless communication. I’ll be typing a vital e-mail and suddenly something not authored by me will appear on the screen. In a way, IM is a kind of schoolyard power play:
stop doing whatever you’re doing and play with me.

“Hi, Rta, whssup?” popped up on my computer screen a few days ago. Lindsay, who didn’t want to talk to me at all when I was actually in the room with her, now wanted to have a casual conversation with me when I was across town and busy doing something else.

“Bsy,” I replied, using my new form of vowel-less verbiage.

I guess Lndsy was offended by my lack of response because she hasn’t IM’d me lately.

The abbreviation that makes the least sense to me these days is “Have a good one.” Logically, the meaning of “Have a good one” is “Have a good day.”
Day
and
one
not only have the same number of letters, they each have one syllable. Where are we saving time here?

Whatever
is another popular contemporary expression. It is all-encompassing and yet noncommittal at the same time.

“I hate you.”

“Whatever.”

“I love you.”

“Whatever.”

“I’m leaving you.”

“Have a good one.”

But even this one word isn’t brief enough.
Whatever
has now itself been distilled to my new favorite abbreviation:
evs.

Evs
exhibits a disaffected ennui that demonstrates you can’t even be bothered to form the three syllables that would convey your disinterest. You’re on top of things, and no matter what occurs you will survive.

It doesn’t stop there. Abbreviations are now being reduced to symbols. I always thought
on
and
off
were two of the briefest yet most efficient words in the English language. What have they done that is so wrong that they can’t live on my phone anymore? As I stare at the keyboard of my new cell phone, it appears to me that those simple words have been replaced by a shoe and a feather. If I want to make a call, I don’t know whether to press
stomp
or
tickle.

So I have concluded today’s generation has become so sophisticated in the age of too much communication that we now have no need to use words and we’re gradually reverting back to hieroglyphics.

Evs.
~*-^.

My grandmother was a very tough cookie. She buried three husbands. Two of them were just napping.

The Advantage of Vintage

A
TTENDING A PARTY THE OTHER NIGHT
, I
LOOKED
down at what I was wearing and thought,
You know you’re getting older when you’re wearing vintage Chanel and you’re the original owner.
I remembered buying this ridiculously expensive outfit twelve years ago and thinking I was crazy, but amortized through the years it had turned out to be a good investment.

At the time, I’d told my husband that it was a good investment, and he said, “An investment is when you put money into something and when you take it out you have more money.”