Rude Bitches Make Me Tired: Slightly Profane and Entirely Logical Answers to Modern Etiquette Dilemmas (19 page)

A professional videographer knows to let the drunks rant and then skillfully edits away the unpleasant language—at least in the PG version he presents the parents and in-laws.

When your daughter gets married the next time, hire a pro. What? This is going to be her only marriage? Oh, that is just precious and darling.

Question: My wife and I recently received a wedding invitation that had this note at the bottom: “Please, no boxed gifts.” I believe I speak for many others when I respectfully ask, “What the hell?”

This is one of the most egregious violations of wedding etiquette out there. Why not just say what you really mean? “Please don’t give us a motherhumpin’ toaster oven. We don’t have the brains God gave plankton, so we’d never figure out how to use it. Yes, we are that stupid. All we want is some serious chedda so we can take that vacay to Cancún.”

This odious tendency to sneakily ask for cash as a wedding gift is multiplying faster than germs in a chocolate fountain. Here in the South, we are highly resistant to this sort of thing because it cheapens the occasion. We already have to worry about the bridal couple dancing an elaborately choreographed version of “Back That Azz Up” and the best man making a complete fool of himself on video, and now … this.

If you do relent, and give cash as requested, make sure that you eat the precise value of the cash given at the reception. In other words: prawns, yes; hard rolls, no. Or you can go renegade-badass and give them the biggest chicken rotisserie you can find at Costco. Wrap it up in tacky wedding-bell paper and make a big show of asking, “Where’s the gift table?” when you get to the reception.

They’ll take it back, of course, but that’s their problem. And isn’t it fun to think of them fuming about your thoughtlessness and huffing about as they try to fit that bird-turner into their Kia Sportage? Thought so.

Question: It has been nine months since the wedding, and I’m still waiting on a thank-you note. Apparently, a Mixmaster with detachable meat grinder isn’t the big deal it used to be! Seriously, why do some couples take so long to say thank you?

Wow! I can assure you that if I got that present, I’d drive to your house with a coolerful of freshly ground homemade sausage to show my undying appreciation. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, the word got out that it was acceptable for a couple to take up to one year to mail their thank-you notes after the wedding.

This is oft repeated like those scary e-mails you get from idiot friends. Things like how if you soak a human tooth in Pepsi, it will dissolve overnight. It’s bunk, hokum, and completely untrue. Sadly, there is no Snopes for this sort of thing, so we must resort to using our common sense and common decency.

The truth? Thank-you notes should always be sent within three months of receiving the gift. Anything more than that indicates that you have found the whole thank-you thing such a terrible chore that you just can’t quite believe you have to do it. Poor you. If you wait more than three months to write your notes and mail them, people will talk bad about you. And they’ll do so for way longer than a year.

Question: What’s with that guy on TV who has four wives?

Okay, I actually made up that question because I am currently obsessed with TLC’s
Sister Wives,
and I’m dying to talk about it. The only thing more challenging than one wedding is four, with four different brides.

Oh, how I love to follow the lives of the smiling puppy-faced Kody Brown, who rotates through his four wives’ bedrooms like a Roomba on testosterone. With his moppish blond hair and surprisingly ripped bod, Kody looks and acts like the one guy in the frat house who you always suspected was actually forty-five years old. He giggles behind his hands when he’s busted for whatever ticks off four women at a time.

I was expecting the four brides to be dour, hard-faced women obsessed with martyrdom, homeschooling, and those scary-tight polygamy-gal cornrows, but these chicks are downright mouthy. You should’ve heard them carp about how they didn’t get to help bride number four pick out her wedding gown. The nerve!

I get what Kody gets out of the arrangement (he’s a man with four sex partners who know about one another, and yet none of them wants to strangle him with piano wire while he’s sleeping), but I’m not sure what’s in it for the women except they like each other a lot, and I get the feeling they’d be fine without Kody in a
Golden Girls
kind of way. They get along great, which is nice since you-know-who is always hovering outside the bedroom door with his motor running, so to speak.

Kody is like a golden retriever, if a golden retriever had Lumineers and could actually bark out, “It’s!” “All!” “Good!” for every situation, from facing felony charges for polygamy to having to pay for four different rental houses. He’s not the perfect groom; in truth, he comes off as kind of a dunderhead, but he does seem happy, perhaps because he gets laid a bazillion times a week and never actually does any child care. Cool.

Question: Weddings have become some sort of spectator sport. Look at the proliferation of TV shows like
Say Yes to the Dress
and
Four Weddings
. Whatever happened to the sanctity of marriage?

That’s easy. Kim Kardashian happened to it. For every royal wedding in which we sniffle happy tears to see that William has chosen a lovely, elegant bride who would’ve been adored by Our Beloved Lady Diana May She Rest in Peace, we are subjected to many more of the common and foul-mouthed, the anal-bleached and the Botoxed.

Kim’s marriage to “some basketball player” was made into a two-hour TV special that generated millions in ad revenue. She filed for divorce seventy-two days later, citing “irreconcilable differences.” Uh-huh. I suppose this was the day the last check cleared. Call me a sentimental fool, but I would hope that a marriage would last longer than the mustard in my fridge.

If you want to see what’s really wrong with weddings today, watch an episode of
Say Yes to the Dress.
No, not the one episode with a conscience, where they’re fitting a gown on the paralyzed chick, but the rest of them. My least favorite brides casually drop eighty thousand dollars on a couture wedding gown because they “always wanted to be a princess.” Let me be frank: You’re a little old for that, Your Hagship. Why not use that money to help out somebody less fortunate because, trust me, a year from now, nobody’s going to remember your gown didn’t come from the five-hundred-dollar rack at David’s Bridal. Nobody.

Question: Why do so many celebrity marriages end so badly?

You mean like Ashton and Demi? As my friend Amy pointed out, that marriage broke down when Demi finally figured out she was married to Kelso. If ever there was a case of arrested development, it was Ashton, who seemed happiest in his role as the shaggy stoner in
That ’70s Show.

There are some who think that the age difference between Ashton and Demi—she’s 135 years older than he—was the real reason for the breakup, but I don’t think so. I happen to be married to a younger man myself. What’s it like, you ask? Well, Duh Hubby finds it extraordinarily amusing to tug on my sleeve every so often and ask, “What was Vietnam really like?”

This sort of “humor” can be the foundation of a solid and satisfying marriage. Or it can be the catalyst for someone to be “hit upside the head,” as we say in the South, depending on whether or not I’ve had my prunes that morning.

I knew the marriage was on the rocks when Ashton gave Demi an eco-friendly Lexus for her birthday. Nothing says, “You’re still as sexy as the day I laid eyes on you” like a hybrid sedan that would be more at home in the cafeteria parking lot than cruising the PCH with the wind wildly whipping your extensions.

My humble opinion? Celebrity marriages tend to be short-lived because they don’t understand that there has to be compromise and (gasp!) sacrifice in a marriage. The successful ones (Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, or Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, for instance) get that you may have to take turns being famous for the marriage to thrive. Home fires burning and all that.

Nuts and Mints

• If anyone ever calls their fiancé “my soul mate,” the marriage will last no longer than eighteen months. Every time.

• Don’t fill your wedding party with kids. Lady Louise, seven, and Viscount Severn, three, were attendants in the wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton. Poor little boy. I’m already picturing the numerous swirlies at Royal Pain Academy and invitations by burlier classmates to “Viscount this!” As to Lady Louise, why should anyone who is barely old enough to recite her “timeses” participate in the most important event of your life? I mean, until the next most important one.

• It’s not cute to let your dog be the ring bearer. Sure, you’ll get a chorus of “awwwwws,” but at the heart of it, you’ve just given over one of the most profound moments of the day to a furry fellow who just wants to spend the day licking his own genitalia. Sure, that describes the best man, too, but somehow it’s different.

• Brides: Never marry a man who makes significantly less money than you do. Your mother isn’t wrong about this, and neither am I.

• Grooms: Never marry a woman who makes significantly less money than you do. Your father isn’t wrong about this, and neither am I.

• Be nice to all your guests, even the ones you don’t know but had to invite because your mother convinced you that there would be hurt feelings and “You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube once that happens.” That’s the kind of shit mothers say. Smile, put on a good party face, and think of how pleasant Kate Middleton looked even as she was surely dying to ask Helena Bonham Carter if she ever plans to release the squirrel monkey that is obviously hiding in her hair.

chapter 25

Phoning It In: Does Anybody Know Why That Black Thing on the Wall Is Ringing?

Oh my God, the weirdest thing just happened. The house phone rang, and
it wasn’t my mother.
I saw the caller ID, and it looked like some sort of local number but there was no name attached. The whole thing left me a little shaky, I gotta tell you, so I let it ring until voice mail could pick it up. I mean, really, who actually talks on the phone anymore?

With all the texting and tweeting and Facebook messaging and Tumblring and e-mailing and IM’ing and the rest, I sometimes forget about the old-fashioned phone call. And then I see a
Seinfeld
rerun, and there’s Jerry picking up that huge-ass phone with this long
antenna
sticking out of it. He’s walking around his apartment all cool, like, “Ha! I live in New York and I have one of those phones you can walk around with inside your home.” When he’s done, he puts it back in a charger the size of a cat carrier. Too weird.

Nobody uses the phone anymore except your mother and telemarketers or old friends who don’t have your cell or can’t find you on Facebook.

So, yes, when the landline rings, it’s always a bit of a shock. I jump out of my skin just like in that old horror movie where the babysitter answers the phone and that evil voice asks,
“Have you checked the children?”
Yeah, it’s just like that.

You know what I really hate? When you answer the phone and someone sounds profoundly disappointed.

“Ohhhhh, I was just going to leave a message,” they say with a noticeable pout. “I didn’t think you’d actually pick up.”

Yes, by all means, forgive the crap out of me for answering a ringing phone in my own home.

These days, I conduct most of my business via text, including texting to make an appointment to talk on the phone (only if absolutely necessary). You can’t just call someone out of the blue. If they answered their phone, I wouldn’t even know what to say and would probably just ask to speak to their voice mail.

So, yes, I text just like God and the Unlimited Texting Plan from AT&T World Domination intended. Texting eliminates all the useless prattle and chatter. We’ve got
lives
here, people. Just text your bullshit problem/question/observation to me. Sister Mary Francis.

When I do actually answer the home phone, it’s usually with full-on dread and trepidation. Has someone in the family expired? Did I forget to pay the water bill?
What?
Oh, it’s just the local public radio station reminding me it’s pledge-drive time. It’s always pledge-drive time. Those people got more pledge drives than I got hot flashes. It really doesn’t go well if they call during a hot flash.

“You can make the pledge online, if you prefer,” they say. Oh, no you did-
unt.

“And you can just e-mail me. Don’t call me at this number. I keep this landline for three reasons: Mama, Aunt Verlie, and because I have no idea how to cancel it without mucking up my cable/internet/phone/TiVo package!”

When family does call on “the real phone,” as they call it, it’s always bad news. Aunt Verlie reports that her sister-in-law has finally gone so dotty that, when nature calls, she starts lifting up her nightgown as soon as she gets out of bed and walks through the house to the bathroom, pulling the gown higher and higher in anticipation of her arrival on the throne. Doesn’t care who sees her. Yeah, there’s a mental image I can never get rid of.

My handyman sends a text when he’s coming over. Ditto the cleaning lady and the yard guy. We’re conducting business, here; there is no need for endless conversation. It’s fabulous!

I’ve never been a talk-on-the-phone person but rather one who paces like a caged lioness in flannel pj’s when a call lasts over ten minutes, complete with mock stabbing myself in the chest if it’s over fifteen minutes.

Dinner plans? Text me. We don’t need to talk for thirty minutes when we’re going to see each other at night anyway. There won’t be anything left to talk about, so we’ll sit there, stirring our after-dinner coffee too long and sneaking a peek at our cell phones to check the time.