Rude Bitches Make Me Tired: Slightly Profane and Entirely Logical Answers to Modern Etiquette Dilemmas (6 page)

Laugh gently and say, “What a question!” Frankly, I’m wondering where she’s headed with this. Is there a follow-up question brewing? (“’Cause I was just thinking, if you’re not gonna pump for a while, could my kids stand under those things for shade? It’s mighty hot out here.”)

Question: My baby shower wasn’t much fun, because everyone insisted on giving me their own horror stories of long labors, missed opportunities for epidurals, emergency C-sections, and the like. Why can’t people understand that I don’t want or need to hear all that negative stuff? I’m nervous enough as it is!

I know, but we can’t help ourselves. You’re probably recognizing a trend in my responses. While all these issues could be construed as nosy and rude, I tend to keep it real in matters maternal. Don’t you think that cavewomen did the same thing? One sympathetically patting the other’s hairy hand and grunting about her fifty-six-hour labor with only a cool leaf to chew on? Childbirth is exceedingly personal, but it bonds us together like nothing else.

Of course, if you have a friend who insists on only concentrating on the icky stuff (“You know, inverted-nipple syndrome is more common than you’d think!”), you are welcome to feign tiredness and ask her to give you some nap time.

Let these women into your life, though. Because there’s a very good chance that, along with the horror stories, they’re carrying a casserole and a nice salad for dinner.

Question: I was strolling my toddler the other day, and a stranger told me that she hoped I had applied sunscreen and then she said it was really the wrong time of day to be out for a stroll, considering the sun’s strength, and so on. Why do people think they can talk to me like this?

It’s vexing, I know. You expect to hear that kind of nagging from your family members but not from complete strangers. I’ll just have to assume that your kid’s cheeks look like a baboon’s hindparts and the stranger is genuinely concerned.

Be prepared to absorb all sorts of unsolicited advice when you are raising a child. Usually it’s completely well intentioned and can actually prove useful; the best brand of diaper rash ointment, the store with the best prices on your favorite diapers, the best all-night pharmacy in your town … that’s helpful information, but it can sound rather high-handed if you let it. Don’t. This is just the way it works. And one day, it might be you cautioning a young mother that her toddler is playing with a stick that will most assuredly put his eye out.

Admit it: You also never thought you’d be that person sitting in a restaurant at Disney World who suddenly smells something icky, grabs her baby, and presses her nose to his bottom, inhaling like it’s blow. But there you are. Mercifully, butt-sniffing in public is given a pass when it’s a baby. Etiquette understands that sometimes instinct takes over. If, however, your instinct also tells you to change the baby at the table, ignore it. That’s just gross.

chapter 7

PDAs: His Hand, Her Crack … Must Be Love

My dear friend David High shares my distaste for public displays of affection to the extent that he alerts me, via e-mail from his home near Nashville, whenever he sees a particularly heinous offense.

So I wasn’t surprised when I heard from him recently with this cryptic pronouncement:

At the mall. Two 16-year-olds. She already has a muffin top, he has a wisp of a mustache, and they’re walking along, each with a hand tucked down deep inside the other’s waistband.

Oh, my.

David calls this “walking tacky,” and as you know, “tacky” is the worst thing anybody can ever say about anybody else in the Southland. (He also considers it “riding tacky” when you see the couple jammed together in the front seat of a car, and, as always, I agree.)

Public displays of affection are a serious breach of etiquette. Affection should be private and “displayed” only between seriously committed romantic couples during the magic window just after
The Daily Show
is over and just before you realize it’s too late for anything but that recurring dream about Matthew McConaughey winning an Academy Award for best actor and thanking you for being there for him every step of the way, “darlin’.” Kidding! He could never win an Oscar.

PDAs, including the type David had the misfortune to witness (and, really, are they going to eat orange chicken in the food court with those hands?), seem to be on the rise.

The other day, I arrived a few minutes early to pick up the Princess from a club meeting at her high school. I assumed the early pickup position, reading her dog-eared
Seventeen
magazine while half-listening to public radio discuss Syrian warlords (I am nothing if not well rounded), when what to my wondering eyes should appear …

A couple, both about sixteen, sitting across the quad, locked in a public amorous display, that’s what. She was straddling him and giving him a tongue-ectomy. He had his hands under her T-shirt. I quickly lost all interest in both “how to rock the perfect smoky eye!” and Syria. Copulating, or mighty close to it, on a concrete bench on the front lawn of a public high school on a main highway? That’s so Raven. No, what I meant to say was “Ick!”

I resisted the urge to spring from my car and douse them both with the remains of my Vitamin Water. But this isn’t like breaking up a spat on the elementary school playground. This is a playground of an entirely different sort.

Mercifully, the Princess arrived just as I was pondering my next move.

“Did you see that?” I said, jerking my head in the direction of the couple, which was now reenacting the cover of
The Notebook
as a light drizzle failed to preempt their passion.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “They always do that.”

This is what we parents like to call a Teachable-Ass Moment.

“You wouldn’t act like that in public, would you?” I asked.

Eye roll, followed by immediate installation of earbuds. Conversation over.

Well. I think I made my point.

Question: My girlfriend likes to talk baby talk to me when we’re alone, which is okay, I guess, but she also does it in front of my friends. We’re both in our early twenties, and I’m embarrassed by the way she talks to me in public. How can I get her to stop?

You can’t. You can only break up with her in a note signed:
No longer your “Snookums Pootie Bear.”

Just as an animal marks its territory, your girlfriend is metaphorically circling and spraying around you, signaling to your friends, whom she probably detests, that you have a bond that can’t be broken. That she is your widdle wuvver-dover and they better back the shit off. She knows it irritates you, but it’s more important that she show your friends that she’s the one in control. Simply put: She has infantilized you, and now you must cut the cord. Put it to her in terms she’ll understand: “We’re overkins.”

Question: My husband always gives me flowers on Valentine’s Day, my birthday, and our anniversary. This is very nice of him, but I have asked him time and time again to have them sent to my office instead of just bringing them home to me. Everyone knows it doesn’t count unless your coworkers see what a great guy he is and how much he loves you.

I know that what you have written—in excruciating detail, I might add—is incredibly shallow, but I have to agree. It’s like the old “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, did it make a sound?” Or, to put it another way, “If your husband brings you flowers at home and nobody saw them, was his money wasted?”

I don’t know jack shit about the tree/forest thing, but I can say, without hesitation, that flowers brought home for special occasions do not count. Also, there’s a better-than-average chance that he bought them at the grocery store instead of the florist. He’s saving a ton on delivery charges, which, frankly, shows you where you stand. The presentation of flowers at your workplace is a public display of affection that is to be encouraged. Cheaping out on flowers by buying them from someone who also slices sausage by the pound is not.

Question: My boyfriend and I are in our late twenties, and have been dating for two years. Whenever we go out, if there’s any kind of a wait, he likes to pass the time by making out. I’m embarrassed by the way people look at us, all the pointing, snickering, and the inevitable suggestion that we “get a room.” How can I get him to understand that this is not something I’m comfortable doing?

Truthfully, I just can’t relate. At this stage in my own courtship with Duh Hubby, he would be overjoyed at the mention of a wait as long as there was a bar with the game (any game) on. We would spend the entire wait watching the game, drinking a couple of “foamers,” and then our names would be called. Your old-enough-to-know-better boyfriend sounds like someone who likes showing off his horn-dog behavior for an audience. It’s a little creepy. Normal guys just don’t act like that. And, yes, I’m sure you’re very alluring, but, really, the bloom should be off the rose by now. I’m presuming that you’ve mentioned that you don’t like this and he just isn’t listening. If you stay with him, you can be sure he won’t listen to anything else that matters to you either. He’s an asshat; dump him.

Question: My boyfriend and I are one of those couples that find it exciting to make out in public. We’re both on the same page about this, so, really, what’s the big deal?

Get back to class. The bell’s getting ready to ring.

Acceptable PDAs …

• Hand-holding.

• Arm looped around the shoulder.

• Quick kiss on lips or cheek to greet SO. (No tongue!)

Nonacceptable PDAs …

• Everything not listed above.

Nonromantic PDAs …

When we talk about PDAs, we usually connect it to romantic love or just outright gotta-hit-that lust, but there’s another kind of PDA that is just plain weird and offensive. I speak, of course, of the chalk drawings on the rear window of the minivan you’re behind in traffic.

What more public display of affection than a groovy little height-ordered depiction of all your loved ones? There’s Dad, looking tall and in control, even as a chalk outline. There’s Mom, fuzzy haired and goofy in her mom-skirt. There are the kids and even the family dog, cat, and
bird.

I get that this is meant to tell the world that You Love Your Family. But, if we’re being honest, the subtext in this particular and very public display of affection is that My Family Is Probably Better Than Yours. (P.S. Did you not see our
bird
?)

Question: What’s so bad about letting the world know that you love your family? You make it sound as if that’s a bad thing.

First of all, you’re not letting the “world” know anything, unless you honestly think the world begins and ends at the exact route that takes you from school to gymnastics to choir practice to ballet to the grocery store. Scary how well I know your pathetic little routine, isn’t it? Why, it’s almost as if it’s my routine, too. Because it is. And that’s my point: There’s nothing special about your family. You love them and that’s as it should be, but pasting scary, emaciated decals of them on the back of your car doesn’t make them better than my family or anybody else’s. Quit boasting about your brood, or I’ll be tempted to show you a bird of my own next time we meet on the way to the PTA meeting. Where worlds collide.

Question: I’m considering getting a tattoo of my dead (brother, cousin, mother, NASCAR hero, sister, aunt, father, coon dog…) as a way of letting the world know how much they meant to me. Then, when that’s done, I’m going to get a decal on my truck’s rear window that says in really big letters:
RIP
with their name and birth and death dates. What do you think? Isn’t that a fantastic tribute?

Oh, sorry. My skin just crawled a little. What were you saying? Oh, heavenly Lord, why must you force your undoubtedly sincere and heartfelt grief on an unsuspecting public?

I don’t mean to be cruel, here, but if I’m out on the town with my gal pals and we get behind one more giant
RIP JUAN … 1984–2011
complete with a semi-artistic rendering of Juan and his little dog, too, I am going to scream,
“Buzzkill!”
out the window just a little too loudly.

Grief is something that has no place on the back window of a truck. At times like this, you should ask yourself WWJD? (“What would Juan do?” naturally.)

Would he really want to bum out 99 percent of the motoring public? I’m guessing not. I didn’t know Juan, but I imagine he would be a tad embarrassed by this whole thing.

Grieve privately and with those who actually knew Juan and can share in your grief. Anything else just looks like you’re trying to overcompensate. Perhaps you had a hand in Juan’s untimely demise? Hmmmm? Frankly, if this were an episode of
Law & Order,
I’d “like” you as the “perp.” Think about it. And get that damn thing off the window.

chapter 8

Husbands and Wives: He May Not Be Much, But He’s
Your
Tube Sock Filled with Gravy

Perhaps it’s because you’ve seen him trim his toenails in bed over an open copy of
Sports Illustrated
one too many times. Perhaps it’s because he’s seen you spend a full five minutes pulling up your pantyhose until he finally screamed,
“My eyes!”

Husbands and wives don’t always demonstrate good manners to one another. Familiarity breeds contempt, the saying goes, and it’s a damn shame.

Of all the people we encounter who deserve an extra measure of thoughtfulness, our life partner should be first in line. So how is it, then, that you are once again standing in front of the fridge, holding a milk carton that contains exactly one tablespoon of milk?