The Potty Mouth at the Table (18 page)

We’ve all read our fair share of gasp-eliciting status updates from People You Thought Knew Better, but when it comes to setting the lowest common denominator, leave it to Facebook to repeatedly drop the bar. Again. And again. And again. It’s rapidly becoming my go-to spot when my hope for mankind—which is composed of such highlights
as seeing people wash their hands after going to the bathroom, the fact that Walmart hasn’t run Target out of business yet, and those moments of kindness when strangers let me pet their puppies—completely flatlines and leaves me with a feeling of raw despair for roughly thirty seconds. Without fail, Facebook plants me firmly back in my place and reminds me that for every six-week-old Australian shepherd with a wagging tail, there’s someone who can’t wait to tell me that twelve people got killed in a movie theater because there’s no prayer time in public schools.

5.
Any relationship status identified as “open”: Yeah, see, that’s really none of my business. That is private information that you shouldn’t be sharing, especially when you’ve been to my house for dinner. Thank God Facebook doesn’t have an option to list your STD status, because I’m sure if you admit in public that your husband/boyfriend/sire of your illegitimate children is still very much swimming in the dating pool, I have no doubt that I would be wrestling with the news flash that you have genital herpes and have probably already sat on my toilet.

No, no, no. I’m not old-fashioned, you are. It’s not the seventies anymore, so move on and get with the program.
Swingers are gross and it’s not the same as sharing a soda with a friend on a hot day. It is not. Gross. I am grossed out. Now I have to look at you like you are a dirty person. Do you know what my mother would do if she knew I’d let you into my house? I’d never hear the end of it. “Oh, you want national health care for everybody? Sure, you and your swinger friends . . .” she would say.

So just keep your keys in your pocket, your diddling activity off Facebook, and do the right thing: alert me when the toilet seat needs a shot of bleach. That is something I definitely need to know, not that you can’t close your eyes and use your imagination like everybody else in a dark room.

4.
People who take photos of themselves and expose what a hovel their house is in the background: Hey! Nice cleavage! Is that your kid in the background? Awesome. Now uncross your arms, pull your shirt up, and wipe the macaroni and cheese off your wall that your offspring is licking.

Maybe I’m the only one who knows how to work a cropping and blurring tool, but if you’re going to show every single person you know
plus some
what a truck stop your bathroom is, maybe you should walk through a tutorial or two. Or maybe do a quick sweep to make sure your panties and enormous Costco Kotex box aren’t shining like pink beacons in the night.

Now, true, if you look at my profile picture, you are going to see a bottle of liquid fuel, a bunch of yarn, several open shoe boxes, a couple of Target bags hanging in midair, a red shoe lying alone on its side, a box of fabric that I still haven’t unpacked—wait, make that two boxes of fabric that I haven’t unpacked—and a bunch of torn pages from a magazine I tacked to a bulletin board that is partially obscured by the Target bags, but I consider all of that
set design.
And as I told the person who commented on it and begged me to let her come over and organize it, to clean up my office would be to destroy my world. I know where everything is. No one is allowed in here and I don’t want anybody touching my stuff. I have my own system.
It works for me.
And at least my world doesn’t let my coworkers and in-laws know I’m ovulating or that I buy maxipads in a box so big I have nowhere to put it but in my sink.

3.
Any e-mail from a guy I don’t know that begins with the salutation “Hey, Pretty Lady”: Now, I’m not sure what it is I’m posting that is an open call for every lonely man from Pakistan to come knocking on my mailbox in search of transatlantic Facebook love, but I hardly think that a status update about finding little brown round things in my hair and believing them to be lice is a siren call. Then again, I don’t know what is considered sexy there. I have no idea.
Maybe vermin scalp eggs are an attribute. I don’t know, but I have to admit that it felt a little invasive, and my immediate thought was to shoot back an e-mail that said, “I just farted, Aqib. How pretty is that!” But then a smaller, quieter voice said, “Do you think he really means it?”

The thing of it is, Aqib, that I can tell you are very proud of your status as the richest man of your village, and I’m sure you worked hard to acquire your empire of three goats. However, I’m already the first wife here and you may be shocked to hear this, but I am running the show. I have no desire to become the Tuesday night appointment in your harem, and if I may speak frankly, I know you think you’re rich, but I saw bin Laden’s mansion on the news. It looked like Section 8 housing to me; in fact, it has a somewhat eerie resemblance to a block apartment building next to the freeway exit where crystal meth is openly traded in the parking lot like, say, kebabs. It was just as filthy on the inside, too, and he had a couple of wives. I know there was a tussle/bloodbath before those pictures were taken, but in all honesty that doesn’t explain the filthy sheets on the beds. That rubbed patch of grime developed long before any Navy SEALs landed in that compound.

So I can imagine that any new girl on the block is going to be pulling the majority of that load, and I bet you don’t have a stackable Whirlpool Duet, either. That is, I’m afraid,
a deal breaker. I hate bending down. So, while I thank you, Aqib, for noticing my inner beauty, and there is much of it, I am going to have to pass on your offer. But may I suggest that you might have better luck finding a concubine if anyone is left over at MySpace.

PS: I know a couple of swingers; I can pass on your e-mail to them, too.

PSS: They weren’t larvae eggs, but foxglove seeds after I knocked myself on the head with a spent stem, which I luckily realized before completing the plan of setting my hair on fire.

2.
Receiving messages from the dead: I understand that Facebook is a little challenged in this department since you cannot entirely ever expunge your account (that may be something you want to fix, Mark), but I have to say that getting a friend suggestion from Uncle Dan, who died last summer, was a little more than unsettling. Sure, I respected his opinion, and clearly, we have several mutual friends already, but communicating with the beyond is a little out of my safety zone. I didn’t set up a Ouija board, didn’t hire a psychic, and I have no interest in setting up a portal to another dimension, so to hear from Uncle Dan unsolicited was, in a word, friggin’ creepy.

If I am ever given the opportunity to communicate
with Uncle Dan in the unknown and ask some questions, they would be along the lines of “What did you do with my grandmother’s wedding ring?” or “I was riffling through some old documents and I was just wondering if you ever got the feeling that Grandpa maybe wasn’t your real father?” and probably not “Should I friend Shelley, the receptionist at your company who I have never met or spoken to?”

So yes, Facebook, please invent an “I’m Dead, Thanks,” button so loved ones can truly rest in peace and not spend eternity haunting the right sidebar, still giving advice I don’t want.

1.
When someone else’s profile is not of that person but of you: Initially, I thought it was curious that someone’s profile looked so similar to my own; the style of hair, the position of the head, the expression on the face, until I looked close enough to see that the photo wasn’t similar at all; it was exact.
It was me.
And where did I see this but on my own timeline, where the person who stole my face was leaving a comment on something I posted.

Now, this is altogether different from seeing someone who looks like you—this is a person who obviously went out of her way to swipe the photo, upload it onto her Facebook account, and select it as her profile pic, then flaunt it on my page. Who would steal someone else’s head and claim
it as her own? And why? The creep factor is mile high on this one, as I’d rather have Aqib and his open-relationship harem talk to my dead Uncle Dan in my office, eating Chick-fil-A, than see my picture popping up with someone else’s name underneath. Again.

I kind of felt like I had been skinned, and that It had done a good job of spreading lotion on Its body. I didn’t know what to do; I didn’t want to engage a stalker, because any acknowledgment is pretty much an invitation to break into your house and wait around with some piano wire in hand until you get home. If you have any ideas on how to handle this aside from buying a pet lion, tell me.

The only other thing I can think of is to steal
her
profile picture and put it on my head. But I can’t even do that because
it’s already my head.
So if my real face goes missing anytime soon, the authorities will know to look for the
friend
wearing the Laurie hat on Facebook.

I
t was heading straight for my biscuits and gravy like an asteroid hurtling toward Earth. The arc was perfect. It shot into the air with impeccable form, a smooth, round curve gaining momentum with precisely perfect moment, bridging the span across the table with astonishing speed.

I was stunned, knowing that in the next moment, something gruesome was about to happen. In a flashback, I recounted the previous hours and the perfect afternoon my friend and I had before ducking into this trendy brunch place for a well-deserved and much-anticipated bite to eat. It had been a glorious afternoon. We stopped into a fabulous chocolate shop, where they plied us with full-size free samples, and when sweet and salt are combined, it’s a known scientific fact that calories and fat grams are canceled out.

We saw the most glamorous old-lady alcoholic weaving her way down the street wearing leopard-skin hot pants, huge sunglasses, and the brightest red lipstick smeared over her puckered mouth and melting face, a mirror image of what her pillow must have looked like that morning. She was incredible, and she reminded us of what drunken glories our respective retirements could hold if we could just outrun cancer and diabetes a little bit longer.

And right outside the restaurant, we saw a gorgeous skinny girl crying, asking, “Why? Why?” to her brand-new ex-boyfriend, who was in the process of breaking up with her. And seriously, only a really good friend would know that after fake-reading the brunch menu posted in the front window, when you say, “I wonder if they have bacon here?” that you really mean, “Let’s hang out here for a second until he answers that question or she blows a snot bubble.”

So truly, it had been a day to remember, full of exceptional achievements and realized reveries (free chocolate, lady alcoholics in leopard skin, and sobbing models!), and not only had had our afternoon bonded us closer in only a way pure excess and evil can, but we also worked up an appetite while we were at it.

I was ravenous when we entered the restaurant and opened the menu with the delightful realization that of course I could order five pounds of French toast and a baker’s
dozen of biscuits and gravy, because a daily diet of chewing gum and five sips of Red Bull had done no favors for the girl now sitting on the curb with her protruding cheekbones in her skeleton hands that clearly no man wanted to hold. When our meals were finally delivered and my biscuits and gravy were placed before me, my mouth watered a little bit and I readied for the attack. I couldn’t wait to dig in, and as I lifted my fork to go in for the kill, I saw
it
out of the corner of my eye, taking flight.

The tiny rocket of spittle launched from my friend’s mouth as she was in the middle of telling me a story about a girl we knew who had been living in a run-down Winnebago that exploded after some illegal fireworks in it caught fire. My eyes followed it involuntarily as it entered the airspace on my side, then landed, skidding into the middle of my biscuits and gravy like a high jumper in a sandpit.

By the time I saw it, it was too late to cobble a defense together, even something as simple as attempting to swat it with my hand like it was a white fly or impure thought was out of the question. Seriously, even the most prepared person would be rendered helpless after realizing a drop of spit was charging at their food like a goat released from a medieval trebuchet, which had just landed with a barbaric splat! Really, I mean unless you’re a character out of a trashy vampire book, no one has the lightning reflexes necessary to
conquer such a juicy, hurried foe, but my reflexes were sharp enough to know that whatever beautiful promise of satisfaction and carb overdose my lunch once held, it was now lost to the ages, like Cher’s real nose or American homeownership.

Gagging and covering your mouth is not a good move, so I’m sorry I did that, for two reasons: (a) retching noises with any amount of volume are never really welcome in a food service establishment and that becomes very obvious once you emit them; and (b) I then had to quickly think up a reason of what would trigger a such a reaction (aside from “Shit! You just spit all over my food!”), and saying you swallowed the cough drop you were saving under your tongue wasn’t going to win you any court cases.

Also, mouthing the “F” word isn’t particularly beneficial, either, and can cause hurt feelings, particularly if the Spitter knows what she’s done and the defiled baked good now lies on the table between us like a dead possum. This can cause uncomfortable silence for the remainder of the time you spend together, which in my case was four hours, most of that being in my car. This will result in both of you feigning extended and painful excitement over the “performance” screen in a Prius, literally forcing you to make squealing noises every time it’s noted that you’re getting 99.9 miles to the gallon, which happens roughly every seven seconds,
simply because there is nothing left to say except, “Have you thought about investing in one of those spittle-suctions they have at the dentist’s office to suck up some of the excess saliva? Or perhaps a mouth sponge?”