Why My Third Husband Will Be A Dog (13 page)

And after I clipped Buddy today, I went inside, sat down at my computer, and got back to work. Do you think my plot, characters, and dialogue magically appeared?

You must be dreaming.

I don’t know when this started, but I’ve become very suggestible lately. I first noticed it when I was watching TV and a commercial came on, for spaghetti and meatballs. Instantly I wanted a plate of spaghetti and meatballs. I couldn’t help myself. I craved spaghetti and meatballs, even though eating carbs is now against federal law and I’m supposed to be a vegetarian. Still, I spent a lot of time fantasizing about spaghetti and meatballs.

Then it got worse.

I was watching
Sex and the City
reruns, and I wanted a nice pink Cosmo, or three. During a Wendy’s commercial, I wanted a square hamburger. And every time Kentucky Fried Chicken came on TV, I’d be thinking, extra crispy is the best. Extra crispy always hits the spot. I’d just love me some extra crispy right about now.

But it went beyond food.

I’d watch tennis on TV, and I’d want to be a professional tennis player. I’d watch
Top Chef,
and I’d want to cook for Chef Tom Colicchio. Bottom line, I’m starting to want whatever I see on television, and lately I’m watching
Miami Ink
.

You can see where this is going.

Miami Ink
is a reality show about people who go to this tattoo
parlor in Miami and walk out covered with tattoos. There’s a little story behind each person’s tattoo, and many of the stories are sad. There are parents who get tattoos to memorialize children who died; there are teenagers who get tattoos to memorialize parents who died. Plenty of people get tattoos of their dogs and cats who died. All this dying and all this tattooing, I can’t take it. I cry like a baby through every episode.

But that’s beside the point. The point is that I went from being a person who was disgusted by tattoos to being a person who wants tattoos very badly.

I think about tattoos all the time now. I look at pictures in magazines and wonder, would that would make a nice tattoo? I squint at tattoos on other people, appraising them with a critical eye. I visits websites with tattoos when I’m supposed to be working. I think about tattoos so much that I have already selected three, though they are imaginary.

And because I have to decide where to put my three imaginary tattoos, I think about that, too. Should they go on my arms? Too flabby. Lower back? No tramp stamp for me. Ankle? Looks like dirt with heels. Neck? Can you say state prison?

There are a lot of choices to be made in the imaginary world in which I live.

I suspect, however, that I’m not the only person to pick out imaginary tattoos. Fess up. You know you want one. If you tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine:

I like Kewpie dolls, so for my first tattoo, I thought it would be nice to have a tiny little Kewpie doll on the inside of my wrist, where it will be discreet, even classy. (Okay, maybe not classy.)

For my second tattoo, I would like an old-fashioned Sacred Heart, but I don’t know where on my body to put a Sacred Heart tattoo. It’s too butch for my arm, and I could burn in hell
if I put it anyplace else. You take your chances with the religious tattoos, and you don’t want to be thumbing your nose at you-know-who.

Thirdly, I think one of those colorful Japanese scenes would be nice, something with orange koi fish or calcium-white kabuki masks or an ornate kimono of threaded gold. I can’t decide about my last tattoo. I think about it a lot. It has replaced spaghetti and meatballs in my magical thinking, at least for the time being.

Unfortunately, I’ve passed my suggestibility on to daughter Francesca. We watch
Miami Ink
together, and though she doesn’t want a tattoo, she wants the tattoo artist—Ami, the star of the show. Come to think of it, I want Ami, too. And while we’re on the subject, I also want Chef Tom Colicchio from
Top Chef
. He’s more my age, and with his bald head and intense gaze, he’s my Telly Savalas.

It turns out that the power of suggestion extends to everything on TV.

Maybe I should get a tattoo of Chef Tom?

Summer’s over, and I’m trying to be mature about it. I’m ignoring the depression I always feel at the end of summer and the dread at the onset of autumn. For a cheery girl, I get a little gloomy around now.

Why?

Because even though I’m allegedly grown-up, I still have the mentality of a middle-schooler: September to May sucks, and summer rocks! No more pencils, no more books! Summer is for getting crazy, and fall is for facing the music.

I don’t go to school anymore, but I remain on the back-to-school mental clock. It’s like I have to gear up for AP Bio, but I don’t take AP Bio. I never did take AP Bio. They didn’t even have AP Bio when went to high school. They had pop quizzes, and that was scary enough. “Pencils down” will forever be associated with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Nor is it as if I go back to work in September, after my summer vacation. I don’t always take a vacation, and didn’t this year. Like a lot of us, I work seven days a week, year round. I’m not complaining, mind you, I love my job. But it raises the question, why should I be sad that summer’s over, when it’s not as if it were such a big break?

The same goes for Sunday nights.

I always feel a little bummed out on Sunday nights. Sunday night is the Labor Day of the week, if you follow. It’s as if the weekend = summer, and Monday = fall. This makes no sense, again, because I work on Sunday, the same as I do on Monday.

So why do I dread Monday, on Sunday night? Why do I dread fall, at the end of summer? Why do I feel this way? My days don’t change one iota.

Daughter Francesca thinks she knows the answer, and she weighs in, below:

Well, Mom, that’s not exactly true, your days from summer to fall do change in one respect: me. Sure, you haven’t been in school in a long time, but for almost two decades, I have. For the last sixteen years, just being my mother has put you on some version of the summer vacation schedule. Although I realize that, for you, it may not have always been such a vacation—driving me to day camp when I was little, watching me attempt the perfect dive for the 100
^th
time in a day, later on, teaching me how to make the drive down to Ocean City by myself, or, most recently, giving in to my insistence that summer is the perfect time to get two kittens. For better or for worse, my summertime glee and back-to-school dread has probably rubbed off on you over the years. But that’s about to change. For both of us.

In a sense, this is my last real summer. The last summer of my childhood, the last summer as a student. As I prepare to be a senior in college, I am preparing for my last academic fall. By next summer, I will be a (gulp) grown-up, or, I guess I’m supposed to say, adult. Summer vacation will shrink to two weeks, and the rest will just be going to work in hot weather. I’m excited to enter the adult world, but to be honest, I’m scared, too.
I will have a new sort of weight in the pit of my stomach when I hear my last “pencils down.” I’m out of time.

The chemistry test may be over, but the new test is just beginning. Is my adult life the “fall” of my summertime childhood? Now that I think about it, I don’t even like the word “fall.” It sounds perilous. And I’m afraid of heights.

But then again, maybe summer isn’t gone for good. Of course I know the season isn’t going to disappear, but I mean, summer as-I-know-it won’t go away forever, either. Like you said, Mom, you still get that thrill when the spring days get longer and warmer, regardless of work schedule. It’s as if the weather and the people can finally exhale into the balmy summer breeze. Summer will always be the time of short sleeves, lunch outside, and guilt-free ice cream. Last time I checked, sunshine has no age limit.