Why My Third Husband Will Be A Dog (36 page)

In other words, impossible to resist.

Plus the economy was better then. It turns out that “shop until you drop” wasn’t such a hot idea. Or maybe we just dropped. Or somebody dropped us. Either way, don’t get me started.

To stay on point, early on, websites like Amazon and
bn.com
required a four-digit password. It was my first password, and what a thrill! Think of a secret word! It put me in mind of decoder rings, speakeasies, and people knocking on doors, saying “Sam sent me.” In those days, I used the same go-to password for everything—specifically, my goal weight plus zero. It was easy to remember because nobody ever forgets their goal weight, and the chance of ever attaining it is zero.

Then everybody caught on to online shopping, so much so that the other day I went into a pet store and they had only two dog collars, both large and blue. I wanted red and small, so they told me go home and shop online at their website. So you know
where this is going. The bad news is that someday the stores will be empty. The good news is that there’ll be plenty of parking.

But somewhere along the line, passwords stopped being fun. Complex rules entered the picture, like an IRS Code for passwords. Nowadays passwords have to be eight or ten digits, mix numbers and letters, use both upper and lowercase, no asterisks or other punctuation, can’t repeat digits, and never on Sunday.

Now I hate passwords.

I have 3,929,874 passwords, not only for shopping but for banking, Gmail, satellite radio, and other stuff. I try to keep track of them but I can never remember to record the password, and if I keep forgetting it, I get locked out of the website and have to reset the password. Then I reset the password to something close to the original, which means that all of my passwords are scarily similar, like some inbred mountain family, so I’ll never be able to keep them straight.

And then websites started requiring user names, because our regular names stopped being good enough and we became users and not people. I can never remember my user names, because sometimes the website requires lscottoline or lisascottoline or [email protected], and the other day I got so fed up, I made “password” my user name.

This amused me.

Then of course I couldn’t get into a website because I misremembered either my user name or my password, and they don’t tell you which one you got wrong, so you have to try different combinations to hit paydirt, which never happens before you are locked out of the site. And you can’t get an email sent to you reminding you of your password unless you remember your user name. But if you’re like me and you forgot your password, you’re also the type to forget your user name, which is when you throw your laptop out the window.

But it gets better.

Yes, I’m talking about Security Questions. These are something my bank has come up with, wherein after I finally get my user name and password correct, they ask me questions, the answers to which I established too long ago to remember, around the time I lost my car keys. And if I get all the answers right, I’m still not in the clear, because the website shows me a picture of an oak tree and asks me to remember the caption I wrote for the picture, once upon a time.

Huh?

I can write a novel, but not a caption. All my captions stink. And so therefore they’re impossible to remember.

I look at the oak tree picture and try the caption, “This is an oak tree.”

Incorrect.

Then I try, “This is not an oak tree.”

Surreal, but also incorrect.

I try “Oaky Dokey!” For fun.

Also incorrect, so I’m locked out of the bank. At which point, I leave the house to go to the store.

And park.

Let us now discuss cougars. Not the “large, tawny cat” defined by
dictionary.com
, but women over forty who date younger men. In other words, not the feline, but the female.

You used to be able to find cougars in the mountains, but now cougars are online in their bra and undies, at
www.datea cougar.com
, which invites younger men to log on to meet “Older Beautiful Women” in the “cougar community.”

I’m trying to figure out how I feel about cougars.

I get it, in principle. Older men have been dating younger women since the dawn of time, and usually I think turnabout is fair play. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, though I keep forgetting which is the girl. Maybe it’s time for men to see what it feels like when the stiletto is on the other foot.

Although please note that when an older woman dates a younger man, she’s called a predator. When an older man dates a younger woman, he’s called a success.

But still, what is going on here? Do these men want mothers? Can anyone really want a second mother? You could die from guilt of that magnitude.

And do these women really feel younger when they’re the
one with all the wrinkles? I like my men even wrinklier than me. If I could date a prune, I would.

But let’s look to history for guidance.

Probably the first recorded cougar was Mrs. Robinson, the wealthy housewife who preyed on Dustin Hoffman in
The Graduate.
She had great eyeliner, but boozed it up, seduced her daughter’s boyfriend, and wore leopard, the hallmark of cougardom. Ironically, cougar is not the fur of choice for cougars. Don’t ask me why. I’m new around here.

Other old-school cougars were equally drunk, or worse, overly made-up. Think Mrs. Dubcek in
3rd Rock From the Sun,
if you can follow my literary references. She was the landlord on the show, who smoked, drank, and flirted, the cougar trifecta.

Then Demi Moore came along, not only dating Ashton Kutcher but marrying him, and it was a turning point in cougar history. Demi brought respectability to cougars everywhere. She could have had any man she wanted, but she chose a man-child.

Demi taught us that you don’t have to be drunk to realize that Ashton Kutcher is drop-dead gorgeous. And maybe smart and a nice guy, too, but who cares. He’s superhot, and if he needs a little help with his French homework, so much the better.

Nowadays, cougars abound. Hollywood types like Halle Berry, Kristin Chenoweth, and Drew Barrymore all date younger men. Every day I meet normal women who date younger men, and none of them dies from exertion.

Hmm.

I confess I almost have some experience in this area.

A near-miss.

Once upon a time, I met a very nice young man. He was twenty-something to my forty-something, and even more gorgeous than Ashton Kutcher, and I wasn’t drunk at the time.
When he asked me out, I thought I’d heard him wrong. After all, I was doddering to his toddling.

Usually I have better self-esteem, but all I could think was, why do you want to go out with me, child? I’m old enough to be your mother. And if I were, I’m pretty sure I would have nursed you.

Heh heh.

In any event, this happened before cougar nation, so I didn’t take him seriously. I forget what I said, but I think it was something cringeworthy like, “You must be joking.”

Ouch.

In those days, it didn’t seem like it would be okay to go out with a man half my age. I thought people would laugh at me, or him. Plus I couldn’t see myself with someone who didn’t know Steely Dan. And my days of pushing a stroller were over, though he would have looked so cute in OshKosh B’Gosh overalls.

But now, times have changed, and I have to ask myself, do I regret saying no?

You bet your ass I do.

I mean, perhaps.

Maybe cougars are a good thing, after all. I’m suspicious of men who go out with much younger women, because I think they need to be adored. So what’s the matter if women need to be adored, too? I mean, so what if he doesn’t know Steely Dan?

So I’ve been wrong. Go for it, ladies. I don’t judge you.

Find the right guy, and teach him a thing or two.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, which means that we’re all crazy busy, me included. I’m busy thinking about when to pick up daughter Francesca from the train and how to smuggle her puppy onto Amtrak, then I’m deciding whether to make a turkey or tofu shaped like a turkey, and finally I have to go hunting for fresh cranberries, so I don’t have to serve canned sauce with its telltale dents. And with the rest of the holidays approaching, like everybody else, I’m busy worrying about the economy. Every day the news reports more layoffs and downturns, and that worries me more than canned cranberries. Banks and car companies get bailouts because they’re big, but none of us do, because we’re little.