Happy Holidays from Beezow-doo-doo Zoppitybop-bop-bop

A couple of years ago, I gave you one of the best gifts I possibly could for Christmas: a sampling of my collection of ridiculous names. I’ve acquired several more delectably moronic names since then (Luv Wrotten, anyone?), and I’m feeling in that generous holiday spirit, so I’m going to share more. I tried not overlap, but there may be a couple from last time that were just too good. My winner for best name of the last two years is at the end, so you have to read the whole thing to find out. Do not scroll down and cheat, loser!

Also, my husband and I are trying to come up with a name for baby No. 2, a girl, and not agreeing on much, even though she’s due in about two months. When tossing around names the other day, husband wisely asked, “How is that going to look on a résumé?” I have a feeling the parents who bestowed the below names never asked themselves that question.

And as last time, these are all real and from here in the middle of the Midwest. I didn’t cull them from national news or anything like that. They’ve been sent to me by people who know I collect crazy names (it’s way more fun than nesting dolls and takes up less space), including reporter friends who run across them in court records and from my own perusals of newspapers and such. They run the gamut on age and ethnicity. I tried to leave out the ones that were obviously foreign and normal for their cultures.

I’ve organized them into groups, starting with just the first names.

Your expectations are too high

Dinero - bring on the pesos!
Dominant - is the sibling named Submissive?
Messiah
Heavenly
Honesty
Queenester - I’m assuming like the Esther from the Bible who saved the people of Israel. That’s a lot to live up to. Not as much as Messiah, though, I guess.
Shrine
Jordache - Never mind. Not a lot to live up to with an 80’s denim brand.

Fine name, but spelled the dumbest way possible

DominiQue - There is no need whatsoever for a capital letter (or apostrophe, for that matter) just randomly stuck in a first name.
Elexsis
Jazzmon
Mellissia
Mykhil
Rossschell - The three consecutive S’s really make this one a stand-out.
Tyszn

The always popular “it looks like it kind of rhymes with diarrhea” category

Kiearea
Day’Teara
Turriah – I imagine this is what a drunk person slurring the word “diarrhea” would make it sound like.

Just. Nope.

Adidas – Shoe brand ≠ equal good person name.
Arkadiusz
CarL’Reese - combining the deadly sins of random capital letters and apostrophes
Cashinita
Cha’Sha
DeEric and DeMarvin -why just be Marvin when you can be DE Marvin?
Joedon - twice the redneck in one name!
Kizuwanda
LaResasha
Qiyamha
Taki
Yankuba

General WTF first names

Audraft – This reminds me too much of the term for when payments automatically come out of your bank account.

Biagio – Like the name of a casino that’s trying really hard to be fancy but just isn’t.

Equeecia – The sound it makes when you’re trying to squeeze something out of an orifice?

Fanandous – This needs to be a new adjective – fantastic and stupendous together. “Those cookies were fanandous!”

Flash – Really? I imagine the middle name is “Of’Lightning” and the brother is Aquaman.

J’Ya – What J’Ya doing for lunch today?

Jelious – A reporter friend sent me the docket entry on this guy, who was for real arrested for domestic violence. Ironic and sad.

Menthol – Mom or dad decided their favorite kind of cigarette was the best name to give a human being. Props.

Morocco – If we’re going to go naming people after African nations, Djibouti is the obvious choice, here.

Samajay – For some reason, this seems like the verb for, “I’m making a peanut butter and jelly and sandwich.”
e.g.
“What are you doing in the kitchen?”
“Samajay.”
“Sounds good. Can you make me one, too?”

Symphanee – That’s. Not. How. To. Spell. That.

Takila – That’s not how to spell that, either.

Tumyia – Like what you’d affectionately call a toddler’s belly.

First, middle and last name combos

This is where things get out of control. I mentioned Luv Wrotten earlier. Ladies, stay away from him and what I presume to be the horrible 80s punk band he certainly belongs to.

My friend Dan once told me he went to elementary school with Buddy Wieners. I want to give that kid a hug right now, and I hope he turned out OK.

Rapture Mapps – God’s going to suck him right out of here before all the topography work is finished.

Befored Bangs (this is a man’s first and middle name) – Did the mom really hate her own hair after she cut fringe into it?

Crystal Metheney – Another docket entry from a reporter. She was, sadly, arrested for drugs.

October Dawn Hallmark – She is her own greeting card.

This name that was totally legally changed to this: Beezow-doo-doo Zopittybop-bop-bop

I know I said I’d tried to avoid obviously foreign names, but, but: Ding Deng. Who’s there? Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.

And finally, the very best name of 2015-16 goes to:

Ecclesiastical Denzel Washington.

Merry Christmas!

The Midwest Bystander takes Manhattan

Not actually us.

I always find getting out of my Midwestern cultural comfort zone to be intriguing, and the United States is so big and diverse, I can do it without even leaving the country. After cancellations with other people, one of my besties and I decided to venture off to New York City together for a long weekend. It was so fun to take a little break from the kiddo (thanks, husband), spend some girl time together, take in a Broadway show, walk 1,470 miles and narrowly avoid being blown up. 

I was last in New York City for a college journalism conference 13 years ago. Ground Zero was still a big hole, and the U.S. declared war on Iraq when I was there. (My friend and I got caught in an anti-war protest and were almost prevented from getting to go to Bloomingdale’s by all the crowds and fences. We didn’t have Bloomingdales at home and it was very exotic for us, OK?) I didn’t even own a cell phone then. It was obviously a long time ago, and things in NYC have changed considerably. 

I did have a wonderful time on this trip: experiencing the 9/11 Museum and Memorial, the Morgan Museum and Library that had an exhibit on Charlotte Bronte - to include her original hand-written manuscript of Jane Eyre (eeek!), enjoying “An American in Paris” on Broadway, eating my weight in ice cream and stumbling upon an amazing festival in Little Italy. The whole time, however, I was acutely aware of my foreignness. I thought I would take this time to outline some of the distinct cultural differences between the Midwest and New York City I noted on this trip:

Food

* Cheese, or the lack thereof - About every 10 feet in New York were these food carts selling fried Middle Eastern food (falafel, gyro, etc.), hot dogs and soft pretzels. I love soft pretzels and cheese. In the Midwest, you assume that your soft pretzel will come with cheese. That’s just how it works. This is not what happens in New York. I was stunned and devastated. It’s just, “Here, enjoy this piece of warm, dry bread.” After being handed the soft pretzel at the cart I purchased it from, I was a little perplexed and thought, “Oh, you must pay for the cheese separately. Kind of a racket, but whatever.” So I asked to buy cheese and was told there was none. I went to two other similar food carts. No cheese there, either. Just more dry bread. We’re in Manhattan for God’s sake, not on a ship that’s been at sea for months. 

* Mexican food, or the lack thereof - Excluding some time in London’s Heathrow airport, New York was the most ethnically diverse place I’ve ever been. Different languages and colors of people all around me, and it was amazing. But there is one group New York is sorely lacking: Mexicans. Generations of Mexican immigrants have brought so much to the Midwest and my hometown of Kansas City: a vibrant culture, a skilled workforce and, of course, delicious, delicious food that also is inexpensive. Apparently, not very many people from Mexico have made it up to New York, and that was painfully obvious when we went to a purported “Mexican” restaurant by Lincoln Center. The food was overpriced, seasoned all wrong, trying too hard to be fancy, and there didn’t appear to be a single Mexican person working in the entire place. It made me long for the enchiladas perlas of Mi Ranchito and the street tacos of Silva’s taco truck (which used to be a restaurant but burned down and they found the body of a vagrant in the rubble and it was very sad but they’re carrying on operating out of this big van with a generator and it is delicious and I can get three tacos for less than $5.)

* Italian food - OK, they win on this one. At the restaurant we ate at on Mulberry Street, the waiters were so Italian they barely even spoke English and had names like Salvatore. I like authentic.

* Money - Yeah, everything cost more there, not just food. I am currently with child, so I could not drink a cocktail, but I noted pretty much all cocktails there would be half that price in Kansas City. I want a cocktail. I miss cocktails. A really girly, fruity one where you can’t taste the alcohol and end up buzzed before your know what happened. Argh, pregnancy. 

Transportation

* Subway - Obviously this beats anything Kansas City has as far as public transit. We’ve got a pretty extensive bus system, but I’ve seen enough videos of attacks on the buses I kind of stay away. Our city was built for cars, anyway. It seems everyone rides the subway in New York despite economic status, and they seem way less likely to shoot each other than the users of KC’s public transit. We saw beggars, sleepers, readers, almost-dry humpers, babies (how their parents got those strollers down to the station and on and off the trains I’ll never know - the subway was the most inaccessible place ever for strollers and wheelchairs), and even an impromptu dance/gymnastic performance. After eating a giant ice cream sundae before getting on the train back to the apartment we’d rented, my bowels decided it was time to clear out. The station where we waited for our train didn’t have a bathroom, and I thought I would poop my pants. I told my husband about it, and he comforted me by saying it wouldn’t be the first time somebody pooped their pants at a subway station, and it probably wouldn’t even be the first time that day. I made it back with poop-free pants. Barely. 

* Walking - Everything looks so much closer on the map, so we were just like, “Eh, let’s walk it.” I don’t have a Fitbit or anything because people with them who are constantly talking about getting their steps in annoy me and I don’t want to be them, but I kind of wish I’d had something to keep track of how far we walked. The subway may be great, but it isn’t everywhere, and the station nearest to where we stayed in our cheap but shady neighborhood in Harlem shut down for the weekend, forcing even longer treks. Also, pretty much only the tourists in Manhattan were fat. Because everyone else is walking hundreds of miles a day. (I read a review of the place I had the giant ice cream sundae stating it was a “tourist trap for chubby-kneed Iowans.”)

* Taxis - I felt soooo New Yorkish when I hailed cabs, like Carrie in “Sex and the City” minus all the sex with multiple partners and expensive outfits and heels. Then I discovered Uber a few weeks later and decided it was so much better and cheaper. 

People

* Body odor - It’s probably because the population density is so much higher in New York than in the Midwest, but I felt like I encountered way more stinkies than normal. Maybe just because I was shoved up against them and they’d been walking a long way, but I don’t get near that kind of B.O. exposure in Kansas City.

* Giant bags for everyone - Everyone, including men, carried a large bag with them at all times. Probably because they just walked six miles to get to their subway station and knew they would need everything they would need to survive for the next 12 hours on their person because there was no shot of running back home. 

* Niceness - Nicer than I thought, but still not Kansas City-nice. Everyone also drove so angrily and honked a lot.

* Bombs -  People who plant bombs are decidedly not nice. We were there when the Chelsea bombings happened. In fact, we had been just down the block from where they found the unexploded one about four hours before it all went down. Fortunately, the Midwest has not been a very target-rich environment for terrorism. 

Shopping

* Canal Street - So this is the place in Chinatown where people try to sell you counterfeit luxury-brand purses and stuff. My friend, N, whom I am only referring to by initial to protect her identity given our shady shopping experiences, had requests from two people back home to procure purses on Canal Street. This involves having Chinese ladies walk up to you, quietly say, “Handbags? You want handbags?” Then usher you over to a corner where they quasi-surreptitiously whip out a laminated sheet with all their options. You tell them what you want, then they disappear to an undisclosed location and return with whatever fake Burberry, Louis Vitton or Hermes bag you requested. They only take cash, and it’s all a negotiation. They also will roll up their long sleeves to show you an arm full of bracelets they can get you. They put your purchase in an opaque, black bag and move on to whispering “Handbags?” to the next person. It’s both underground and yet entirely blatant. While N took on this shady market on behalf of her KC friends, I purchased some cheap and beautiful scarves from the regular stalls and a non-name-brand purse. (“This say $35, but for you, $25.” N insisted I could have negotiated cheaper, but I view negotiating as a form of confrontation, and I hate confrontation, so I don’t do it.) 

* The Oculus - This is an amazing feat of architecture next to One World Trade Center and the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. We thought it was another museum or memorial or something, and when we went inside, we thought we’d stepped into the future. But it was pretty much just a mall with stores we couldn’t afford. And in the middle of it was also sort of a train station. 

On the shuttle back to the economy parking lot at KCI Airport, N and I were with many of the people who’d been on our return flight from NYC. I heard them saying what pretty much every Midwesterner thinks upon returning home from New York:

“We stayed at this apartment that was like a closet. And they pay $2,000 a month in rent for it. Ridiculous.”

“I can’t believe how much I paid for a beer.”

“The 9/11 Museum was so well-done and touching.” 

“I wish we had a subway system.”

And the most resounding sentiment:

“It was a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” 

  

Lazy life hacks for the Pinterest-averse

I don’t do Pinterest. I guess I’m just not aspirational. Nor am I crafty, good at cooking, planning a wedding, redecorating anything or doing anything else that would require my use of the site. I have an account because they made you get one to look at stuff. It didn’t used to be that way. I have pinned two posts ever: a single roasted potato recipe and a thing about how to clean a glass stove top. Both were over a year ago. 

But if you’re ever on the site at all, you’ll see hundreds of thousands of posts about “life hacks.” You know, stuff about how you can use binder clips to organize your pantry or salad tongs to clean blinds. These things claim to make your life easier, but they still seem like a lot of work to me. So I’m going to share with you some truly pin-worthy life-hack stuff here. (I even added lots of photos to make Pinterest like it more.) These are things that were borne out of my own laziness (and paranoia), so you can rest assured they are mildly effective and require very little energy.

Ironing only with a hair straightener

If it can’t be ironed with my hand-me-down Chi, it stays wrinkly in this house. Ain’t nobody got time for ironing with two working adults and a 3-year-old. I try to avoid buying anything that actually needs ironing (button-down shirts, linen, etc.), but my husband kind of needs button-down shirts to look like the professional engineer he is in the winter. The engineer’s summer uniform of choice is of course a polo shirt and khakis. Business casual is so boring for men. Anyway, the only parts of his shirts that ever get ironed are the parts that can effectively be reached with the hair straightener, like the collar, cuffs, button placket and edges. But it does an impressive job, especially considering my husband will often leave these shirts in the dryer for days and then put them in a laundry basket without ever bothering to hang them. They look like they were wadded up in a cow’s ass for a while, but a few swipes with the hair straightener on the edges, and I daresay they look 60 percent better. Plus, the hair straightener is ironing BOTH sides of the fabric at the same time! It’s therefore twice as efficient as a normal iron. And it reduces frizz. Winner, winner chicken dinner.

Foot mopping

Sometimes you need to clean up a small area on the floor (like when you discover your kid spilled applesauce two days ago and it has since crusted over) without getting the whole damn mop out. And you don’t want to bend over because you’re lazy. Bending over is hard. For times like these, I spray a nice all-purpose cleaner on the floor (I prefer ones without death chemicals; Method products don’t have those and are awesome), put a couple paper towels under my foot and just rub it around until it’s all clean. You don’t have to get on your hands and knees, adequate pressure is applied to clean up the mess, and the bottom of your shoe gets pretty clean, too. (I would have posted a picture of this, but unbelievably, I couldn't find any on the internet, and I was too lazy to take one.)

Meat-touching gloves

No butcher ever has been or ever will be this attractive, BTW. But good demo of gloves and meat.

So I eat meat, but I have never been able to tolerate being in proximity to it when it’s raw. It just grosses me out. In high school when I helped out with cooking, I’d put sandwich bags on my hands. As an adult I found something so much better: vinyl physical exam gloves! Usually very near gauze and bandages at the store is the perfect tool for getting up to your wrists in ground beef without getting grossed out! No worries of salmonella burrowing under your fingernails, which in my mind is what happens the second you touch a raw chicken breast. I once made the mistake of getting the latex gloves with powder on them. That is not good in enchiladas, FYI. 

Just let the cat eat his barf

Last week I was walking out the door for work when I heard one of the cats start puking on the kitchen floor. I turned back and saw him ralph up all the food he just ate too quickly. I did not have time to deal with that, so I decided to just leave it and clean it up when I got home. (It was on hardwood - I do not recommend this on carpet.) When I got home nine hours later, I couldn’t even tell where the barf had been. He’d eaten it all right back up. Gross? Maybe, but it saved me a ton of work, and he got the breakfast back he’d previously lost. It seems like we both won. I did foot-mop where I kind of remembered the pile of vomit being. 

Trash night fridge clean-out

I’ve seen schedules about when to clean stuff so you have a nice rotation and nothing ever gets too dirty. I’m not that organized. But every Monday night, anything that’s old in the fridge gets tossed. (Some of it gets garbage-disposed, depending on its size and density.) Because the trash gets picked up the next morning. I’m not going to put moldy casserole in the trash on a Wednesday where it will stink for almost a week. It always goes out on a Monday night (unless it’s a holiday and trash pick-up gets delayed one day). Doing this weekly keeps nasty, old crap from piling up in the fridge. And raccoons generally stay away from our foody trash when it’s out at the curb overnight because it also contains cat turds. That’s my theory why it hasn’t gotten torn up, anyway. And maybe even the raccoons are like, “How old is that lettuce?! Nope.” I know, I know, I should compost. But I just don’t have the will to do that yet. Maybe when my kid is older or something. And worms gross me out. I think you have to have worms in compost.

Chopped, frozen onions

Props to my friend Melinda for introducing me to this one. I know some people cry when they cut onions, but I do more than that. I get instant burning in every sinus cavity, leak from almost all my facial orifices and ruin all the mascara. I think my raw onion reaction is more adverse than most - like borderline Epi-pen worthy. But 98 percent of recipes I like that have onions call for them to be chopped up. So for years I suffered. I put on goggles from my high school chemistry class that I’d saved. I put a clothes pin on my nose. I ran fans. I tried chopping them under water. It was all in vain. Until one day Melinda told me that the processed food gods make frozen onions that are already chopped up! I found them by the French fries. It’s really just onions. It’s not like a bunch of salt is added or anything. And they have changed my life. They should really work with Johnson and Johnson to share the “No More Tears” trademark on those suckers because that’s what has happened for me. I can make sloppy joes without looking like I just watched “Me Before You,” and I don’t spend any time chopping.

Etsy

Much to my mother’s disappointment, I am not crafty. Pretty much every decorative DIY thing on Pinterest looks like it would make be bored to do and be too much work. I would rather read a book than turn a dresser into something shabby chic any day. I don’t want to knit, paint anything with chevrons, reframe vintage mirrors, make a plaster cast of any of my child’s body parts, make God knows what out of an old window frame, etc. etc. Just give me well-written fiction (preferably historical), and I will be so much happier than I would be if I were covered in modge podge. However, I do like some of these crafty things. I just don’t want to take the time to make them. That is what Etsy was made for, my friends. You pay someone else to be crafty for you. Then you have neat, unique stuff and you didn’t have to work for it. The little felted sheep on the invitations for my son’s second birthday party? Etsy. The gorgeous, hand-crafted wooden step stool for the bathroom? Etsy. The unique turquoise necklace for my friend’s birthday? Etsy, Etsy, Etsy. I support independent artisans, and I never have to sew anything.

Please, dear readers, take these lazy life hacks and use them! Pin them! This isn’t even in super-annoying slide show format! Stop full-on ironing, bending over to clean stuff and chopping onions. Does the thought of putting chalkboard paint on anything or making a DIY baseboard-cleaning paste make you cringe? Then come join me in the anti-Pinterest world. Leave that cat barf there for a little while, sit back and enjoy a good book with me.

The Tear Jerker (i.e. why I should file a lawsuit against Warner Bros.)

Me, after watching this movie.

I don’t cry pretty, little girly tears, accompanied by feminine little sniffles. When I cry, it is U-G-L-Y. Splotchy redness - especially on the nose; swollen, red eyes and overall facial puffiness. Snot flows forth from my nostrils with a ferocity topped only by Niagara Falls or my husband’s morning pee. 

So when I went with some friends to the theater this past weekend to see the jerkingest of tear jerker movies I have ever seen, it was not pretty. I won’t get into what movie it was because I don’t want to ruin it for anyone, but suffice it to say I have never cried so much at a film, ever. And I have seen both “Old Yeller” and “Beaches.” It took all my willpower to stop the sobs from escaping in big, hyperventilating gasps that would disturb everyone else in the theater. 

I had a package of tissues in my purse, but when the tears and snot started flowing, they came out so aggressively, I did not have time to dig in the black hole that is my purse to find them. So I had to grab the first thing I could: Chipotle napkins I’d stuffed in there weeks ago. (I always take whatever napkins I don’t use from a restaurant. For occasions such as this. Or when my kid spills something. Or when I want to buy fewer napkins for my house.) While excellent for salsa removal from one’s fingers, a Chipotle napkin is not a wise choice for a swollen nose that is spewing forth devastation-driven mucus. I’d gotten myself together, and then tragedy struck again in the movie, and again, the only thing I had time to obtain before I’d soaked myself with tears and snot was another Chipotle napkin. Obviously, I should have been more prepared. 

When the movie was over, I had to go to the bathroom to get myself back together. And also because I drank a big Icee and my bladder was full, but mostly because my friends and I were going out to dinner afterward and I didn’t want to look like an emotionally overwrought circus clown. One of my friends also had to use the facilities, while the three others remained in the lobby discussing the moral implications of the movie we’d just seen. 

So as I’m shutting the door to my bathroom stall, the head of a girl who I’d guess was about 7 years old popped in. Like I almost shut her head in the stall door. Then she looked at me, her face colored with concern, and said, “What movie did you see?!” I told her, and then said it was really sad. I wasn’t sure where else to go from there, as her face was still preventing me from closing the door to pee, and she seemed like she still wanted to talk. So I asked her what movie she saw. 

“The Alice in Wonderland one.”

“Was it sad, too?”

“Hmm-mmm.” (Shakes head.)

“Oh. I’m going to pee now, OK?”

“OK.” 

Then she left. I could hear my friend who came in with me snickering a few stalls down. When we’d both finished our business and came out, she said, “What was that about?”

“I think that 7-year-old girl was really, really worried about whether I was going to be OK. I guess I look pretty rough.”

I proceeded to reapply all my mascara and try to tamp down the redness of my nose with some powder. I think I looked semi-normal by the time we got to the restaurant. But the pain wasn’t over yet. 

See, when my son was 11 months old, he lacerated my cornea with a stick. The doctor told me it was so bad, my “eyeball almost burst.” I didn’t even know that was a thing that could happen. Ever since then, it gives me occasional trouble (and my vision in that eye got twice as bad). Particularly when I sleep, it dries up, and when I open my eyes again, it peels a little bit of the cornea off and feels awful. This is especially bad after I’ve been crying. And the more I cry, the worse it is. So I put my special eye drops in before bed to prevent this. (And then I took melatonin because I knew there was no way I was going to fall asleep on my own with the devastating events of the movie - which yes, was entirely fictional - running through my head.) I put the drops in again in the middle of the night when I woke up with discomfort. I put them in again when I woke up in the morning. But my eye still felt absolutely wretched. It felt like someone had poured sand and salt in it and just rubbed it around with a rock. I used up my ridiculously expensive eye drops.

I think all of this adds up to a pretty good lawsuit against the movie’s creators for emotional distress (for both me AND the little girl who I clearly disturbed by my very ugly-cried appearance in the theater bathroom) and physical damages (nose rubbed raw by a Chipotle napkin and a sandy eye, anyone?). Smarmy attorneys, take note, and leave your contact information in the comments. 

Congratulations, graduates (revised)!

Aaah, graduation season: When legions of idealistic and pretty clueless young people embark on their next phase of life. It’s been a long time since I graduated from anything, but it really doesn’t feel that long ago. I spoke at my high school graduation. I wasn’t valedictorian. I actually was ranked fifth in my class. (I attribute this to the fact that I took dual-credit college courses instead of recreational sports my senior year. Pulling an A- in college algebra put me a smidge behind the people who got a straight A in badminton. My school obviously did not give any GPA weight to harder classes, about which I remain a little miffed.) The valedictorian did speak, but my school also had try-outs for another speaking spot. I am one of the weird ones who enjoy public speaking, and I obviously felt I had very valuable wisdom to impart to my classmates. There actually were a lot of people who tried out, and I was pleased that I was selected to speak. 

I don’t remember a damn thing I said. I think it was something about how we were the class of 2000 and how monumental that was. In hindsight, it wasn’t really that big of a deal. And it is with that hindsight that I draft a revised speech - a speech I would give if my 33-year-old wisdom were put into my 17-year-old brain. So, here is the speech I would give to my graduating classmates today:

“Well, class of 2000, we made it! All the computers and clocks in the world didn’t stop like everyone was freaked out about a few months ago, so that was good, right? Not that I was that worried about Y2K when the actual new year rang in, as I was holding my friend’s hair while she threw up at the party at that guy’s grandma’s house when the clock struck midnight. And to all the drunk friends I sober-drove around this year, you’re welcome. You are very lucky to have a friend who is an ardent enough rule-follower not to drink underage but not ardent enough to avoid underage drinking parties altogether. You will need risk-avoiders like me later in life. My people will keep you from totally screwing up, and your people will help mine live a little. 

“Speaking of totally screwing up, did you notice that like 70 people in our class dropped out? Of high school. High school isn’t that hard. Fortunately, they were the ones who did most of the bullying in middle school, so it was pretty nice to see them go, right? Some of them you soon will be supporting with your tax dollars. They will out-breed the successful among us by a ratio of roughly four children to one. Their tattoos also will outnumber everyone else’s by about the same ratio. And maybe one of the meanest ones might end up being pursued by police in a live-broadcasted car chase. Maybe she’ll end up in jail in the same building where I do public relations for a large law enforcement agency someday, and I will relish her downfall and then feel a little guilty for feeling that way. I mean, I’m just throwing out ideas, here.

“And to my fellow female classmates, if you’re like me, high school has been challenging, romantically. The guys you liked always seemed to go with girls who were dumber and easier than you, and sometimes less attractive. Oh sure, they liked to flirt with you when their girlfriends weren’t around, but you wanted something more substantial. Fear not. High school relationships rarely matter. And the guys you’re crushing on now? In 15 years, most of them will be overweight, and/or bald and/or boring. Save yourself for a guy who has not hit his hotness peak yet. Many of the ones you think look kind of skinny or dorky now will be ten times hotter at age 35, when all the jocks you presently yearn for are looking into Rogaine and moving out to the next hole on their belts. And go for someone as smart as you. When the initial lust has burned away, you still will enjoy matching wits and having meaningful conversations. That’ll last you a lifetime. And, let’s face it, the smarter ones will make more money. In fact, I think you should go to California and try to get to know this guy named Mark Zuckerberg. Just a hunch.

“To those kind-of skinny, dorky guys: your time is coming. The quality girls will be waiting for you. To the jocks:  you’re not going to be able to eat like that for much longer without consequences. 

“We are incredibly fortunate, though, to have some of the finest television shows and music that ever will be created. ‘My So-Called Life,’ ‘Friends’ and ‘Dawson’s Creek’ on TV with Oasis, Alanis Morissette and Matchbox 20 on the radio. Future generations will lament the suckiness of their own entertainment by comparison.  

“But I ask that you please get out of here, at some point. You can come back and live in this town, that’s fine, but see what else is out there. See what’s outside our state and our country, even if just for a short visit. Read and learn about points of view that differ from your own. Get to know someone different than you. Or else you’ll just be another redneck with truck nuts who will someday blame a guy named Barack Obama for everything that’s wrong with your life and watch ridiculously biased 24-hour news stations. Or trashy reality television. It's just 'Real World' right now, but I think a time is coming when legions of television shows will focus on the unscripted and highly edited world of moronic narcissists. You will get more ignorant by watching.

“We’re much dumber than we think, in fact. We giggle and travel in packs and annoy people at shopping centers. We do stupid things to impress members of the opposite sex. We wear stupid clothes. What are you thinking with the JNCO jeans? (The Doc Martens, though, they’ll last for years.) We think things are black and white and that our actions have little consequence. We’ll figure it out eventually, but we’ll get hurt and hurt others in the process. 

“So you should wait a while to have kids. You’re not ready for it. You’re immature, impatient, selfish and have so little foresight. You need to get wiser. You need to get some selfish desires out of the way, because that kid will someday demand your very sleep from you. And probably make it so your hips will never again be able to fit into the pants you’re wearing now.

“We, by and large, all will gain weight. Most of us aren’t done growing yet. We’re not too far off, though, so take it easy on the Fritos. Stop drinking pop now. It will give you diabetes and eat your teeth and stomach lining. Stay active. There’s not going to be any more P.E. class or track practice making you do stuff. You’ll have to do it on your own. And in your mid-to-late 20’s, your metabolism will slow significantly. You’ll eat handfuls of Halloween candy your coworker’s kid collected that they brought into the office so their child wouldn’t go haywire, and you immediately will get nauseous. You can handle that kind of sugar now, but not so far in the future, it will send you into a glucose crash the likes of which you won’t know until you have to take one of those stupid prenatal diabetes tests.

“So, class of 2000, keep all these things in mind as we celebrate today the mediocre accomplishment of graduating high school. May this be one of the lesser things in which you take pride in the future!”

Manfluenza: The struggle is not real

I’m getting over a cold. It’s been a fairly nasty one. I even stayed home from work for a day. But I only did that because things have been rather slow at the office. If it had been busy, I would have soldiered on, avoiding contact with coworkers and frequently washing my hands and sanitizing things around me. But throughout the dredges of this rhinovirus, I have carried on with adulting. I have taken care of my child in the mornings while hung over from Nyquil - playing memory card games with him and letting him “help” mop the floor. I’ve met social obligations. I cleaned and made dinners. And I’ve largely been pleasant while doing so. I have sucked it up, taken the good cold medicine you have to get behind the counter and kept on with life. The only thing I changed was I temporarily stopped working out, which I needed to do anyway to rest an IT band injury (a part of my body I didn’t even know existed until I hurt it). 

A couple days later, my husband came down with the same cold. And the world ended. He claimed his head felt disconnected from his body when he took the same cold medicine I did. When it was his turn to get up with our toddler on the weekend morning, he lay lifeless on the couch and put Bob the Builder on Netflix to entertain the kiddo. While I usually let him sleep in until 10 on weekends when it’s my turn to get up early, he came in around 8:45 a.m. begging me to take over because he just couldn’t handle laying on the couch anymore and needed to rest from his exhaustive supervision of our child. He is cranky and largely silent. A mention that it is his turn to clean up the pee that ended up outside the litter box is met with incredulity that I would demand any sort of physical activity when he is in such a state. He has a man cold. Or, as I like to call it, manfluenza. 

There’s a reason God chose women to bear children. Because he knew men couldn’t handle it. They do not have the capacity for prolonged pain and discomfort. Example: I’m in charge of blood drives at the law enforcement agency where I work. You know who always turns out in spades? Women. The office workers and dispatchers. The female officers. And the guys on the SWAT team? Nada. I cornered a whole squad of them one day and asked them to come donate. They refused. Scared of needles, they said. (These are the guys who bust into the homes of the armed and dangerous and risk getting shot daily.) At our last drive, I apologized to the phlebotomist who was drawing my blood for such a low turn-out of dudes in our male-dominated organization. She said it’s that way at every mobile blood drive, and estimated the female-to-male ratio at these drives to be 80 percent to 20 percent. I asked why.

“Because men are wimps,” she said. 

(To be fair, my spouse is a regular blood donor.) 

And I am by no means singling out my husband, here. This is a universal phenomenon. There is a whole web site devoted to this. And then there’s this gem from WebMD: 

“Researchers at England's University of Glasgow studied nearly 1,700 people and found that men were more likely than women to overrate their common cold symptoms. The researchers theorized that men and women have different thresholds for perceiving and reporting symptoms, rather than actual differences in symptoms.”

About a year into our marriage, I got my first look at real manfluenza. My husband had what obviously was a 24-hour stomach bug (which I never got) right around New Year’s Eve. At the same time, one of my friends had just had a baby, and I wanted to go visit them in the hospital. I told my husband as I was leaving for work that I was going to stop by the hospital after work and would therefore be late coming home. 

He said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. What if I die when you’re gone? I think you should take me to the hospital now.” There was no humor in his voice. He was dead serious. 

I played the odds he wouldn’t die and went to work anyway, leaving him at home alone to convalesce. I called late in the afternoon to check in on him. 

“I don’t know if I’m going to make it,” he said. “Can you at least take me to see a doctor?” 

“Are you still throwing up?” I asked.

“No, I haven’t for a while. But I’m so… so…. tired.”

Needless to say, he recovered without medical intervention. And I visited my friend and her new baby.

All my girlfriends report similar bouts of manfluenza with their spouses. When I was growing up, I remember my mom still doing laundry and making dinner when she was sick. My dad? He just sat on the couch when ill and snapped at anyone who dared approach him. 

My dad did get sick less often than my mom, though. The opposite is true in our house. In general, I am healthier than my husband. I get sick less frequently than him, and when I do get sick, I’m over it quicker. This could be because I have several habits he doesn’t, which include eating fruits and vegetables, working out fairly regularly and not staying up late to play computer games. When I was pregnant a few years ago, we both got the stomach flu (which I strongly suspect to be norovirus obtained from an anniversary dinner for which we paid $160 at a purportedly swanky Argentinian restaurant - but I digress). Despite my pregnancy-compromised immune system, my illness consisted of nausea and vomiting for just 4 or 5 hours at night followed by a single day of sharting. My husband vomited for three days straight before the infection moved south. I had already been back to work for days at that point and had gone on about the business of growing a human being inside of me. 

Men also really want to make sure you know they’re sick. There’s nothing stoic about an ill male. Of course there’s the whining. And telling people they don’t feel good. But the worst is the fighter jet-decibel-level sneezes. I and most women I know try to make our sneezes as small and confined as possible. Especially when there’s, say, a sleeping 2-year-old nearby. But not men. Ooooh no. They want everyone in a 2-mile radius to know they have a nasal irritant. Which is why I conclude with a link to one of my favorite Saturday Night Live skits ever.