My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places (8 page)

Part of the reason I don’t care is that most of the people around me don’t seem to care either. It’s as though somewhere along the line, without saying or signing anything, America reached an agreement: If we all pull together and look like hell, we can make this country great. We can be people who don’t feel the edges of our waistbands! We can be people wearing sweat suits in the airports of Europe! One nation, undivided, with Velcro and stretch panels for all.

Good House Hunting

Our poor realtor.
She’s sent us listings for 16 weeks, and we haven’t found a place we want. The other day—true story—we saw a listing that said “yard, complete with outhouse.” Another included the phrase “classic midcentury tunnel entrance.”

Had the century in question been the 15th, and had the home come with a moat and the threat of enemy attack, I could see where the tunnel might be a selling point. But this was a 1952 house.

One listing bragged of “solid surface” countertops. Fabulous, I thought, because our last house had liquid countertops, and we had to hire skin divers to get to the spice rack.

We’re like that finicky Persian cat in the old Friskies ads that turned its nose up at everything its owner fed it. (It’s difficult to turn up a nose that is already so far turned up as to have penetrated the sinus cavities, but this cat managed it.)

Still, it’s been a learning experience. For instance, we have learned the origins of the term In-Law Apartment. This is a basement living area so low ceilinged and devoid of light you would never move your own parents in, but your wife’s parents would fit right in, alongside any enemy soldiers you’ve hauled from the moat and shackled to the walls.

Once we’ve whittled down the choices, the fun begins. For all of you who make a habit of looking in friends’ medicine cabinets when you’re over for dinner, the Open Home tour is not to be missed. Though the ensuing gossip is less titillating, as you don’t know whom it’s about. Psst, some people on 44th Street in Oakland use beard mascara.

Unfortunately, these days, most Open Homes have been cleared of the owner’s belongings and “staged” with generically tasteful Pottery Barn furniture and accessories. It’s as though there are whole neighborhoods populated by people who own nothing but brocade throw pillows and eat only colorful Italian dry goods, positioned with their labels facing forward. Often, the staging includes a breakfast tray of croissants and coffee lying on the bed, as though the homeowners had been abruptly chased out and left to wander the streets in their pajamas. Frequently, they’ve left so quickly that the fire is still burning. Ed will kneel down and inspect the fireplace. “We just missed them, Kemo Sabe,” he’ll say.

Last week, I caught Ed eating the staging. On a table out on the deck, a plate of strawberries had been placed alongside a chilled bottle of wine and two glasses. Ed believed they were treats set out to win us over, like the chocolate-chip cookies Realtors will bake just prior to your visit in an attempt to mask evil odors seeping up from the in-law quarters.

This afternoon, Ed has been threatening to visit the upstairs bathroom for reasons other than having a look. Ed’s GI tract is timed to go off about three hours after the second cup of Sunday morning coffee, i.e., during our afternoon house hunt. This means he routinely faces the existential torment of an endless array of pristine toilets, all of them off-limits.

Ed looks at our map. “Which place had the outhouse?”

Perhaps this is our problem. Perhaps we’re paying too much attention to the cookies and the pillows and the old people moaning in the cellar, and not enough to the actual house. However, I remain confident that one day, when neither of us is expecting it, we will walk into a house, look at each other and say, “This is it.” And our Realtor, like the exasperated Persian cat owner, will sigh with relief and collapse onto a tasteful arrangement of brocade pillows.

Counter Attack

It is my personal belief
that the people who install the mirrors and lighting in department store dressing rooms are in direct cahoots with the cosmetic companies. All down the rows of rooms, you hear the sad moans and horrified gasps of women confronted with their own fluorescent-lit reflections. My eye bags, I realized the other day while shopping with my friend Wendy, had ceased to be an anatomical feature and were approaching the status of an actual piece of luggage. “You can almost see the little handles,” I wailed. Wendy was in the next room trying on a jacket. “My skin is green,” she was saying. I assured Wendy it was light reflecting off the jacket. “But the jacket is brown,” she said.

We went directly from there to the makeup department, where a facialist determined that we needed help; a whole new approach. As with all major renovations, this one was to begin with foundation. I told the salesgirl I don’t like foundation, because it sinks into my wrinkles and makes them look even deeper, if you can imagine any deeper wrinkles than the kind I’ve got. She could not, of course, for she was 19 and the only wrinkles she owned were the kind that appear on her nose when forced to contemplate the horrors of middle-aged skin.

“That’s because you’re not using a primer,” said the girl. Her name was Elaine. Her company actually sells a product called Face Primer. “You wouldn’t paint a room without putting on primer first, would you?”

“Of course not,” I said, because my husband was not around to expose me as a liar. We recently painted our den and I had tried to argue for a single coat. Why spend an extra two days painting when you could just put a lower wattage bulb in the overhead light?

In keeping with the home repair theme, this brand of makeup was to be put on with brushes. The salesgirl, who had gotten me into the makeover chair, was applying primer with one such brush. She suggested buying their four-pack of specialized makeup brushes, which came in a pink leatherette case. “It’s an investment,” she said. Did that mean that over time the brushes would become more valuable, and that one day I could cash them in and retire? It did not. It meant they were very expensive. The foundation brush alone cost $42.

“What is it, mink?” I asked. I was trying to be funny, but the line landed far shy of its mark, for the brush was, in fact, Siberian blue squirrel. “I’ve never seen a blue squirrel,” Wendy commented.

“Now you know why,” I said. I pictured entry-level makeup company flacks, sent out to stalk the northern forests with BB guns.

“Maybe they just trim their little tails and let them go,” Wendy said charitably.

Elaine said that my brush portfolio would last 10 to 15 years if I took care of the bristles. This entailed using the company’s Brush Bath and Brush Cleanser. “You want to treat them like your own hair,” Elaine said. She was wrong. I wanted to treat them like squirrels treat their own hair. Shouldn’t that be enough?

Elaine wasn’t listening. She had moved on. She was applying a $35 skin luminizer, which, she said, “minimizes fine lines.” For instance, the fine line between luminous skin and highway robbery.

“That is so pretty on you,” said Elaine. Notice the structure of this sentence. It is the makeup that’s pretty, not me. Wendy told me I had a bad attitude, that I looked fabulous. She handed me a mirror. I had to admit that I looked, if not fabulous, a bit less washed out.

I considered buying it all: foundation, makeup, makeup remover, primer, sealant, luminizer, cleanser, moisturizer, brushes, brush cleanser, brush bath, brush masseuse, brush finishing school . . . Instead, I went down the street to the hardware store and bought some 25-watt bulbs.

Unpopular Mechanics

My old mechanic, Stephen Lee,
was an honest man. One morning I had my car towed to his garage with a note affixed, stating, “Will not start!!”

He called my office to tell me that the reason it wouldn’t start was that the gas tank was empty. He could have lied and said it was the starter. Then he said, “I’m charging you $50—because you’re stupid!” which was possibly more honesty than was called for, but so be it.

Stephen Lee retired early, an event I take no small amount of credit for, having owned a sickly 1966 Volvo these past ten years. I did not take the news well, for it meant finding another mechanic. I do not trust car mechanics. I don’t know anything about engines, because I, like other women, lack the take-apart gene.

From a young age, the male feels a powerful need to pry the backs off mechanical objects and disassemble them to see what makes them tick. If the family is lucky, the compulsion will strike just before the picture tube or what-have-you would have blown or otherwise stopped ticking on its own.

The female does not share this compulsion, except when it comes to men she is dating. Many’s the time I’ve tried to open up Ed and see what makes him tick (neurosis and bran, so far as I’ve been able to figure out).

Anyway, men understand motors and women don’t. You may say that this is a stereotype, and I won’t argue with you because I know even less about stereos than I know about cars. So your male mechanic can say to your female car owner, “You’ve got a fraying bammy crank in your left vorculator, and your frunchions are shot. Gonna run you $700,” and there’s no way for us to know if this is true or if, in fact, it’s his home entertainment center that needs the new vorculator.

My new mechanic, Andy, seems like a nice enough fellow. I base this primarily on the fact that he breeds parakeets in a little aviary inside the shop. Though part of me believes there’s a how-to book out there for shady car mechanics that includes the line: “Set up a parakeet aviary. Women will think you’re nice.”

I recently took my car in for a tune-up, hoping this would solve the problem it was having. “When I hit the gas, it goes, ‘UNH UNH UNH UNH UNH,’ ” I said intelligently. Andy took notes while I talked, and nodded, like a concerned therapist, though for all I know the notes said, “Total ding-dong. Give her the fraying bammy crank story.”

Andy’s theory was that water and “sediment” had been getting into the gas tank through my ill-fitting gas cap. This would cost $450 because, being men, they had to take apart the whole rear end of the car to get the tank out and clean it up.

“Can’t you just clean it out with a suction thingie?”

There was a pause, while Andy debated whether it was worth $450 to hang up and never have to listen to my voice again. “I don’t have a ‘suction thingie.’ ”

Andy said I was putting the cart before the horse. I’m not sure what he meant by this, but a horse and cart sounded pretty appealing right about then.

Then he said, “If I do it your way, will you sign a form saying ‘Mary Roach agrees that this might not work and that she won’t yell at me if it doesn’t?’ ” I considered the possibility that Andy was an honest man and that my car was the more appropriate target for my anger. I agreed to do it his way and spent the $450. As usual, I went away feeling like a sucker. Or a suction thingie. But let’s not get technical.

Congested and Confused

When I was young,
a nose had few choices when it came to cold remedies. There were the capsules filled with cupcake sprinkles, and there was the antifreeze-looking stuff with its own little medicine cup. There was also that nasal spray bottle that breathed in and out in the TV ads, but frankly, this was unnerving. It was like having a tiny obscene phone caller living in your medicine cabinet.

It’s not so simple anymore. Today’s cold sufferer must confront The Wall of Cold Remedies. There are pills for people with stuffy noses and pills for people with nasal congestion, who are, I suspect, simply people with stuffy noses and advanced degrees, or, otherwise put, stuffy people with stuffy noses. Perhaps because I don’t have an advanced degree, I don’t understand some things. For example, the difference between sinus congestion and nasal congestion. Fortunately, there are helpful anatomical drawings on the boxes. These tell us that the sinuses are the sink drain located over the upper nose, whereas the nasal passages are the dripping faucet down below.

Possibly a cheaper and faster remedy would be to have Ed, my husband, use a plunger on me. The facial suction marks would be a source of embarrassment, but no worse than the embarrassment endured by the guy on the 24-Hour box with the clock installed on his head. Every day at noon he has to pry the hour hand out of his eye socket. No doubt there’s a special pill for that too.

I’m not a fan of what the drug companies call “cocktail” remedies: a single pill that treats nasal congestion, cough, headache, fever, sore throat, loose shingles, rising interest rates, pushy salesmen, cracked O-rings, and a dozen other things you don’t actually have. Especially puzzling is the combination of a cough suppressant and expectorant. Why would you seek to “loosen chest congestion,” readying it for travel, and at the same time shut down the launching mechanism?

Seeking the gentle simplicity of yesteryear, I reached for the bottle of NyQuil with its adorable medicine cup hat. Then I stopped. There’s a DayQuil now too. Soon there would be a Dusk-quil, and a Daylight-Savings-quil, and a Darkest-Hour-Just-Before-the-Dawn-quil. Then my gaze strayed two shelves down, to something entirely new and possibly fabulous: Breathe Right vapor nasal strips. These are a variation of the nose strips you see football players wearing. Instead of simply trying to unclog the mess inside your nostrils, the Breathe Right strip holds them open wider, so there’s room for everything: congestion, airflow, toilet plunger, movie tickets. Plus, you enjoy the unique motivational pick-me-up of feeling like a linebacker. Rather than lying around the house moaning for soup, you find yourself up and about, grunting and shoving. People laugh at your shiny nylon trousers and you hurl them to the ground! You dislocate their bones, and when you’re done, an NFL pension awaits. Way to feel better!

There is one more thing to keep in mind (that’s the area above and to the rear of the sink drain). If you take a pill that cures all your cold symptoms, no one will know you are sick. No one will pity you or let you out of your chores or tell you to take the rest of the afternoon off and read junky magazines in bed. There should be a pill that, while easing your overall distress, leaves intact one or two of the showier symptoms, the sympathy-getters. Whoever comes up with this pill will become very rich, so rich he can afford his own mansion, and another for his mother, and one for the heavy breather in his medicine cabinet.