Increasingly Socially Awkward

Last summer my husband and I were invited to a barbecue with two other couples. These couples are nice couples, upstanding citizens, god-fearing couples (unlike my heathen husband and I) who are the kind of people who, if they accidentally didn’t get charged for beer at the grocery store, would go back and pay for it, unlike myself who went “Free beer!” and drank some even though I don’t like beer that much.

So maybe I shouldn’t have expected to fit in. In retrospect, this makes everything pretty much my fault.

When we first arrived to the barbecue, our hostess informed us that, should we need to use the bathroom, we should turn right at the end of the hall. Use the bathroom on the right, not on the left, she very clearly said, and you better believe I listened carefully because when it comes to bathrooms, I am a rule follower.

There were no problems at first except for the fact that I didn’t consume any carbs with dinner but did drink the heck out of the “grown-up” lemonade. I had been craving lemonade. I hadn’t had any all summer so I immediately drank a whole cup of it before I ate anything, even though I wasn’t aware of quite how MUCH vodka was in it.

Obviously, when I needed to use the bathroom after everyone was finished with dinner, I turned right at the end of the hall and headed down it.

That’s when I got a weird feeling. I could see the bathroom door was open, but called out anyway just on the off chance that something bad might be happening, which it was. From the hallway I could see the reflection of our host in the shower doors. He was sitting on the toilet with his pants around his ankles. When he heard me call out he, of course, yelled “Occupied!” and pulled the sliding door closed, at which point I was already tripping over my feet backing down the hallway with the kind of urgency that only a person who has just seen another person they just met that night sitting on the pot can feel.

I then broke the only rule of the night and used the bathroom at the other end of the hallway. I was pretty much in shock at that point. As soon as I sat down, I leaned forward and put my face in my hands to take a moment to compose myself, and that’s when I saw the eye. The one eye. One eye staring directly into my face.

The reason we had been warned not to use this bathroom was apparently because a chihuahua with one eye was nesting in the bathtub for the evening, and now that it saw me sitting on the toilet, decided to check me out through the shower door. It watched me as I finished peeing, which you can bet I did pretty quickly.

When I got back to the dining area, all five adults were at the table, happily dealing out cards. At this point I figure the host and I have some kind of special bond because we both had an awkward encounter and now we would have to fudge our way through a pleasant evening. It would be equally hard for both of us but we would both be willing to make the sacrifice because we were ultimately good people who cared about the well-being of the group. However, when I looked at him, he made no sign that anything weird had happened.

That was when I realized that I had seen his reflection but he hadn’t seen mine, and he didn’t even know I had seen his at all. This awkwardness was mine alone to bear.

In desperation I looked at my husband and attempted to communicate a whole sentence to him via facial expressions, which has never once worked with my husband like it always did with my sister.

What I tried to say with my facial expression was: I saw Sam pooping!

Apparently my face just looked weird. So my husband communicated that back to me.

Husband’s face: Your face looks weird.

My face: I saw Sam pooping!

Husband’s face: You know I can’t read facial expression language.

My face: I saw Sam pooping by accident. Well, he wasn’t accidentally pooping; I accidentally saw him pooping! *pause* And I saw a one-eyed dog! Staring at me from the bathtub!

By then my husband whispered “What’s wrong?” but everyone was done dealing the cards and explaining the rules of the game and I decided to just barrel ahead with the evening. I had another glass of lemonade.

As you can guess, I did not behave in any kind of normal way that night; I became increasingly socially awkward, at one point illustrating an anecdote with an honest-to-god Jerry Lewis dancing impression. For this little venture I actually stood up and executed the dance in as Lewis-esque a manner as possible, the way my siblings and I has always done for fun. When I finished the little dance, every other adult was staring at me with their jaws dropped. No one had found it funny, no one had even seen that movie, no one else would have done that dance and THANK GOD AT LEAST I DIDN’T SING.

Obviously, they all had to conclude that I was just a crazy drunk lady, not, in fact, in a social situation that was very hard for me to survive in. For the next several weeks I lived in humiliation, and that is the story of how I saw a guy pooping and a one-eyed dog and gained a reputation as the increasingly socially awkward lady who doesn’t get invited back to barbecues although, if I did, I wouldn’t drink any lemonade because then I probably would not have had to pee.

The end.

I think you can tell how I was feeling. Also, I didn’t arrive with that hat. It was part of the game, I swear.

 

P.S. This is not even the first time I’ve seen a guy I didn’t really know sitting on the toilet. In 7th grade my friend and I were playing hide-and-seek indoors and I walked in on her dad sitting on the toilet with the newspaper all a-spread in front of him. At least in that instance he was aware that he had been spied, and we both avoided each other in mutually earned shame for the rest of our lives. Like you do.

How to Win a Fist Fight (In Fifth Grade)

Let me first establish one thing: I have never been one of those people who get into fights. Not even as a kid. I wasn’t some tomboy, tree-climbing, army-playing kid; I was one of those ‘inside children’ who read lots of Anne of Green Gables and played the piano and watched cartoons and avoided sweating at all costs.

All-in-all, the fact that I did so well in my one fist fight (using the phrase loosely) ever speaks decently to my survival ability.

Here’s the story: in fifth grade I rode the bus to and from school with two brothers and a sister, and it was a long, sweaty ride. By the time we got home my hair came loose from whatever ponytail or braid it had originally been wrangled into, had curled up from all the humidity, tangled, and was pretty much a wild bramble–and not in that charming forest maiden kind of way–that got in my face all the time. This figures in later, stay with me.

On Wednesdays my siblings and I would go straight from the bus to our piano teacher’s house, where her three kids, the three kids she babysat in the afternoon, and the four of us would all run around in her backyard like rival dog gangs who thought they might want to play together but weren’t sure. Most times I was inside quietly reading, but I guess I didn’t have a book this particular day. That is how I came to be in the backyard when a kid from a rival dog gang picked on my little sister who would have been only in first grade.

Yelling ensued, and this feral rival-boy picked up a heavy toy record player and flung it at me frisbee-like. It hit me in the hip with enough force to (later) bruise and (instantly) send me into the kind of rage in which any glimmer of humanity is erased and….well….it’s rather feral, if I haven’t drilled that into this story enough.

In a lot of pain and blind from the constant tangle of hair that was never NOT in my face, I roared–I’m certain that happened–and made the angriest of grande jetes across the yard with one single thought in my head: I will pull his nose off. I WILL PULL HIS NOSE OFF.

He seemed pretty scared running from me and I doubt he relished the sight of this fiendish child-witch coming at him, but I knocked him down and straddled his chest. Blind as a shih-tsu from the aforementioned hair, I did my level best to literally pull his literal nose off his literal face.

But my aim was off and it turns out that I was pulling on his upper lip instead, which, if you give it a try right now, you will see can actually be very painful.

He squealed and wriggled madly until my brother and sister pulled me off of him, which is apparently a thing that people do when they are afraid someone they love is about to commit a criminal assault.

Rival Boy cried a lot after and I feel super bad about it now, but if you are interested in someday winning a fight and you plan on going Red Ross, don’t rule out pulling on your opponent’s upper lip. Guaranteed: if you are up against a third grade boy, you will totally win.

Broccoli Cream Pie

If you think about it, there are not nearly enough desserts made with broccoli. It’s an untapped market, y’all.

Wise Men Say: Turn You Crazy Installment

Warning: this article may be offensive to some readers. I know not everyone thinks Mormonism is harmful or sexist, but this article is written for those who do. It is not expressly intended to hurt the feelings of those who don’t.

There are many times in which I find myself at a loss for words to explain the culture in which I was steeped. My ineffective descriptions leave people baffled as to my personal brand of screwed up…….and everyone has their own brand. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

All the words I know to describe the religion of my people have ceased to mean much; saying ‘sexist on the most fundamental level’ and ‘oppressive’ and ‘dehumanizing’ all have as much bite as when people describe political opponents as ‘Nazis’. Nobody is listening to that anymore.

But recently my favorite satirist of all time, LDS Stake President Paternoster, wrote about an article on the LDS (Mormon) website giving instructions to so-called “sister missionaries”. His source material was so outrageous that even I, who should certainly know better, doubted its veracity.

I was so wrong.

Here are a few choice quotes from LDS admonitions to its lady PR representatives that certainly need no elaboration or explanation from me:

“Sleep on a satin pillowcase” to preserve not only your hair style but also your divine femininity.” Because God knows hairstyles are the very foundation of femininity.

Significant amounts of diet advice are provided: “take small helpings, no seconds, and cut down the next day”.

“Never, never eat late at night! When you come home late after a discussion and you have not had time for dinner, eat a little salad or fruit and then go straight to bed and think how much skinnier you will be by not eating a large meal until morning.”

God abhors a fatty, you see.

And best of all, “If you are one pound overweight, it is too much. Take it off.”

I’m certain the pudgy young man who stole my innocence before he jetted off to England scot-free (no joke intended) to great accolade as a “servant of the lord” while I was shamed as tainted goods back here in the states was given the exact same admonition regarding weight. Certainly. I mean, no possible way he was instead given sway over the appearances of his inferior “sisters in Christ”, right? Oh, wait…….

“Elders’ most frequent complaints are about sisters’ hair.”

Oh. I guess I didn’t realize that doing the work of Christ necessarily included criticism of women’s appearances. Well, at least there’s a system set up for it. Up until very recently, women could not go on missions until they were 21, whereas men went at age 19. Since the age gap is nearly always present (even still, although the respective ages have been lowered) this wonderful source of advice provides for dealing with the humility required to be constantly treated as an inferior by hormonal, arrogant teenage boys.

“Honor and support the priesthood authority over you (even though this authority be administered by an elder who is younger and less experienced). This is an important lesson to learn, for the line of authority is an eternal principle of the gospel and of the home.”

Did you hear that? This is good practice for when you get married. You have to remember that official authority goes first, God. Second, a man. Third, women. Last, children, unless the “child” in question is an ordained 12 year old boy, in which case he will have more authority from God than the woman actively raising him. Once again, the beauty of the system is in its perfect and unflinching structure.

The last bit of advice I found noteworthy was this bit about sister missionaries having a Be Nice To Elders week.

“BNTE Week (Be Nice to Elders Week) where you either cook something good or do something nice for the elders in your district. If you do this, remember that this week especially you must work like a whirlwind so no one can say that you borrowed the Lord’s time. Make it a top week in service and in work also.”

It isn’t that there is something so problematic about doing something nice for your fellow missionaries, it’s that it must necessarily be separated by sexes. I’m sure the elders have a “BE Nice to Sister Missionaries Week” too. I mean, probably. It seems likely. Because of all the inherent equality in this entire missionary system. No, what bothers me is that even though the sisters are being directly instructed to use their time to cook for the elders, they are supposed to somehow do it without taking any time away from the actual missionary work. Can you say “set up to fail”? No? Can you say “damned if you do?” Bet you can. Go on. Say it. Then say, “But surely no one would use these kinds of admonitions to actually inflict guilt on the young women who are sacrificing years of their lives and the amount of money it takes to pay for their mission, would they?”

Yes. They would. If this doesn’t perfectly demonstrate the complete lack of value of women in this organization…….in which one of the most important things about any woman is her mere physical appearance……..then nothing does. If anyone ever tries to tell you how valued women really are in this organized religion, even though you have seen a perfect example of how false that statement is, maybe you can understand how women like me have their brains almost completely broken by the time they are old enough to hope to think for themselves.

*If you think I’m making any of this up, or that the wise President Paternoster has, follow this link

It’s on the Church’s official website. It doesn’t get more official than that. Well, not unless a man had authored it.

Head Gravy

There’s this whole idea about ‘dry shampoo’ that I don’t really get. If your hair is oily and you put this product (typically cornstarch) on it to absorb the oil, what happens when you use a flattening iron or hot rollers? You’re going to show up at work or on your date or wherever explaining, “I don’t know what happened! It stewed into some kind of sauce or something!” and I don’t think that is going to be particularly attractive compared with the other option of just washing your hair the way god intended.

Pens, Paperwork, and Psychotic Breaks

I didn’t have any pictures for this article, so here is the wire telephone I made one time (with a GI Joe for scale).

It’s no secret that a major percentage of adulthood is paperwork. I mean, there’s that final year of high school when it seems very important to many of the adults at the school that your entire class take the ASVAB. And it seems at the time that a significant part of this process is just finding out if you can fill out the header properly. Somehow it takes the first 25 minutes to get your name, the date, your student number, and the name of your high school in the proper order. Because if you get that wrong, they can never trust your answers to the question: “According to graphic 6. A., if cog A is rotated in a clockwise direction, in which direction will cog C rotate?”

I know it’s been, like, some years since then, but I have never forgotten that question. It is a real and unexaggerated example of how elementary that test is. My counselors actually made me take Math Analysis so I could answer THAT question.

Anyhoodle. So I don’t mind paperwork on principle. In fact, I do crossword puzzles for leisure. I don’t mind filling in small boxes in scrupulously legible print. Give me a good pen and I am a happy clam.

Tonight I had a huge stack of forms from my son’s school to fill out so I got my shoebox of good pens and a glass of wine and began.

You know what? I wish I was taking the ASVAB. I remember on that test they asked us to properly differentiate between a wrench and a screwdriver. No joke. But, you see, that is a DEFINITE TASK  with a DEFINITE ANSWER. Nothing is to be implied or inferred. It’s all very literal. That’s why I kicked butt on the ASVAB and the Air Force wouldn’t stop calling me.

That is the last time I was good at answering a question. I’m too literal. Now, for some unimaginable reason I regularly cause major misunderstandings when I have to fill out paperwork. I apparently caused a huge miscommunication when my son’s soccer team application asked for “Your email address”. I gave my son’s ZooBuh! email and not my own. When my husband found that out he looked at me like I’m insane, but he doesn’t even know HOW LONG I stared at that stupid application thinking: Are they asking for my email? That would imply that this is my application. Clearly, this is not my application. This is my son’s application, so when they say “your” they must mean him, right? Why would they assume that all fifth graders have email? But why else would they say “Your”?

Not kidding around, this stuff stresses me out.

Tonight I began filling out page one of, like, a million, by writing my name. Our address. Our home phone number. Easy stuff. Then it asks for “Highest Grade Completed”.

What, like a number? They need a number? What number? A Bachelor’s Degree is high school plus four. Assuming you got your degree in four years. Assuming the year of graduate classes doesn’t count. Honestly, should that be a 16th grade or a 17th grade? And nobody says either of those things, so that can’t be right at all!

I wrote “Bachelor’s Degree” and hoped they didn’t think I was trying to rebel against their sysem of calculation.

Next question: “Mother’s full name.” Okay. It’s a repeat, but okay. “Father’s full name.”All set. “Mother lives in child’s home?” Yes. “Father lives in child’s home?” Yes. “Child lives with (check one) Both parents? Mother only? Father only?”

Seriously?

I check “Both parents.”

“Names of adults child lives with.”

WHAT GAME ARE YOU PEOPLE PLAYING? I  ALREADY TOLD YOU BOTH THOSE THINGS.

But they aren’t kidding with this. Further on they need to know what anesthetic I had when I was in delivery. I want to say it was something like “Demarol” but I’m not totally sure how it’s spelled. I wrote “Demoral” and then I realized that says “de-moral” and I thought, “Well, that doesn’t look good at all,” but I had already written it down and if I scratch it out it will look tacky.

I’m sweating heavily. I don’t want the people judging my kid and thinking his mom is an idiot who can’t spell the names of pharmaceuticals and doesn’t know what 17th grade is.

They give a list of diseases. I’m supposed to write in the dates of the ones he has had. This leads to a long process of asking myself, “wait, how old was his brother that year? I’m pretty sure he was still in diapers. So, no older than two, but he could have been one.” Then they ask me to “describe” the illness.

Hey, these guys  do know they just wrote down all the names of the illnesses, right? When they printed “pneumonia” with a space to put a date next to it, they KNEW WHAT THE WORD “PNEUMONIA” MEANS, RIGHT?!

Describe it? He was coughing. He had a fever. IS THERE THAT MUCH ELSE TO IT?

This was all I could face of paperwork for the night. I can’t possibly imagine what they could ask me next because there is no limit to the personal questions they will ask and no limit to the idiocy they will employ to ask it. If they ask for pregnancy complications do I have to –yet again–explain the faulty position of my placenta? Do they really NEED to know about the placenta? Furthermore, whose placenta even was it? Was it mine? I grew it and it tore away from my uterus and I almost bled to death. But I guess we technically shared the uterus so maybe Placenta Previa applies as a medical condition my child suffered from, but I’m far from sure and I would like to know if anyone else finds these questions easy. THESE ARE HARD QUESTIONS.

Can I go back in time and just take the ASVAB and have people think I’m smart? Because when I bumble around the regular world I feel like I do not belong here. At all.

Rock, Paper, Coconut

I’ve recently put my family on a “primal” diet. (Never heard of it? Start here.) Basically, if you can’t hunt or gather it, we aren’t eating it. Mostly.

Cutting out wheat makes it really hard on bakers, so I’ve been using rice flour (kind of a cheat, but whatever) and almond flour. Because coconut flour is $32 a pound–not exaggerating.

I saw young coconuts at the grocery store last night and thought, “Hey, I’ll get those. Maybe I can make my own flour.” After fifteen minutes, I became convinced that to film the coconut-opening scene in Castaway, they just tossed Tom Hanks a coconut and said, “Good luck, dude. Aaaaaaaand action!”

Look.

All the tools in that picture: a very sharp knife, a very “heavy” knife (as per instructions), a screwdriver tip, a wine corkscrew, a meat smashing hammer, a butter knife, and an apple corer.

I finally got tiny holes in the shell by hitting a screwdriver tip into the coconut with the hammer. Got about seven drips of water out of the thing.

This was big success. However, I couldn’t get any farther than this.

After asking my husband for help, he tried hitting my “heavy” knife with the meat hammer. It broke the hammer.

Then he went out to the garage and hit the knife with a sledgehammer. And then used an electric screwdriver.

I laughed and went back in the house. A few minutes later he came in with it:

He used a machete. A freakin’ machete. (Before you freak out that we own a machete, let me tell you that, no, he is not a weapon collecter. The machete was originally–and still primarily–used to cut heavy plant undergrowth.) So instead of the game being “Rock, paper, scissors” it could be “Coconut, paper, machete” and actually be more accurate.

Then we used a spoon to pop out a couple ounces of coconut meat.

That’s it?

Moral of the story: never waste three dollars on a coconut. Just buy the $32 coconut flour, because it turns out that that’s a deal. Supply and demand and whatnot.

Boxed Insanity

A few months ago my son had a birthday just before we moved out of town. A family member and his wife sent a gift to what they thought was our new address. However, their method for obtaining our new address was not the same method that most people use, which is asking. Most people just go, “Hey, what’s your new address?”

But not these two. These two printed out a whole bunch of real estate info from our area before we moved–just to see what we were looking at. Or something. I don’t know; it’s kind of hard to understand why, because many of the houses they printed out weren’t even houses we looked at. They just printed out random houses. So when we finally bought a house and told them about it, they threw out–apparently randomly–all of the pages but one. Which happened to not be the house we bought. Or even one we looked at. Then they sent a gift to that house.

That was the beginning of May, and as you may have noticed, this is not May. My husband finally asked them where they sent it and they replied that they sent it to our new address–to the street we don’t live on. Clearing up that part of the insanity, the gift was sent back to the return address where the family members also don’t live. Anymore. They moved to Idaho.

The box’s route: Oregon to Tehachapi, Tehachapi to Oregon, Oregon to Idaho, Idaho to Tehachapi. Just your standard shipping experience. When we finally got the box it was much the worse for wear, which was not a problem for the various hats contained inside, including what I’m pretty sure was a hat used in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as part of an Oompa Loompa costume. Some of you may remember what cool taste this person has in hats; let me remind you of the last time we got hats from him:

This is my fully-insane okie girl/hunter impression. It just goes with the hat, you know?

So the hats were fine. However, they had also sent a gift for our daughter. It was surely once a neato vintage porcelain doll. That had been shipped to different states, like, four times.

Fortunately, my daughter is too young to care about dolls and wouldn’t have been traumatized by this even if she had seen it. My eight year old son, however, was completely freaked out.

When he first pulled it out of the box, he saw only this:

Horrified, he turned to my husband and said, “Dad, why would they send us a headless doll, huh? Why, Dad, why?”

My husband said, “Well, son, I’ve been telling them how naughty you’ve been lately and they didn’t think you deserved a real birthday present.”

And then my son said, “Don’t they love me anymore?”

And then my husband said, “Frankly, son, no they don’t.”

Maybe it didn’t happen exactly like that. My husband explained what had happened and my son was mollified with the cowboy hat in the box. It was I who dug through the rest of the box looking for broken glass and had to be creeped out by this:

As I continued to pull out pieces, I couldn’t help but think of that one Courtney Love song that was ubiquitous in 1996. You know, the Doll Parts song? It was all “doll eyes/doll arms/doll hearts/doll parts” and then bizarrely, “I wanna be the girl with the most cake.” But surely you remember.

I can’t tell you how relieved I am the there was no actual doll heart. Just a doll ear, doll fingers, and a doll neck spring.

So for those of you who have come to visit us on a Saturday or who plan to come up on Saturday, yes, we might take you on a cool hike. We might take you to the pool. We might take you to Oktoberfest or a craft fair or to the 4th of July hot-air balloon festival. But if you’re really super lucky and the stars have aligned and smiled upon you, you will be present next time we get a shipment of hats. Because that is a special kind of fun, the kind of fun that makes you laugh in the daylight but when night comes you get to be afraid that some kind of curse came in that box, too, and that doll is gonna come alive, climb over the side of the bed, and steal your eyeballs.

A Terribly Unprofessional Condom Review

In honor of this being Saturday night, and Saturday night ideally being a night of pleasure, let me offer a review of the One brand condoms I was inspired to write about last night when searching through the One variety pack for the One with the most interesting picture.

Let me first offer a disclaimer:  this brand was previously unknown to me. I think my husband got them at Savemart once on a late night beer run. And my interest isn’t in preventing pregnancy (trust me. That would be one impressive feat for my body.) or keeping disease at bay (mongomous relationship and all.), so I cannot verify whether or not these condoms actually do their ostensible job well. However, I can break down the whimsy aspects for you.

First, they have flashy packaging and each condom is individually named. Check it out.

I guess that, in my state of entertainment–completely halting any and all nookie, I took the photo of the condom on this very busily decorated box. Sorry. Next time I do a condom review I’ll choose a better background.

One Night Stand. Clever.

Alright. Mildly clever, but a bit too literal for me.

In case you need to be reminded what you’re about.

Ah yes. The old bug motif. Because if the sight of an insect’s underbelly doesn’t put me in the mood for acts of intimacy, what will?

Moving away from cover art, lets see what these different condoms have to offer.

Well, far be it from me to turn my nose up at bumps. 576 of them no less. So……..texture is nice. The idea of turning a mere human penis into a more carefully engineered sex toy is an admirable pursuit. But mere bumps are not enough to entertain a woman such as myself. If bumps also bore you, you could try this condom:

Can you see that diagram?

Whose penis did they base this design on? Whose vagina? I’m not totally clear which way this condom should go on or how a user could get it situated perfectly without a great deal of light and attention to the act of application.

If you’re one of those people who wants a condom to be more user-friendly than the above monstrosity, you could try this one:

……which does this:

You know what they say about Marilyn, don’t you? She loved her condoms rainbow colored. (Nobody says that.)

Seriously, if the most interesting thing about your entire sexual escapade is the multi-colored condom, YOU’RE DOING SOMETHING WRONG.

But hey, if visual effect is your delight, try this one:

One to Light the Way. Awesome. And all you have to do to get your condom to glow in the dark is to arrest all festivities and hold it under the lamp for thirty seconds. That is the BEST POSSIBLE WAY to spend thirty seconds of sex! Absolutely no better use could be made of that time, you know why? Because this condom turns your ordinary human weiner into a glowing green light saber. You just try and tell me that’s not a turn on.

Now, because this exercise is beginning to dull (or my buzz is just wearing off), I’m going to direct your attention to one final rubber, called……….

I don’t understand. Maybe I haven’t paid enough attention to how penises work (although I seriously doubt that) but I just don’t see………why you’d need increased headroom. In particular, I mean.

In summation: I apparently have no concept of what fun sex, penises, bumps, lumps, or domes have to offer. I have clearly been doing sex wrong all this time. Therefore, I have one glowing condom under a lamp right now, charging up so that I can truly experience the mind-blowing pleasure of things that glow in the dark. If you are thusly equally benighted, you should head out to Savemart right now, where you too can own your own bug bedecked prophylactic device.

Bonus condom:

Because maybe you hate your taste buds. Maybe you think your mouth is a terrible person that can only be punished by being given mildly scented plastic to lick on. Whatever. I don’t know your life.

The Best Revenge is Dragon

First things first: this is an awesome dragon tattoo I drew on my husband for a Halloween party a few years ago. If you think I drew it badly, consider my source and I will accept your apologies.

But onto my real point. Everybody knows that axiom about how the best revenge is living well. And we instinctively understand the truth of it. It’s the entire reason high school reunions exist…….if you haven’t already kept in touch with the people from high school you care about, you’re mainly going so that everybody can see that you don’t have frizzy hair and braces anymore. Now you are kewl. You have a job and regular sex and a good car and everything.

Outside of the adolescence paradigm, there is a lot of pleasure in showing people that they never did get to you. They tried to hurt you but they did not succeed. Humans do not respond well to feelings of impotence, so when they do their best to take you down and it has no effect, they experience psychological pain. And we all know it and we go, “neener, neener” inside our heads.

A while back some members of my own family did their very best to harm me, my husband, and worst of all, my children. In my siblings’ case the paradigm was the whole miserable-people-need-to-make-other-people-miserable mindset, but that is neither here nor there. What IS here and there is how we dealt with it, and how we could have dealt with it.

What we did? Nothing.

What we could have done? Here’s the plan.

First, you find the person who wronged you. Follow them to the grocery store. Push around a cart inside and accidentally bump into them. You act like everything is normal. Nothing has ever happened. Ask about their kids, their wife, their dogs. Be excruciatingly polite.

Next, just when the person gets into the checkout line, get in line right behind them and keep up the super uncomfortable hunky-dory act.

At the very last moment, when they are about to leave, lean over very close to your enemy and whisper, “dragon” in their ear. It needs to be over with so fast that they aren’t sure they heard it. Ideally, neither the checker nor bag-boy noticed, but it weirds out your enemy and psychologically unsettles him. Step one is accomplished.

Step two:

TEN YEARS LATER you come up with a plan to sabotage their life or property in a significant and tangible way. You could smash out all the windows of their car and then, like, vandalize the engine in some way that it would become forever unusable.

Another way you could get revenge is with ninjas. You could hire ninjas to infiltrate their village at night, jump out at all the women and go, “Boogedy!” until the women shriek and faint, and then the ninjas could hold down your enemy and cut off his queue, leaving him otherwise untouched but living in the shame of having a short hairdo forever. Of course, you would have to have the ninjas repeat the process every few months because hair grows back. It could get expensive hiring all those ninjas year after year.

But the key to these revenge scenarios is that the vengeful acts are completely untraceable to you with the exception of one white business card with the word “Dragon” printed on it in red ink.  

What can they do? Tell the police (or Emperor of China, if you went with the whole ninja scenario), “Yeah, and I know who did it, too, because ten years ago this one person said ‘Dragon’ to me in the grocery store!”

 

Police: He said ‘Dragon’ to you?

Enemy: Yeah! In the grocery store!

Police: Ten years ago?

Enemy: Yeah!

Police: And now, ten years later, he cut off your ponytail?

Enemy: Yeah, man! Go get him!

Police: …………….

 

And that is how you win at revenge. I admit it takes discipline, creativity, and funds, but you will have the satisfaction of the profound knowledge that the best revenge is, indeed, dragon.