Written by Riley on July 22, 2008 in: Musings | Tags: fools
Two months ago, the water dispenser in my friend J’s fridge broke and filled the fridge with water. Upon the door being opened, the water spilled into the kitchen and dining area and seeped under the wood floor. J and her husband R and their two girls have been living without flooring these past two months, waiting on their insurance to assess the damages, approve the cost to fix it, and send them the money to do it.
They were (finally) approved! As a bonus, they were approved for so much money that they were able to re-floor the entire first floor, the stairs, and the upstairs hallway with a nice light colored wood, much nicer than their previous flooring, in fact.
It was installed last week, and the family and I went over last night to ooh and aah.
We brought wine to celebrate.
I pulled out a corkscrew. I opened the bottle. And then I dropped the corkscrew.
Onto their brand spanking new wood floor.
And would you believe it, the corkscrew went straight into the wood like a thumbtack in a corkboard. Seriously. It was like I had thrown a dart into their floor. J stared at the corkscrew and I stared at J, and neither of us spoke.
I finally coughed. “I’m so sorry… um… I’m… really embarrassed.”
J laughed it off, pointing out that the dog had already scratched up the floor over by the sliding glass door. So I’m in company with the dog. But they love the dog, so that’s a good thing, right?
All these headlines about the World Youth Day going on in Australia right now got me thinking about my own World Youth Day experience.
I was 16. It was in Denver. My school had organized a field trip for the event, but it cost a reasonable sum of money that my parents did not have. At the time, I was a model Catholic, and my home church decided to foot the bill so I could attend. I was excited because I was going on a trip without the family. To a place I’d never been. To see the Pope. Best of all, my best friend was going on the trip with me, J (who is getting married in September – holla holla! – to a guy I introduced her to – double holla! holla!).
We rode a bus for a ridiculous number of hours. Over 24. There were delays. We ate at Cracker Barrel and Arby’s. I argued with this jerk in senior year over something inane that enraged me to the point that I considered making a rude remark about his mother. (I’ll even tell you what it was: “You only got voted class president because everyone felt sorry for you because your mother died.” Yeah. High school was dumb.) That was the “not cool” portion of the trip.
In Denver, we stayed at a sweet hotel, the Loews Giorgio. Having been on many family trips where we stayed at such snazzy locales as Motel 6 and the Cheap Z’s Inn (I didn’t make that name up), the Loews Giorgio was overwhelmingly nice. Especially the bathrooms, which were luxuriously roomy and full of free shampoos that I duly stole.
And here is where the true confessions starts, ie more information than any of you will ever want to know about me (you are warned).
As I mentioned, we were eating Cracker Barrel and Arby’s on the 24+ hour bus ride. Then we arrived in Denver, where we attended Mass at the Mile High Stadium and walked around downtown Denver unsupervised and eating whatever we wanted. This turned out to be not such a good idea for me and my stomach.
The problem, though, is that I am uncomfortable defecating in public, or anywhere where other people might know and whisper “it’s her.” I know I am not the only person who suffers this, (based on humorous email forwards I read from time to time) and I know this is something every human does, so really, what’s the problem? Be that as it may, my body shuts down and refuses to allow me to go.
I don’t remember exactly, but I believe the trip was 9 days long. So you can imagine how this went. I managed to sneak into a few bathrooms on my own here and there, but I longed for the relaxing content of just sitting on a toilet and going without fear.
Well, approximately night 4 (and by approximately, I mean I don’t remember so I’m just saying), the three girls in the room with me had gone to sleep, and I realized: Now’s my chance!
I went into the bathroom. To be extra careful (what if one of them woke up?), I turned on the shower. I did my business. Ah, my stomach, my friend, I did you well.
I took my shower. I got out of the shower. And while drying off, I noticed something funny about the toilet. How the water level looked conspicuously low.
I flushed again.
There was a gurgling sound, and then – yes, you see this coming, don’t you? – the water level began to rise. And rise… and rise… and rise.
I did not know what to do. I was only 16. When a toilet clogged, I ran for my dad. Or brothers. Or mother. Or grandmother, for that matter. But a fancy hotel with my friends? I threw all the towels onto the floor to soak up the spilling water, thinking, well, at some point, the water is going to stop. Alas, I was wrong. When it became clear that the water was going to seep onto the carpet within the next couple minutes, I ran into the room and bit the bullet. I woke up J. “J,” I hissed. “We’ve got a problem!” (Yes, I did say “we”)
I dragged her to the bathroom which she took one look at, then immediately walked over to the toilet, lifted the top off, and pushed down on the flush valve. The water stopped. Wow, I thought. She’s a genius.
She turned around. “What did you do?”
What was I to do? Tell her the truth? Tell her how I had clogged the toilet? Or lie. Lie, while in attendance at World Youth Day as a model Catholic to see the Pope.
“I used a lot of toilet paper to clean off my makeup. I guess I used too much.”
Funny thing, it wasn’t a hard story to believe because if there was one thing anyone could know about me in high school simply by looking at me, it was that I wore a lot of make-up. I was big on liquid eyeliner and lipstick. And everyone knows that high school girls get crazy with their make-up rituals. I honestly did use a lot of toilet paper to remove my make-up. But we (you faithful readers and I) all know that wasn’t why the toilet clogged.
We contacted the Loews Giorgio front desk and they sent a plumber up. He fixed us up real quick, removed the soaked towels and had some dry ones sent up. His only comment was that “someone put too much toilet paper in the toilet.” Which coincided with my bs story, so it all worked out.
But there you have it. The truth is out there. The story plagued me for a while. The rest of the trip, everyone in our bus group at one point or another said, hey, didn’t your room’s toilet clog because you were taking off make-up (for goodness sake, how was this a good piece of gossip????), and when we got back to J-ville and all our friends asked us separately how the trip went, the other two roomies in my hotel room would jerk their heads at me and say “she clogged our toilet taking her make-up off.”
But I tell ya, I’ll take “girl with too much make-up” over “the girl who took a shit” any day.
Recently, my niece and I were driving to her house, and I said, “Do you want to stop at Starbucks?”
I enjoy asking my niece this question probably as much as she likes hearing it, because we are both slaves to our beverages. She loves the fraps. I love the lattes. Plus, she stays in the car with the kids and receives a free drink and I get to indulge in a few blissful moments of Eponine time (because I’m “On My Own”).
She asked if I ever gave the employees fake names to write on the coffee cups, and I thought, why the hell would I do that? And she told me that some girls she knows (but never her personally) like to give silly names, like “Sexy Mama” and well, I admit, I had a good, long laugh at the notion of a 15-year-old telling the beatnik dude behind the counter at Starbucks that her name was Sexy Mama.
So what would you tell them your name was, if you wanted to give them a silly name? The more I thought about it, the more answers I came up with. Just remember, you have to say it with a straight face:
1. Cowgirl – YEEEEHAW! Get me some straight up black coffee, I likes ‘em hot! Boy howdy, Starbucks ain’t gonna know what him ‘em.
2. Sexy Mama – Well, as stated above, I didn’t make this one up, but it’s Just. So. Me.
3. McLovin – I actually asked the girl behind the counter if people gave her fake names and she told me that this was a popular name choice among the guy set. There you have it.
4. Humbucker – Husband turned me on to this word. It’s a guitar-related item, but doesn’t it sound more like something sexual? Or is that just my dirty mind?
5. “I Have No Name” – but the key to saying this is that you have to imitate the blind guy in Oh, Brother Where Art Thou. Ideally, your Starbucks employee will respond, “That there may be why you’re having trouble finding gainful employment” or if they’re that damn beatnik employee, maybe they will respond with bad, forcefully written poetry
6. Bone Lick – admittedly, this is not the name for a person, but it is the name for a place in Kentucky, as I was informed by Veronica over at Toddled Dredge; thank you, once again, Veronica, for making me laugh
7. Eponine – well, as already stated, I refer to my in-line time for coffee as Eponine time
8. Cosette – hell, let’s just cover all those Les Mis names
9. Fantine – see above
10. Genevieve – to be honest, I always wished this was my name when I was younger. Now’s my chance to live out a FANTASY!!!!!!!!
11. Mr. Spock – just to see who laughs and who thinks I’m dip wad
12. DJ Moses – there is a long story behind this but let’s leave it at, this was a nickname I had in college for a rap I made up that opened with me impersonating Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea
13. Luke – Mainly, I want to use this name, so that when they yell out ‘Luke!’ I can yell back, in a trembling, angst-ridden voice “I’ll never join you!” or please, please, PLEASE, let them have made the wrong drink, just so I can say, “Frappucino? No… no… that’s not true… that’s IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!”
Needless to say, I plan on subjecting my Starbucks employees to irritation at its finest. Wish me luck.
Regarding the other post I wrote about Harry Potter the Musical, here is the footage from the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference of me performing it in the contest. Thank you to Lisa Angle for videotaping the contest.
To recap, this was for a speedwriting competition. I was given a half hour to write a song for a musical based on the book Harry Potter (any one of them). This is the opening number to the first book.
