Oh Christ, I thought, what is it? What happens when your transmission drops out, the clutch goes bad, the fuel pump quits? I had no idea. I called AAA on my cell phone and told the operator that I needed help.
“Do you need a tow truck?” she asked.
“Maybe,” I answered. “What happens with a bad transmission? I think that may be the problem.”
“You won’t be able to go into drive or reverse,” she said.
“Okay. Then how about a bad clutch? I think that may be the problem,” I mentioned.
“Do you drive a stick shift?” she responded.
“No. Okay, what about a fuel pump? I think that may be the problem,” I said, panicking.
“I’m just going to send a truck, lady,” she said.
“I’m just not a car kind of girl!” I pleaded as she hung up.
Ten minutes later, I jumped when someone knocked on the passenger window. It was a cop. I had forgotten to put my hazard lights on, mainly because I don’t know where they are. I lowered the window. I know where that button is.
“Hi,” I said quickly, “it’s my fuel pump. Or transmission. Or carburetor. Or muffler. I think it’s my muffler. I’ve called a tow truck, it will be here any minute.”
“I don’t think you’ll need a tow truck, ma’am,” he answered. “You ran over a gas can.”
“Oh,” I replied.
“How far did you drag that thing?” he asked. “I don’t know how you didn’t see it. It’s as big as a TV! Do you have a jack?”
I hoped to God I did, and that he knew what it looked like.
I popped the trunk (I know where that button is, too) and helped the cop take out a couple of lamps, a box of books, and a pile of dirty clothes I had forgotten were in there. I was embarrassed when he found the jack, put it in place, jacked up the car, lay down on the ground, and then kicked the biggest gas can I had ever seen out from underneath my car, but not as embarrassed as when he got up just in time to see a big gust of wind from a passing truck rush toward me and blow my skirt all the way up to my chin.
“Your tow truck is here,” he said, trying not to laugh.
Are You
the Petersens?
I was biting into the best tortilla of my life at my favorite Mexican restaurant when I saw her.
Sitting at the next table, behind my friend Jeff’s head, there she was: my eighth-grade math teacher. I couldn’t mistake her still jet-black hair, the soft curve of her almond-shaped eyes, and her thin, pursed lips.
It was her, all right.
I nudged my friend Jamie, who went to all the same schools I did since the third grade, and was now sitting next to me enjoying her very own heavenly tortilla.
“That’s my eighth-grade math teacher!” I said to her as she lifted the buttery, golden, nearly transparent tortilla up for another bite. “Do you remember what her name was?”
“Was that the teacher that made you stand in front of the class and add fractions until you cried?” she asked for the benefit of Jeff and Kristin, our newly betrothed friends who were sitting on the other side of the table, since we didn’t meet Jeff until high school.
“That’s the one,” I confirmed. “She’s also the one that gave me detention for asking why we couldn’t just ‘round up.’ ”
“You got in more trouble then than when you stole all of those Little House on the Prairie books from the library, and the librarian caught you with On the Banks of Plum Creek stuffed down your pants,” Jamie added.
“They weren’t pants, they were Sassoon gauchos,” I stressed. “And I had to steal them. I didn’t have enough baby-sitting money to pay for the late fines on that Joanie Loves Chachi book that I found stuffed in my little sister’s Easy-Bake Oven two years later. I still can’t believe gauchos went out of style.”
“Her name is on the tip of my tongue,” Jamie finally remembered. “Her husband was my biology teacher in ninth grade . . . Mrs. Petersen!”
“MRS. PETERSEN!” I nearly shouted.
“And that’s him right there!” Jamie pointed out excitedly. “Mr. Petersen is sitting right next to her!”
“You guys should say hi,” Kristin said. “I’m sure they would like to see you.”
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “I wasn’t the best student . . .”
“I know!” Jeff ventured. “Maybe you can impress her and completely validate her career as a teacher if you show her you can figure out how to leave a tip!”
“Why didn’t you guys both have her for math?” Kristin asked innocently.
I looked away.
“Well, you see,” Jamie started to explain, “in junior high, I was in a special group for math and science.”
“What do you mean, ‘special group’?” Jeff practically yelled. “Do you mean . . . you were in the Dumb Group in math?”
I turned my eyes back to Jeff. “It’s NOT called the Dumb Group, Jeff!” I hissed. “It’s called Essential Math Skills, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Some people have more creative skills than technical skills. Some people want to smell the flowers instead of counting the petals! Some people are just circles being hammered relentlessly into square peg slots! Some people just want to ROUND UP!!”
“I was in advanced-placement math,” Jamie finished.
“And I . . .” I said quietly, “was in . . . Slow Math.”
The silent pause at the table was timeless and dreadful.
“Somehow,” Jeff finally stammered, “I now see you differently. Do you . . . get checks from the government? How did you get a driver’s license?”
“If you fill in C for every answer, you’re bound to get some right,” I snapped.
“I still think you should say hi to them,” Kristin repeated. “Won’t Mr. Petersen be thrilled to know that Jamie is now a microbiologist with her own cancer research lab! And Laurie, you didn’t need math after all to write . . . those little things in the paper! See? You should say hi!”
“I still don’t know . . .” I hesitated, shaking my head.
“Come on.” Jamie nudged me. “I will if you will!”
“Oh, all right,” I said, giving in.
“I have a microscope and an autoclave in the car,” Jamie said, jumping up from the booth. “Should I bring them in?”
“I don’t have any of . . . my little things,” I protested. “That’s hardly fair.”
Slowly, we took the two steps necessary to reach the Petersens’ table, where Mrs. Petersen had her lips stretched wide to accommodate a rather thick taco. Mr. Petersen, on the other hand, was armed with a fork and knife, and was preparing to bludgeon his chimichanga.
“Excuse me,” Jamie said, leaning over slightly.
The Petersens suddenly froze in time as they looked up at us.
“It’s Laurie!” I said as I waved at Mrs. Petersen. “Remember me? ‘Round up’!”
Mrs. Petersen’s eyes grew wide; her mouth was still open, though slightly more circular, as if to accommodate an element of complete horror.
“LAURIE NOTARO!” I emphasized, sensing that she could not place me. “From Retard Math! I write little things for the paper now!”
“It’s Jamie,” I heard my advanced-placement friend say to Mr. Petersen. “Remember when we cut open that cow’s eye, and Mike Purcell ate the retina on a bet, and you made him throw up in the sink?”
“Want me to figure out how much you need for a tip?” I said to Mrs. Petersen. “’Cause I can!”
“I have slides and a microscope in the car, but she wouldn’t let me bring them in,” Jamie said, and added in a whisper, “She was in Retard Math.”
The Petersens remained silent, saying absolutely nothing as they just sat and stared at us.
“Um,” Jamie finally said. “Are you . . . the Petersens?”
The two of them slowly, and in a synchronized movement, shook their heads from side to side.
The fake Mrs. Petersen pointed at me. “You have refried beans on your cheek,” she said, still
holding her taco with her other hand.
We took the two steps back to our table as the fake Petersens continued to gawk at us.
“You won’t believe this,” Jeff said as we slid back into the booth, “but your high school English teacher is sitting right over there!”
“Mrs. Gaio?” I said as Jamie and I both turned around to look.
“It’s her, all right,” Jamie said.
Revenge of
the Bra Girl
I was searching for a slip in a major department store not very long ago, perfectly content to mind my own business. In the lingerie department, two teenage bra girls were busy rehanging a mountain of bras they had culled from the dressing room fifteen minutes before closing.
They were working as fast as they could, making small chitchat between them as they tucked straps back onto plastic hangers.
“You guys are having a clearance sale, huh?” I asked, as they nodded with something of a scowl. “I know all about it. I used to be a bra girl myself.”
As a former bra girl, I have seen more mammary glands than Larry Flynt.
When I was a lass and got thrown out of college for the first time, my parents came up with a plan: I had to get a job.
I applied at a large department store, got called for an interview, and instantly had visions of myself parading through the dressing rooms dispensing invaluable critiques to malnourished, size-six fashion junkies: “Lose that caboose!” “Are those your upper arms or honey-baked hams?” “That little paunch tells me you’re in the wrong department, mama. Maternity is on the second floor.” But instead, the human-resources director looked at me and said, “What luck! We have an opening in lingerie!”
Bras and girdles. My vision switched gears and reminded me of my first bra fitting when I was ten and my mother felt that my “lentils” (a scientific term she used for not-yet-developed bosoms) were beginning to sprout. Before I knew it, I was in a dressing room with an elderly saleswoman’s hands cupped over my niblets, categorizing my size as a “grape on its way to a lime.” As I tried the bra on, she scooped her fingers inside the cups to make sure that the grapes had ample room to mature into big jugs of wine.
“And one other thing,” she garbled as she opened the door to the dressing room. “You’ll be a woman before you know it, and if you leave all of that black spaghetti under your arms, it will give you cancer!”
After I was hired at the department store, however, I discovered that when adult women enter a lingerie department, they become primitive, unbridled beasts. They see it as a sanctuary where they may absolutely unbutton their shirts, feeling no shame or reserve, and flash a salesperson while saying, “Do you have this bra?” They feel that it’s completely acceptable to bring twenty bras into a fitting room and leave the nineteen that don’t fit on the floor and draped over doors, none of which are on a hanger. They also find it appropriate to approach an eighteen-year-old bra girl while they are practically naked and ask, “Can you hook me up?” “Do you think this is a turn-on?” and “This tummy tucker is too tight, and I need help getting it off!”
I also saw men purchasing lurid, sexy teddies in a 36DD and a petite-size flannel nightgown at the same time, saw women leave their dirty bras and panties for me to find while they walked away wearing new ones, and once I even caught a trailer-park couple diddling in a fitting room and got to call security.
The lingerie department, in short, was like the devil’s playground. All morals melted away like chocolate as soon as the customers spotted an Olga tag. Probably the very worst part of the job was that I always got in trouble for chitchatting while I was rehanging a hill of bras before the store closed for the night, and explaining that I was working at the same time put me on employee probation.
All of that psychological damage was brought back as I watched the fingers of the two bra girls fly furiously between straps and hangers. I was paying for my slip when, like a bear charging through the woods, a short, stocky woman with a silver pageboy shoved a rack of body slimmers out of her way and pointed at the girls. “Maybe if you’d stop talking, you’d get some work done!” she roared at both of them, and then narrowed her appetite down to one. “YOU! Come with me! I’ll give you something to do!”
The poor bra girl put down her current project and followed the bear into the maze of robes.
“Now we’re never going to get this done,” the surviving bra girl sighed. “That manager, Eileen, is so mean! She made a girl cry last week because the Wonderbras weren’t hung in alphabetical order.”
I felt sorry for the bra girls because I understood only too well. I nodded. Then I had an idea.
I grabbed my bagged slip and headed out into the forest. I circled the entire sales floor twice with eagle eyes, finally stopping at the Fashion Passion department.
“Have you seen a mean rhinoceros of a woman with a silver pageboy haircut scurry through here?” I asked.
Both of the salesgirls shuddered. “You mean Eileen,” they said. “We just heard her howling in Fancy Pant-sy, but we’d stay away from her if we were you. Word has it that she bit a salesgirl in Houses of Blouses, and she hasn’t had her shots.”
“That’s exactly why I’m here,” I said, and headed off in that direction.
I saw the silver goblin turning a corner, and I couldn’t let her get away. “EILEEN!” I shouted, and she immediately stopped and turned around.
“Can I help you?” she asked with a sudden smile.
“Yes, you can,” I said in my best adult voice. “I was in lingerie when you yelled at that salesgirl.”
“Yes, well, those bra girls can sure chat up a storm,” she laughed. “All play and no work! Ha-ha-ha!”
“You’re wrong,” I said sternly. “Bra girls are hard workers. Every last one of them. They see horrible things, are forced to touch the inhuman, and have to be nice to fat, near-naked women and their breasts. They are faced with insurmountable odds every day, because they all know that bras NEVER hang themselves up. As soon as you hang one, someone else tries it on and leaves it on the floor. It’s like working in a sweatshop!”
“Well—” Eileen started.
“I’m not done,” I interrupted her. “And those two girls were talking, but they were working at the same time. Some people are talented enough to do that!”
“I—” Eileen tried.
I held up my finger.
“Still not done,” I continued. “Because you were wrong, Eileen. You were wrong to accuse them, and you were wrong to yell, and as a customer of this store, I demand that you go back to the lingerie department and give those girls an apology!”
“I didn’t realize,” Eileen said, obviously shamed. “I will do that.”
Eileen turned to go.
“And one more thing, Eileen. Do you have this bra?” I asked, pulling open my shirt.
A Hole in One
I’m pretty sure that it had been my favorite tooth.
It was a solid tooth, white and strong and sturdy; a squat little tusk, located perfectly as the last in a line of other squat little teeth in the upper right side of my mouth.
I thought the tooth liked me, too. I did everything I could to be kind to it, I bought it chocolate and gum, and rubbed my tongue over it every now and then to express my love.
But being kind to something doesn’t necessarily mean that it won’t revolt someday, and may do so in a manner that causes blood to spill until it’s dripping down your chin onto a bib.
I wasn’t doing anything particularly nasty when the revolution began; I was eating gummi bears and watching TV when the tooth decided to liberate itself and broke off in several sharp, thin splinters. At first I didn’t understand what had occurred—it felt like I had bitten into a dirt clod or a piece of gravel—but when I spit out the candy, I saw the carnage right away.
My heart skipped a beat, and the first thought that popped into my head was, A splinter of glass in a gummi bear. That means early retirement and a life of leisure for Miss Laurie N
otaro after the personal-injury lawyer takes his cut.
But as I looked closer to see exactly how solid of a case I had, and if I’d be living in a villa in France or a mobile home in Branson, Missouri, I noticed something heartbreaking. The shard of glass was white and ridged. As I began to recognize it as a former body part, I understood that half my tooth was broken, split, and embedded in the orange-and-red chewage, and I was in trouble.
I’ve had dreams like this, dreams in which my teeth felt loose, and with one poke of the tongue, the tooth dropped out of my gums like a brick from a rotted foundation. I’ve had dreams in which numerous teeth fell out so quickly that I collected them in my pocket and kept my mouth shut to prevent more dental abortions, though my mouth eventually felt like it was full of small pebbles.
I panicked. With my most horrible nightmares coming true, my anxiety level started to rise, making my skin cold but my insides burning hot. So I decided, quite quickly, that my plan of action would consist of what I do best.
I was going to ignore it.
There’s a simple reason for this, as my mind flashed back five years, back to the last time I had visited the dentist. I had possessed a molar that rocketed straight through the cavity stage and lodged itself in pure and total decay, which ultimately resulted in a nasty abscess that froze the left side of my head in a throbbing ache.
I went to my mother’s dentist, who examined the tooth briefly and told me I had one option: the tooth needed to be pulled, and as he stuck his hand back into my mouth and took a firm hold on the tooth, I understood that he meant NOW.
I didn’t have time to actually think about it, let alone give an answer before I felt an enormous pressure on the lower half of my jaw, where the doctor—who I now believe did his internship at Auschwitz—was yanking.
He was pushing so hard that I really thought my jaw was going to snap in half, and as I tried to be brave, a baby-sized tear rolled out from beneath each closed eye. The pressure stopped.