Let's Pretend This Never Happened (22 page)

Later, during the labor, I did tear
and
get
cut, and it was totally not in a lightning-bolt shape
, and I immediately regretted not doing some sort of perforation in a lighting-bolt shape, but I was so big at that point that I couldn’t even
see
my vagina, and when I asked Victor whether he’d draw a dotted line in the shape of a lightning bolt (with little scissors indicating “cut here”), he just walked off. I suspect it’s because he didn’t want to admit he can’t draw scissors, because honestly he is a horrible artist, but when I started badgering him the next day he said confidently, “Oh, I already did it. While you were asleep.” Which seemed suspicious, because I’m a pretty light sleeper. But I couldn’t even see myself with a hand mirror, and so then I just wondered whether he was fucking with me so that I’d leave him alone. And if he wasn’t just fucking with me, then what the hell did he draw? Probably a gun, or a cougar, or something stupid. And also, that doesn’t even make sense about tearing being better than cutting, because if that’s true then why don’t they tear people open when they pull out their gallbladder or remove their appendix? There’s really no other sort of surgery where the doctor prefers to just let you get torn apart rather than cut you, and I’m assuming that’s because gynecologists are just really lazy.

Holy crap, y’all. Remember back when I was talking about how my Grampa died but I got distracted with
Hee Haw
? That same thing just happened here when I started to talk about perspective and got distracted by my vagina.
I didn’t even plan that.
That’s how natural this writing shit
comes to me. It’s like my brain is subconsciously sticking to the theme
in spite
of my distracting vagina. I am so fucking going to win a Pulitzer for this.

Anyway
, having a kid is an excellent exercise in perspective. Because it teaches you to embrace the horror and indignity of life. You simply have no other choice.

Take, for example, the first time that you take your child to the community pool. You’re self-consciously trying to still appear hip in front of your thin, childless neighbor, who probably got more than two hours of sleep, when you notice that your child’s ass seems to be exploding. Then you realize with horror that your husband failed to put a swimming diaper on your toddler, and so now the real diaper is soaking up all of the pool water and expanding like a giant mushroom cloud, and your kid is looking at you like,
“What the fuck is happening to my junk?!”
and you’re all, “
DON’T PANIC.
Walk slowly toward the bathroom,” but the kid is all, “Pick me up! I AM BEING EATEN BY MY OWN DIAPER,” and so you do, but then the pressure makes the diaper seams burst, and now you’re covered with this gel stuff from inside the diaper which,
it turns out
, is a bluish, crystal-like jelly. And you’re repulsed and fascinated all at the same time, and you run to the bathroom, but the crystal-jelly stuff is leaking out behind you like a trail of bread crumbs, and the lifeguard is giving you the stink-eye, and you finally get to the bathroom, but the gel inside the diaper is continuing to expand. And so as soon as you yank your kid’s suit off, the diaper rips open from the sheer internal pressure and lands with a splat and the diaper jelly sprays
all. Over. Everything.
And right at that exact moment, your thin, childless neighbor walks breezily in, and then backs up against the wall in shock as she sees you bending over in the middle of the bathroom, splattered with blue diaper filling and trying desperately to use wads of ineffective brown paper towels to clean the (probably cancerous) diaper jelly off a naked toddler. And you try to smile at her reassuringly, as if this is the sort of thing that happens all the time, and you consider standing up to explain casually
that this is really all your husband’s fault
, but before you can straighten up your child sees your giant boob perched precariously at the edge of your bathing suit and she punches it and it falls out of the top of your bathing suit. And then your neighbor backs silently out of the bathroom, like she’s stumbling away from a murder scene, and you scream after her, ”YOU CANNOT RUN FROM ME. BEHOLD! THIS. IS. YOUR. FUTURE!”

Get ready.

That sort of thing happens
all the damn time.

I can assure you, it was traumatizing for
all of us.

Phone Conversation I Had with My Husband After I Got Lost for the Eighty Thousandth Time

ME
: Hello?

VICTOR
: Where are you?! You’ve been gone an hour.

ME
: I’m lost. Don’t yell at me.

VICTOR
: You went to get milk, dude. You’ve been to that store a hundred times.

ME
: Yes, but not at night. Everything looks all strange and I couldn’t see the signs. And I guess I must’ve taken a wrong street and I’ve been driving aimlessly, hoping for something to look familiar.

VICTOR
: How can you get lost every damn time you leave the house?

ME
: I don’t even think I’m in Texas anymore.

VICTOR
: Motherfu—

ME
: DON’T YELL AT ME.

VICTOR
: I’m not yelling at you. Just turn on the GPS and put in our address.

ME
: I left it at home.

VICTOR
: What the hell is wrong with you?!

ME
: You said you wouldn’t yell at me!

VICTOR
: That was before you left the GPS at home. I BOUGHT IT EXPRESSLY BECAUSE OF YOU.

ME
: Can’t you just tell me how to get home?

VICTOR
: How am I supposed to help you get home, Jenny? I DON’T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE.

ME
: Okay . . . there are a lot of trees. And bushes. Or they might be horses. It’s too dark to tell.

VICTOR
: Oh, yeah, I know
exactly
where you are.

ME
: Really?

VICTOR
: No. You’re someplace where there
may or may not be
bushes.
How is that helpful?

ME
: Hell. I need to find a street sign.

VICTOR
: You NEED to remember to put the GPS in your car.

ME
: No. I’m not using it anymore.

VICTOR
: Why not?!

ME
: It’s trying to kill me.

VICTOR
: [stunned silence]

ME
: Remember last week when I had to go into town and I got the driving instructions from MapQuest and you made me take the GPS as a backup, but then halfway there the GPS is all, “Turn left now,” and I’m all, “No. MapQuest says to go straight,” and it’s like, “TURN LEFT NOW,” and I’m all, “No way, bitch,” and then she’s sighing at me like she’s frustrated and she keeps saying, “Recalculating,” in this really judgy, condescending way, and then she’s all, “TURN LEFT NOW!” And then I’m all freaked out, so I turn left
exactly like she says
and then she’s all, “Recalculating. Recalculating,” and I’m like, “I DID EXACTLY WHAT YOU SAID TO DO. WHAT’S WITH THE TONE, WHORE?”

VICTOR
: You’re not using the GPS because you don’t appreciate the tone of the robot?

ME
: No, that’s just the start. Because then she told me to turn on West Lion Street,
but there was no West Lion Street
, so I kept making illegal U-turns and finally I realized that she was mispronouncing Wesley-Ann Street. Probably on purpose.

VICTOR
: It’s “Wesleyan Street.” You still haven’t seen a street sign?

ME
: Oh. Sorry. I kind of forgot I was driving.

VICTOR
: You forgot you were driving
while you were driving?

ME
: It’s not like I ran into a cow. I just forgot I was looking for signs.

VICTOR
: If you ever make it home I’m hiding your car keys.

ME
: Anyway, then I’m all, “Okay, one of us is mispronouncing ‘Wesley-Ann’ and one of us is lost and I think they both might be me,” but that’s when I came up with what might be the greatest invention in the history of the world.

VICTOR
: Street signs. Look for street signs.

ME
: Haven’t seen any. Feels like I’m on a highway now. Ask me what my great idea is.

VICTOR
: No.

ME
: GPS for stupid people.

VICTOR
: [silence]

ME
: I’m totally serious. Because I’m no good with directions, but I’m really good with landmarks, so if you tell me to go north on Main, I’m fucked, but if you say, “Turn at that Burger King that burned down last year,” I totally know what to do, so we should build a GPS system that does that.

VICTOR
: [sigh]

ME
: And here’s the genius part: We make it able to learn so it adapts to you personally. So, like, if I say, “Huh. There’s a homeless guy masturbating,” it’ll put that in its data banks, and then when I want to go somewhere later, instead of just naming random streets it’s all, “You know where that homeless guy was masturbating? We’re going there. Turn left at that Sonic you like. Turn right at the burrito place you took Sarah to that time she was dressed all slutty. Yield at the place you gave that guy a hand job.”

VICTOR
:
What the fuck?

ME
:
Exactly.
See, that’s the downfall of this system, because really I just gave a guy a hand by telling him how to get a job. But robots don’t get the subtle intricacies of human languages, so there’d be a learning curve. We’d have to put that in the brochure. Like a disclaimer.

VICTOR
: How long do you have to be missing before I can start dating again?

ME
: I’m just saying this robot isn’t perfected yet, dude. It’s close, though. I wouldn’t use it with your mom in the car, though, just in case. OHMYGOD, I TOTALLY KNOW WHERE I AM!

VICTOR
: You’re at the place you gave that guy a hand job?

ME
: No. I’m at that abandoned building that looks like it’s owned by Branch Davidians.

VICTOR
: Huh. The rest of the world calls that “Dallas Street.” So can you get home now?

ME
: I think so. Left at that spooky bar that looks like it’s out of Scooby-Doo, left at the place we saw that wild boar that turned out to be a dog, and right at the corner where I threw up that one time. Right?

VICTOR
: You make my head hurt.

ME
: DUDE, WE ARE GOING TO BE MILLIONAIRES.

EPILOGUE
: I made it home.* Victor duct-taped the GPS to my windshield and refused to build me a robot. It’s like he
wants
us to be poor.

*DISCLAIMER
: By “made it home,” I mean I got lost again and Victor had to come find me so I could follow him home. The point is, I made it home. And that I had no robot. This whole incident is kind of a tragedy. Victor says he agrees but probably not for the same reasons.

And Then I Got Stabbed in the Face by a Serial Killer

People with anxiety disorders are often labeled as “shy” or “quiet” or “that strange girl who probably buries bodies in her basement.” I’ve never actually heard anyone refer to me as the latter, but I always assume that’s what people are thinking, because that sort of paranoia is a common side effect of anxiety disorder. Personally, I always labeled myself as “socially awkward” and reassured myself that there are
lots
of perfectly normal people who don’t like to talk in public. And that’s true. Unfortunately it’s also true that my fear pushes slightly past the land of “perfectly normal” and lands well into the desert of “paralyzing pathological handicap.”

Even simple conversations with strangers in the grocery store leave me alternately unable to speak or unable to
stop
speaking about something completely inappropriate to talk to strangers in the grocery store about. For a long time I beat myself up because I thought it was something I could control if I were strong enough, but in my twenties I began having full-scale panic attacks and finally saw a doctor, who diagnosed me with generalized anxiety disorder.

It’s been my experience that people always assume that
generalized
anxiety disorder is preferable to
social
anxiety disorder, because it sounds
more vague and unthreatening, but those people are totally wrong. For me, having generalized anxiety disorder is basically like having all of the other anxiety disorders smooshed into one. Even the ones that aren’t recognized by modern science. Things like
birds-will-probably-smother-me-in-my-sleep anxiety disorder
and
I-keep-crackers-in-my-pocket-in-case-I-get-trapped-in-an-elevator anxiety disorder.
Basically I’m just
generally
anxious about fucking
everything
. In fact, I suspect that’s how they came up with the name.