Yesterday I did remarkably little save pay my bills. Paying the bills is good, of course, but still you’d think I’d have managed to be a little more productive than that.
I did go to the City Market where I had the most fun little smoothie ever. It was not, I’m sad to say, made with anything real at all which was a total bummer since they were so stinking cute. I’d gone with Sass and, after we’d each ordered a smoothie and pretzel, we were sitting at a marble top table beneath a television offering hair loss solutions.
Not the television itself, I suppose, but rather the programming.
We’d gone so that the Sass could tell me why she felt down.
“My life,” she began as she inspected her smoothie, “is just one long string of failures and disappointment.”
“Wow,” I said. “I could see how that could be a little disheartening.”
“How do I get into this smoothie?” she said as she began tearing at the plastic seal with her teeth.
The plastic cups were sealed with plastic liners pressed on by an automatic machine. Like a laminator.
“I have these two boys,” she proclaimed, “who are really attractive, really successful, really nice and like me.”
“I think you have to puncture the top,” I said, pointing to my smoothie. “With a straw.”
“But I don’t want either of them. One of them can even cook!”
I was trying really hard to pay attention to this strange tale of woe, but just then I noticed what was on top of my laminated cup.
“Oh look!” I cried, “I have a celebrity ice cube and two ice cube body guards!”
“Yea… and I have a tree with an apron…”
“Is yours in Japanese?! Mine’s in Japanese, is yours in Japanese?”
“And they won’t pay me more at work even though I’m invaluable.”
I stopped gushing over my plastic cup for a moment, long enough to hear poor Sassie’s Tale o’ Woe. She rounded it out with an “Everyone’s going to quit” and then went back to her woeful story of the men who loved her.
“There are only two reasons,” I declared, “that a girl would not go after these men: She’s pining or she’s pinned.” I gestured grandly, one finger in the air, as I sipped my smoothie in punctuation. She looked at me blankly, as though she were incapable of understanding what I’d said.
“Or you’re a lesbian,” I offered.
“Thanks for that.”
“Well, you were making that crazed face at me over the others so I gave you a third option.”
“That’ll teach me to not answer you, I guess.”
“Not really,” I replied, pointing at her with the punctured smoothie. “I’ve been doing that to you for years and you’re still the worst conversationalist I’ve ever encountered.”
After a moment of contemplation she suggested that maybe she’s just the world’s worst dater. I feel that this isn’t generally a female excuse, since so often women aren’t doing the asking. All a girl’s got to do is show up looking pretty and seem remotely approachable.
“Maybe I’m a bitch, then,” she said, finishing off her pretzel.
“I’d plead the fifth on that one if I were you.”
“Yea. Maybe best that way.”