It Looked Different on the Model - Laurie Notaro [42]
“Well, I’ve never seen anyone on Top Chef make anything out of borax, Epsom salts, and baking soda,” I agreed. “You were approximately one chemical compound away from eating crystal meth. But maybe throw in some tuna and cream of chicken soup and it would be excellent.”
“I can’t believe your mother ate bath bombs,” my husband said from the other end of the couch as he shook his head. “This is better than the time your sister ate the dog cookie.”
And that was true, it was better than the time my middle sister found a bag of treats I had just bought my dog, Maeby, from the gourmet pet store. My sister dug into them, uninvited. After she ate the whole thing, I walked into the kitchen and she took that opportunity to tell me that “Those cookies weren’t very sweet!”
“You mean the ones shaped like a dog bone?” I replied, noticing the open bag, which was cellophane with little dog bones printed on it; and it was tied with a ribbon decorated with paw prints.
“They had frosting on them,” she argued, as if I was somehow wrong and I had mistaken a Mrs. Fields for a pet-supply store with leashes, pet-odor remover, and puppy pads.
“The frosting provided even more detail that it was a dog bone,” I informed her, looking into the bag. “You ate the one that had Woof! written on it.”
Yet my mother had beaten my sister in consuming the unthinkable, because she had identified as delectable edibles not even objects digestible by any species, but bathroom cleaners and ant killer.
“Wow, Mom,” I said to my mother over the phone. “Tell me what you wouldn’t eat if you thought there was sugar on top of it.”
“They were in candy cups! In candy boxes!” she protested. “All fingers pointed to candy!”
“Oh, no,” I corrected her. “No. All fingers were pointing to your mouth. I’m going to leave all kinds of stuff around your house now to see if you will eat it. It will be like an Easter egg hunt, but sometimes foamy. Sometimes not.”
“You’re so funny,” my mother responded sharply. “For a ten-year-old.”
“Oh,” I replied. “You got that right.”
Why Not Take All of Me?
So I was just informed that there’s a thing that can block your private parts in X-ray scanners. You know what I’m talking about: the Rapiscan machine that can not only see through clothes but can show how much saggage my multiple decades—despite preventive measures and expensive body butters—have inflicted on all parts affected by gravity and all the unnecessary time I spent not lying down. I know for a fact that Rapiscan is installed at the Phoenix airport, and since I go to Phoenix a lot, I will eventually be instructed to take a trip through the tunnel of horror, which will not only rip my clothes off faster than a guy just released on parole but I’ll be STANDING UP. And I get a nice, single-serving dose of cancer for an amuse bouche.
I thought for a moment that I would absolutely have to get these little things called Flying Pasties—tiny patches you can adhere to your “no access” areas to ensure privacy—and I was scrambling for my credit card when I suddenly stopped and thought, Why am I doing this? TSA, if you want to peek in my pants so badly, go right ahead. If you really need to invade my privacy the way you claim because some underachiever on a flight to Detroit tried to light his wiener on fire, you deserve what you get.
And that’s not all.
You really want to see me naked, let’s take this baby all the way. Take a good look, because if it’s so important to get to third base without even buying me any sort of dessert first—preferably chocolate-filled or anything on fire—shaving is off the table. If you’re looking for a belly ring, I’ll give you a jelly ring instead. It’s that thing that folds over. And you’ll be getting the bra that has one strap held to the cup with a safety pin, because that’s the one that doesn’t dig into my back