It Looked Different on the Model - Laurie Notaro [63]
The Russian dancer is not a Cossack or Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof. He is my husband. It was very cold that day, so he bundled up. And wore the Diplomat, a style of hat he has. Left over from when he was Hamid Karzai for Halloween. It is quite fetching on him. Anyway, to cheer me up, he did a couple of Russian dance moves one day and then fell over, evidenced by the photos on my iPhone and the blurry image of an ass, but with a belt. My husband always wears a belt. And, yes, you were right, those were slugs having coitus on my patio. I had only seen that once before, and, again, I cite proof. You should really laugh at those photos. I did. It took them forever.
Dude, GET OUT OF BED.
Please get out of bed.
Why won’t you get out of bed?
Never mind. I already know.
You’re not going to give me my phone, are you? You’re going to keep it, aren’t you, or sell it on eBay, or take it to some pawnshop across the river, and there are a ton of pawnshops across the river. You know I’ll never find my iPhone. For the next month I’m going to stare at everyone I see talking on a phone to see if it’s you, talking on my iPhone. At Safeway, at the mall, at every restaurant, everywhere I go, I’ll be looking. But I’ll never know for sure what you did with it, why you simply couldn’t give it back, or why you thought you deserved to keep it.
You suck.
You’re an asshole, and I know it’s just a phone, but, really, what did you think when you found it? Could you have possibly thought that someone abandoned it on purpose, maybe someone who was too young to handle the responsibility of the iPhone and thought that by leaving it in a wet, shiny place with lots of traffic that it might have a better chance at life with a different family? If I wanted to abandon my iPhone, I would have left it in a safe place. Like a fire station.
It’s not your iPhone.
It’s not your iPhone.
I’m still paying for it as I write this to you.
You know, my dog is holding my Visa bill between her paws at this very moment, and I want to take a picture of it and make a joke about her reading the fine print and saying, “You know, if you pay this one day late …” but I CAN’T.
I’m going back to using a Sharpie to scrawl “This was stolen from Laurie Notaro” on everything I own.
You better not have called China.
But if you did, guess what?
Your ma is going to get another phone call, one from me, on my new iPhone. And I’m going to tell her everything.
Sincerely,
Laurie Notaro
P.S. I hope I see you sitting on a curb one day while someone is breaking your heart.
Forecasting World Destruction
“Did you get Mom’s email?” my sister asked me the moment I picked up the phone. “Because this is a good one. All I’m going to say is: Beware of anyone named Karen. They are bad, bad people. You know a Karen, don’t you? Wasn’t she one of your bridesmaids? Well, I’d sever those ties if I were you, or you’ll live to regret it.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” I agreed. “An email from Mom is a lesson in terror.”
My mother chose to prepare all three of her girls for a life outside the nest by scaring the shit out of us at every opportunity. For other little children, a visit to the grocery store might have just been a boring trip to pick up ingredients for dinner, but for the Notaro girls, it was an exercise in human nature.
In the produce department, it might have looked like we were picking out a head of lettuce, but my mother was actually homeschooling us in the subject of “Don’t Be a Tramp” when she looked at the woman sorting through the green beans two feet away, whose halter top wasn’t keeping all that it should under wraps.
“Lentils stay covered,” my mother warned us under her breath. “When even a little pops out, that’s the same thing as being naked. And what is being naked?”
“Dirty,” we all replied.
“And that means you’re not normal,” my mother added, tossing