In which I work for a grad school professor and develop a crush on him and then he goes all crazy on me so we never talk again

During and after grad school, I worked for a professor, Marvin, who was just the cutest, funniest thing in the world. I did odds and ends for him: sorting through the piles of mail that accumulated on his desk. Well, that was most of what I did. Try to find his desk underneath the mail. He was not big on opening or answering his mail. There were unopened checks that were over three months old.

Marvin started having me do some work to support his expert witness business. I scrawled my invoices on the backs of envelopes. "2.5 hours @ $20/hour, $50. Signed, Gold digger." So fancy. So professional. They don't teach you invoicing in grad school. Obviously.

Although maybe they shouldn't need to teach you invoicing. Maybe they think if you have an ounce of common sense, you will know that handwriting an invoice on the back of an envelope is not comme il faut.

I worked for Marvin for about a year after grad school. Then I went to his 50th birthday party - did I say my very mild crush was appropriate? no I did not - and met his wife. (I liked one of his PhD students a lot lot more, but Wyatt had no interest in me whatsoever and was instead captivated by a bosomy, long-haired classmate of mine. But that's not this story.)

Marvin's wife, apparently, did not like me and I did not understand why because even though I had a crush on her husband, it's not like he was interested in me and besides he was married and only a sleazeball messes around with a married man. Plus he was also my mother's age and that's just a little bit creepy - getting involved with a man who is your mom's peer? Gross.

I thought Marvin was cute and funny and brilliant, but I really liked him for his $20 an hour. Yes, I was using him for his money.

A week or two after the party, when I called to ask Marvin if he had any more work for me because I missed that money, he told me he wouldn't be able to employ me any more. "My wife doesn't like me hanging out with nubile 29 year old women," he said.

Me? Nubile? Ha.

But when the wife talks, the husband better listen or else you know what. I understood.

I went to Chile. I returned from Chile. I went to Minnesota and stayed with my mom and dad. I went to Washington DC to look for a job.

Those international development jobs are for those kids whose parents still give them an allowance. Who else can afford to take a job for $20,000 a year in DC? I surrendered and made my way back to Austin after my short stint working at the factory in Tijuana where they hired guys from the heroin halfway house and where, unbeknownst to me, I was living in the heroin trading district.

I got back to Austin and went to the placement office at school to seek employment. Ran into Marvin. He asked me if I wanted to work for him again. Well yes money would surely be nice. Then he told me that his wife could use some help on some projects she was doing. I should come to their house and work there.

Which was fine. That eliminated The Wife Problem, because The Wife was there with me as a chaperone and besides, my (mild) crush was long gone.

I worked and did random things for both of them and they would leave me alone in the house occasionally which was fine because I am mostly trustworthy.

Mostly.

But I am going to say this.

If you embark on a project, Mrs Marvin, where you are going to record all your poops on 3x5 index cards, noting everything including color, shape, and floatingness, then maybe you should not keep those cards in the top drawer of your desk where your occasional employee might look for a pen.

Once you've seen that kind of thing, you can't unsee it.

Marvin was a sweetie, though (and Mrs Marvin was always very nice to me, but the poop thing - ick), and was my reference when my possible employer called him a few weeks after my interview.

What did they ask you? I asked him. The job was in corporate finance, so maybe they asked him if I knew the Black Scholes pricing model? Oh man I hadn't priced options in a few years.

Not that I have ever needed that skill since, either. When I worked for International Paper, I got stock options every year. And every year, the market price for stock dropped lower than my strike price, thanks to the fabulous management ability of the company's leadership. By the time my options had vested, they were worth $20 a share more than the market price. My mother asked me why I would buy stock from my employer when I could get it cheaper on the open market and I explained that I wouldn't. That only an idiot would buy stock in IP, from any source. Not that I'm bitter about that $48,000 I never got to realize.

Marvin shrugged. They wanted to know if you show up for work on time, he said.

That's it? That's all? I asked.

Yep, he said. That's all.

I cocked my head, puzzled. I had a 4.0 gpa from a top-20 school and they don't think they can assume I show up on time?

He looked at me, shook his head, and answered, Oh you'd be surprised.

Later, when I was working at IP, I found out that a guy they'd hired with me had been fired after two months. He had an MBA and an MS in Chemistry. And didn't bother to show up to work until 10, 11 a.m., explaining that he'd been out the night before. Who knew?

I got the job and moved to Miami. My new boss there, Paul, had gotten his MBA from a program where Marvin had taught one semester. I guess they liked him enough that they flew him up once a week for his class. Paul had taken a class from Marvin and really liked him and respected him: Marvin is a hotshot in his field, although I lost a lot of professional respect for him when I googled him the other day and discovered he had put on his resume that he had gone to an international conference in Cuba and had spent an hour with Fidel. That's not something polite people who know anything about what an evil man Fidel Castro is ever admit in public, much less put on their resume. Once you know what goes on in that place, you burn your Che t-shirt and you don't brag about how charismatic Fidel was when you met him.

At the time, though, working for Paul in Miami, I didn't know about Marvin's little Fidel crush so I still respected him and liked him.

Then he called me one afternoon. I cannot remember why - maybe I had called him to tell him about Paul or he still owed me money or I had a 1099 question. Whatever. We were speaking on the phone. He asked how I liked Miami and I said that the little I had seen of it when I wasn't at work was great but that my job stank and why on earth would anyone want to work in M&A and corporate finance?

Then I said he and Mrs Marvin were welcome to visit and use my place as a hotel: I had a guest room and was living in Coconut Grove in walking distance of all kinds of fun places.

That's when it got so weird that it has taken me three weeks to finish this post.

He asked if I had a boyfriend yet and I told him sha! as if! and he said maybe he could visit me by himself.

I answered that if he came alone, it would be better if he would stay at a hotel but I'd sure like to meet him for lunch.

No, he insisted. He would come alone and we could practice sex--

Stop! I shouted into the phone. Marvin! Stop!

He continued. His words were slurred, making me wonder if he had been drinking.

No! I told him. You are a married man!

I slammed the phone down. I was shaking. Had I provoked this? Had I encouraged him in any way?

When I was still in grad school, I had to talk to my marketing professor. I went into his office and closed the door. He walked behind me and opened it again.

"What's that about?" I asked.

"I need to keep it open to protect myself from allegations that I might have harassed a student," he explained.

In what was not my most tactful moment, I looked at him incredulously. "I don't usually make a habit of attempting to seduce men my father's age," I said.

Later, when I was working for Paul, he started to tell me about a fight he had had with his wife. "Stop," I told him. "Do not tell me this. You guys will work this out and then you'll be mad at me because I know about it."

He blinked, thought, said, "Man, you're right."

I really do not seek intimacy with married men. I really do not try to seduce men who are in some kind of authority over me. I do not have those daddy issues. So I was confused about Marvin's propositions.

Maybe I was unaware of the strong seduction vibes I emitted. Maybe I was a siren that Marvin found irresistible. I don't know. But I was horrified at what he said to me and had to shake the horror out of my ears by sharing it with someone. I walked into Paul's office and told him the whole story.

He, too, was appalled. "I had so much respect for him," Paul said. "Now everything's changed."

Marvin never called me again. I have never called him. I almost never think of him, but when I do, it is with some anger. All that nice friendship, down the drain of one bad phone call.

In which I get to speak French and show off

I had this boyfriend, Trace, whose brother and sister in law lived in the Florida Keys. Trace was great. He is not one of the Bad Boyfriends Who Done Me Wrong. I have no complaints about Trace. We are still friends, although there was a period after I broke up with him where we did not talk. I don't remember how we became friends again, but I'm glad we did because I still think he is one of the funniest, smartest, nicest people I know.

After I started dating Primo, I wanted him to hear Trace's band. I emailed Trace - it was two years after our breakup and we had resumed our friendship by then - to ask when they would be playing and if he would mind if I brought Primo along. He gave me a schedule of shows and said of course he wouldn't mind if Primo came with me.

Primo and I went to Beale Street and found the bar. The band was setting up. I hadn't seen Trace's bandmates in over a year. Stan came over, gave me a big hug, shook Primo's hand, and sat down for a beer. Cal came over, gave me a big hug, and shook Primo's hand. Trace came over, gave me a hug, shook Primo's hand. Terry, the guitar player who suffers from Guitar Player Syndrome and who, bless his midlife crisis divorcing heart, wore sleeveless t-shirts even though his bandmates begged him not to - he said that the chicks dug it even though they did not - did not come over.

At the break, Primo and I spoke some more with the band. Except with Terry.

When we left, the band was on another break. Primo and I said goodbye to everyone. Except Terry. He turned his back to me.

The next day, I got an email from Terry. I can't believe I still have it, but that's what happens when you don't have to delete your emails and when in the back of your mind is a little voice saying, This will be good material someday!

Seeing you again was almost surreal, you know?

You know have the immediate effect of discommoding my band every time you show up? Cal is, as always, over sniffing around you regardless of how Trace may feel about it (how could you not notice?), while Trace is blowing his heart out trying to impress you on account of after all this time he's still carrying the torch (and how could HE not notice Cal sniffing around you?).

And me, I watch the maneuvers from the sidelines, bemused and enthralled, because, of course, you look lovely as always, but my band just turned into Peyton Place. Stan, well, he's Stan, just glad to have another fan in the house, but, you know?

Trace's not a good existentialist, is my judgment, and I am not altogether sure he's strong enough to see you with your new guy. I mean everybody's modern and hip and with it and all that, but he's a pretty fragile dude since you dropped him, all the same.

Like I said, still torching.

He'd be supremely pissed if he even knew I'd commented on the matter, mind you. Please pardon my butting in. This is under the rose, strictly.

Regards

Terry

Wow. Just wow. My jaw dropped when I read this. Did Terry really think that I was such a bitch that I would show up unannounced with my new boyfriend to introduce him to my old one? And did he think it was his place to lecture me on the issue, no matter what had really happened?

I didn't bother to reply. I also didn't tell Trace because I didn't know if he should know his bandmate was such a jerk, even though Trace already had his opinions about that. What is the proper thing to do in a situation like that? Do you share such an ugly email?

Trace moved out of town a few months after that, after coming to my house two months after Primo and I went to his show to see my visiting sister, mother and aunt, all of whom thought Trace was wonderful and who wanted to see him while they were visiting me. That's how hurt Trace was by my showing up at the gig: he came to my house for dessert (he brought a case of diet Coke as his hostess gift, which was great as my houseguests were drinking me dry - note that my relatives drink all the diet soda vs Primo's parents, who drink all the booze) and spent two hours talking to my family.

Before he moved, I took him the vegetarian cookbook his sister in law had given us for Christmas a few years back. We spoke for a little while and I told him about Terry and the email. He was livid, telling me that had he known at the time, he would have had it out with Terry immediately and then quit the band, which had been the only thing keeping him in town. We agreed that Terry was a big jerk and we wanted nothing to do with him. We spit - pah! pah! - on him.

But that's not the story I started to tell. The story I want to tell is about a trip that Trace and I took to the Keys to spend Christmas with his brother and sister in law, Scott and Elise. Such nice people. Such a nice family. So many nice families out there and I end up with the in-laws who are not so nice.

Primo did an interview with the local paper about some political protests happening near us. Primo supports the protesters, I do not. The story was about the impact of the protests on friends and families where people do not share the same opinion. Primo noted that his parents disliked me even before they met me because of my political and religious beliefs and that they are rude and mean to me whereas my family, including aunts, uncles and cousins, have all been really nice and welcoming to him, even though they know he disagrees with them.

Back to Trace. We flew into Miami and went straight to the Cuban coffee stand by the car rental place - an aluminum trailer with a window in the side through which emerged shots of Cuban coffee and Cuban sandwiches. Trace got his colada, I got a medianoche. Oh how I miss Miami and the Cuban food. And the winters without snow.

Trace, a vegetarian, tried to buy a cheese sandwich, but had a hard time, as the concept of NO MEAT is not Cuban at all. There is no such thing as a Cuban sandwich or a Cuban meal without meat.

He asked for a cheese sandwich.

Clerk: Pero con ham, si?

Trace: No. No meat. Just cheese.

Clerk: Pero con pork, si?

Trace: No. No meat. Just cheese.

Clerk: Pero con beef, no?

Trace. No. No pork. No ham. No beef. Just bread and cheese.

Clerk: [crazy gringo]

Once we had Cuban fuel, we drove down to Scott and Elise's. Scott and I ate just-caught lobster for supper and didn't have to share because Trace is a vegetarian and Elise is allergic to seafood.

The next day, Trace and I drove back toward Miami so he could do some Christmas shopping. No, I did not want to go with him. I hate shopping. I hate shopping with someone else. I especially hate Christmas shopping two days before Christmas with someone else. But I loved Trace and he wanted company so I went with him.

We found ourselves in a Best Buy. I trailed Trace as he shopped. Then I was distracted in the cellphone section by a Haitian woman who was trying to ask technical questions about the phone to the Cuban salesman. Her English was not very good. Neither was his. She spoke no Spanish. He spoke no French.

Well.

Super French Speaker Chief Bossy Lady to the rescue!

I jumped right in. With my really bad French, but the key difference between Primo, who had 30 hours of French in college, and me, who had one year of high-school French, is that I am not afraid to look stupid. Primo wants to speak perfectly, so won't open his mouth until he is absolutely sure of what he is saying.

I just want to get my point across, so I will say things like, It must be that the thing that one makes with the telephone to be able go to Haiti for to make the call of the telephone, which is not exactly elegant but conveys the idea with the Haitian lady that yes, indeed, she wants a cellphone she can use in Haiti.

Then I tell the Cuban salesman that She wants a phone one can use in Haiti.

Oh! he answers. Then she will need to get a different SIM card once she is there.

I tell her that it must be that when one is in the Haiti, one must to go to the store of the phone for to find the little thing on the phone a new one or else the phone will not march.

She smiles. OK! Then this phone - the pink one - will do.

Trace watches, laughing. I don't need to get you a Christmas present, he said. You just got the best present possible - a chance to show off.

He was so right.

In which I have my first French kiss and am thoroughly disgusted

My first kiss was when I was 12 with the guy who lived on the farm next to the cemetery and three blocks from my grandmother's house. But it was a closed-lip quickie and certainly did not make my knees weak as I had been led to believe would happen by the Harlequin romances I devoured by the pound. No weakness in the knees or the elbows or the cheeks or anywhere. It was a weakness-free kiss. I was robbed.

We did not repeat that kiss. It was a one-off. One and done. I don't remember why - was I still in town but uninterested in trying again? Was I still in town but he was uninterested in trying again? Or did we go back to Lubbock? I remember that the next time I saw him, which might have been the next summer, I thought he was kind of short and not that cute at all. The stardust had fallen from my eyes. Or the scales. Pick your allusion.

My next kiss was in Panama. This was before Ken, the guy who broke up with me before the prom, not that I'm bitter about that or anything and I shouldn't be because he never actually asked me and I didn't have a dress or anything, although I would have sewn something amazing because I used to be a good seamstress before I discovered consignment and thrift shopping, and before the guy who turned out to be gay.

My brother had a friend, Brian, who would hang out at our house a lot. He looked a little stoner-y, but I don't think he was one of those kids who went straight to the smoking curb as soon as he got to school every morning. For those of you who are still in high school or college, know that there used to be places in high schools for students to smoke. On campus. It wasn't just teachers who could take refuge in tobacco, it was also students.

At my high school in Panama, the smokers sat on the curb between the school and the Panama Canal administration building. Gorgeous, gorgeous grounds: manicured grass, trimmed palm and other kinds of trees that I have no idea what they are because I am not a tree person. Beautiful buildings as well. If you want to see some pretty buildings and grounds, google "Panama Canal administration building." You won't be disappointed.

At my high school in San Antonio, the smoking area was behind the cafeteria by the spitting area, because in Texas, we don't just smoke tobacco, we also chew it, as chewing can be done in places where smoking is not acceptable.

I had been working with Mike for six months, sitting across the table from him during the riveting training on how to calculate health and life insurance premiums, a task that took hours to do by hand because this was in the days before a personal computer on every desk but dang, no wonder that company is no longer in business because if they had replaced half their underwriters with PCs, they could have gotten four times the work done in half the time and would have been you know, profitable, which is a necessary condition for the ongoingness of a private-sector business, before I realized that he had been chewing tobacco all day every day and discreetly spitting it into the Big Gulp cup he always kept at hand. I just thought he was really thirsty. Once I found out what he was doing, I was disgusted because there is nothing like knowing that the guy across from you has a cup full of tobacco spit to turn your stomach.

But I still thought he was hot. He wasn't so much to look at, but he was really smart and interesting and funny and he smelled great. I would walk past him just to inhale. His own pheromones plus Polo: a killer combo. I found him online recently and eh - he's aged OK, I suppose. He's moved into the power circles of the insurance industry, so bully for him. He was a hard worker and smart. Still not much to look at. I wonder if he still smells good.

At my high school in Texas, we had the smoking circle for the stoners/smokers and we had the spitting place for the chewers/cowboys. The stoners/smokers were most likely to be found wearing black AC/DC t-shirts and old army jackets and to have long hair. The chewers/cowboys wore Wranglers, the jeans of choice for the rural cow professional, and cowboy hats. And boots. Although many of us in Texas, regardless of stimulant affiliation, wore cowboy boots to school because 1. it was Texas and 2. cowboy boots are cute and comfortable. I have two pairs now, one red and one tan, and am kicking myself for not buying the blue snakeskin Luccheses that were at the consignment store for $50. Fifty dollars! FOR LUCCHESES!

The Wranglers usually had a faded, worn circle on the back right pocket for that was where the chewer stored his Skoal. The Skoal was removed at lunch and between classes so the chewer could chew and spit at the chewing tree, which had lost much of its lower bark and the ground around which was bare dirt because the grass had long since been killed by tobacco spit.

Where was I?

Oh yeah. Brian who looked like a stoner with his longish hair and his rock band t-shirts but who I don't think was. I mean, he might have been, but he still managed to fit in CYO and swim team.

And flirting with me, although at first I didn't realize that's what he was doing, because 1. he was my brother's friend and 2. I didn't know what flirting with me looked like.

But soon I figured it out. Brian was over at the house. My brother was upstairs, my dad was at work, and my mom was in the kitchen doing what I don't know because at this point, doing the dishes after supper was a responsibility farmed out to my siblings and me.

Isn't that one of the reasons people have kids? To have labor? It stuns me to see my neighbor shoveling snow while her 7th grade son watches. We've talked about it (I know her well enough to ask) and she said she has only one shovel, to which the obvious reply is, "Well give it to him!" but I don't know her well enough to say that. But why have kids if you're going to cut the grass yourself, or worse, as one friend did, pay someone $300 a month to do? I asked why he didn't have his high-school son cut and edge and my friend told me that his son wouldn't do it right, which was when I shut my mouth because hey, his money and it's not like you can do much with $300 a month anyhow. Not like that's half of our mortgage payment. Sheesh.

Brian and I were alone in the living room and we were sitting next to each other on the couch and then he kissed me, which shocked the heck out of me but after a second I thought, Well that's not too shabby! Then we heard my brother coming down the stairs so we stopped.

The next time he came over, we found a moment to sneak another kiss. Well this was fun!

Then he came over again. He snuck out from my brother's room and found me in mine. Kissed me. But this time, he stuck his tongue in my mouth.

When I was in sixth grade, I was reading Dear Abby and saw a reference to French kissing. I had no idea what that was so I asked my mom. She told me it's when you kiss and stick your tongues in each other's mouths.

That sounds disgusting! I said, appalled and grossed out.

My mom laughed and told me that I might change my mind.

I felt Brian's tongue in my mouth. What the heck? What was this? Oh this was gross!

But wait.

Hmmmm.

Maybe this isn't so bad after all.

Let me try again.

I decided this French kissing would be an acceptable part of my making out lexicon. So Brian and I made out occasionally when he came over, but then we stopped. Why? I don't remember. Maybe that's when I met Ken The Guy Who Dumped Me Right Before The Prom Not That I'm Bitter About That. I kiss only one guy at a time.

In which I find myself an older man as a high-school boyfriend but he dumps me right before the prom

Perhaps "older man" is not the proper term to use, as Ken was only two years older than I was. But in high school? That two years gave me status. He was a senior, I was a sophomore. A senior! I was dating a senior! Oh how cool was that?

I met him in Sea Scouts, which is I think affiliated with the Boy Scouts and was a group of high-school kids, a few adult sponsors and a 76-foot double masted schooner that we sailed from its moorings in the Panama Canal around the Pacific bay that fed the Canal.

I joined Sea Scouts because my best friend Julie and her brother were in it and there was a party one night by Julie's house for Sea Scout people that I went to with her and the boys in Sea Scouts were cute.

Ken was at the party. I don't know why he talked to me. I surely would not have talked to him first because he was a senior and I was a sophomore and he was tall, muscular and cute. Muscular in that "I do useful things with my body and that builds nice muscles" as opposed to the "I waste a lot of time in the gym" muscular. His tan made his blue eyes sparkle like the ocean on a sunny day. Or like something blue that's pretty. I found him online because I am a superstalker and can find just about anybody and his eyes are still as blue as they were over 30 years ago. Based on the woman he has his still-muscular arm (that is attached to his still-muscular shoulder) around, he also still likes slightly chubby blondes. He has a type.

But talk to me he did. We started talking about records. I had a record at home he wanted to hear. Right. Because my musical taste was so sophisticated. Remember I am the one who, during my senior year of high school, took the $42.51 that I got in cash at the back of Woolworth's every Friday straight to the record department to buy a new Neil Diamond record. But maybe he liked ABBA, which was what I had in stock my sophomore year.

I said I could go home and get the record and he said he could walk with me and I thought wow, what's that all about? but I guess he wanted to spend time with me, which was weird. Because he was cute. A cute boy. Talking to me.

He asked me out. He picked me up in a car and drove me to the movie theater at Albrook AFB. The car was a big deal because you had to be 17 to get a driver's license in Panama. Only the Big Kids had licenses.

Not that not having a license was an impediment to getting around. If our parents didn't want to drive us somewhere, we just took the Panamanian bus, aka the chiva (goat and no I have no idea why it is called a goat bus and I really don't know why "chiva" means "goat" because I thought "cabrito" meant "goat" but heck, there are at least four words in Spanish for "tripe" and I know them all because I never ever want to eat tripe again) bus, which was painted with about a gajillion bright colors, had fringe hanging on the windows and usually had a name like "Marisol" or "Luz de Mi Vida" painted in script across the top of the windshield.

It cost about a dime to ride the bus. Our parents would usually drop us off for swim meets but we would take the bus home. It only took one time of standing with Julie at the bus stop in nothing but our swimsuits, shorts and towels to realize that we should probably bring more clothes next time, as we really did not like hearing the Panamanian men shout, !Ay! Chica americaaaaaaaana! and then make that sucky-kissy noise at our half-dressed bodies.

Ken took me to the movies. We saw Animal House. So romantic. And so influential. Who knew I'd have my own Double Secret Probation blog years later? He must have kissed me then, although I do not remember our first kiss. But kiss we did.

He asked me out again. Took me to a casino, which is not as bizarre as it might sound because casinos in Panama were just one more thing that people did. I don't think there was a minimum age to get in. If there was, the authorities were quite willing to look the other way. Not that I cared about gambling. Even then, I had a strong intuitive sense of probability and statistics and knew that gambling was not a good way to hold onto or increase my hard-earned, one dollar an hour babysitting money.

The Panamanian casino wasn't too bad. I didn't see the truly seedy side of casinos until I was forced to go to Las Vegas to pick up a friend on my way to California. She suggested we walk through a casino or two and I was shocked at how tacky they were: people were not dressed nicely (unlike in Latin America, where when you go out, you go out, and in Miami, a decent Cuban woman does not go to the grocery store or an exercise class without lipstick), they were not pretty and glamorous like they are in the movies, and the cigarette smoke just about choked me.

What I do remember from that evening is what I wore: a blue sweater and a pair of white slacks that I borrowed from my friend Barb. And that I stained. And did not have dry cleaned before I returned to her. Oh the shame. Why couldn't I have returned them to her a few days late, along with the apology that I had gotten them dirty and had taken them to be cleaned? It's amazing that she ever talked to me again.

Ken and I quickly moved from weekend dates to necking at lunch behind the chemistry building. I would eat my fried empanada, slug down my Tahitian Treat or Purple Passion soda, then we would sit on the stoop and kiss and kiss and kiss.

Oh it was fun.

Until one day my mom looked at the rash on my chin and asked, "What is that?"

My hand flew to my chin. "What?" I answered.

"That rash."

"I dunno."

"It looks like whisker burn to me."

I had never heard the term "whisker burn" before. But I knew as soon as I heard it exactly what it was and how I had gotten it.

The next day at school, I told Ken that he had to start shaving every day or I would not kiss him.

We necked at school, we necked at the Gaillard Cut, we necked on the Amador Causeway. We necked on the Chief Aptakisic, the Sea Scout ship. We necked belowdecks while my dad, who was one of the adult sponsors of Sea Scouts, steered the ship. Ken had to return to his sailing responsibilities when my dad told another Sea Scout to go find his first mate, dammit, and tell him to quit necking with his daughter.

I don't think we talked a lot. I don't remember having many conversations with him. We did not have an intellectual connection, although he is not unintelligent. I think his plan was to go to Texas A&M, which is not anyone's safe school. He must be doing OK now because he seems to spend a lot of time sailing on a very nice yacht. Oh yes cyberstalking is one of my pastimes. Fake names, people. Fake names online. Unless you want a high-school girlfriend finding out about your life 30 years later. And I suppose if you aren't doing anything to be ashamed of, then being found wouldn't be so bad.

But he was nice. He was a nice, cute, high-school boy and when he told me two weeks before the prom that he didn't want to go out with me any more - we were sitting on the steps in front of Balboa High school, a beautiful building with a pillared porch and red roof tiles - I was wearing a purple gauze skirt with a purple and green floral pattern blouse with gathered shoulders, both of which I had sewn myself, and yet he wanted to break up with me! maybe if I had been wearing the green crinkle cloth sleeveless jumpsuit with the D-ring fastened belt instead? - he was not taking any pleasure in the conversation. I have had men - grown men - just stop calling, so Ken had more guts than some others.

He broke up with me. I wasn't going to get to go to the prom. He hadn't actually asked me, so I should have been a little suspicious, but I didn't know how these things worked and had just assumed that because we spent our lunch period necking that we would also go to the dance together. We had gone to the Sadie Hawkins dance the month before, but I had asked him. It's possible that he realized that just kissing wasn't enough to carry a relationship and he wanted to go to the prom with someone he could actually talk to and who would be able to talk to his friends. He was a Zone kid, which means he had been born in the Canal Zone and gone to school there his entire life. He had longtime friends. I had been living in the Zone for under two years.

There was this girl in my gym class, Frieda, who had long red hair but was not that cute. I was cuter. Really! She was a senior. She would always ask me, So how is Ken? and I would wonder why she was asking me this stuff because what was it to her and it wasn't like she was my friend or anything.

He took her to the prom.

I took grim satisfaction in the rumor/news later that he had spent the night in jail after being pulled over by the Panamanian cops for something probably really minor. Haha! That's what you get for breaking up with me.

In which I humiliate myself with my exercise class instructor

After I broke up with a perfectly nice boyfriend of several years - it's hard when you love someone but know you can never live together, I was at loose ends. I hadn't paid attention to other men for years. I hadn't had to worry about meeting men and first dates and how do you even get that first date? I was not exactly a man magnet.

Sure, I'd had to push men away when I was traveling by myself through South and Central America, but that was because they were latino men and I was an American woman traveling alone and they all knew what that meant: I was easy. They'd seen the movies. They'd seen American TV shows. American women sleep with anyone!

But I was in The South, where women - except me - knew how to wear makeup and do their hair and dress and flirt. My company had moved its corporate HQ from New York to The South years before and rumor had it that the men who had come down from New York were astonished by the women. Nothing against New York women - they are stylish and steely sharp, but southern women cloak their steel in velvet, lipstick and charm.

I started a new exercise class. It met at 5:30 a.m. and was run by a former Marine drill instructor. My excuse for all that follows is that it was at 5:30 a.m., which is not my best time. My perceptions were not as keen as they should have been. Plus I don't wear my glasses when I exercise, so I couldn't see that well, which meant I couldn't see facial expressions that might have helped me interpret words better.

I have made many early-morning exercise mistakes in my life, including snapping at the pregnant woman who climbed into the lane with me at the JCC pool, even though there was an empty lane next to me. "Must you share a lane with me?" I demanded. "There's an empty lane next to us!"

She smiled and changed lanes.

The next day, I saw her in the locker room. I had had time to think about what I had done and was horrified at my rudeness. "I owe you an apology," I said. "There is no excuse for my rudeness yesterday. It won't happen again."

I suppose I should have used the political/public figure apology of, "I'm sorry if you were offended" because why waste an apology on someone who might not have been offended? Maybe she thought my behavior was perfectly acceptable.

And maybe not. She smiled and told me not to worry about it.

The next day, I read a story in the paper about the new rabbi at a nearby temple. A husband and wife rabbi team who were both assigned to that temple. She was expecting their first child. The photo showed the woman I had been so rude to. Oh man.

Back to my exercise class. The instructor, Mark, was divorced. A few years older than me. Confident. Funny. Smart. In amazing shape. Ooo-rah.

He was flirty. Always had a snappy comeback. I can be somewhat mouthy under the right circumstances, so I egged him on.

I mistook his flirtiness for actual interest. In me. Even though he didn't ask me out or make any other indication that he would like to spend time with me outside of class.

One morning, the entire class and Mark went to Perkins for breakfast. I made some smart-aleck comment to Mark and he told me to put on my big-girl panties and deal with it.

This is how much I don't get out: I had never heard that expression before.

That afternoon, I went to Target and bought a flimsy thong. Which I stuffed into a brown envelope. With the note, "Are these the panties you're talking about?"

Oh you're already cringing, as you should be. If only I had cringed before I handed the envelope to him at the end of the next class.

What do you think a man who didn't know me well would think?

How about, Wow! She's hot to trot! I might not want to date her, but if she wants a little fling, well, that's OK with me.

After two days with no comment, I emailed him. "Well?" I asked.

He was hesitant. What am I supposed to tell my 16-year-old son about these if he comes across them? he asked.

I didn't have a good answer for that.

A friend who always had many men asking her on actual dates only she never thought they were dates - What do you mean, just because he picked me up and paid for my supper, he wants to date me? We're just friends! I don't know why he tried to kiss me! - told me that if I were going to do something as stupid as give a man a pair of panties, I should have given him granny panties so I could toss it off as a joke.

But a dainty, lacy thong?

That is a pretty clear message that I am looking to get laid and that is it.

Mark sent me a very nice, thoughtful email.

Gentle Gold-Digger, he wrote, I am most flattered. But I am not looking for a relationship right now. I just broke up with a long-term girlfriend and am taking a rest, focusing on my children.

I was mortified. Because of course what he was really saying was that he was not interested in a relationship with me, which I have to admit was not a bad thing as people are not always a match, but still the rejection stung. It was like that scene in When Harry Met Sally when Sally sees her old boyfriend and he's married to another woman and Sally says, "It wasn't that he didn't want to get married. It's that he didn't want to marry me!" And then she ends up with one of the most annoying men in the world, Billy Crystal, but then it's not like Meg Ryan has covered herself in roses recently either.

And I was also mortified because I really liked his class - after just a month, I could see my abdominal muscles. For the first time ever. I couldn't drop out of the class. I needed to look good so I could find a man who would want a relationship with me.

I just had to endure the humiliation and add another rule to my dating list: the problem is not working with/attending the exercise class of someone you date, it's working with/attending the exercise class of someone you used to date or in front of whom you have humiliated yourself.

In which some people try to set my friend up with a child molester

My friend Liz is lovely. She is smart, pretty, athletic and nice. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Zaire, where she set up a pharmacy inventory system for her region. Speaks French. She has led an interesting life.

She is also a serious Christian of the Protestant sort and is quite involved in her church. Not interested in casual dating with someone who does not share her faith. Which narrows her options but should not mean she should settle.

Some fellow churchmembers approached her after services one day.

We have a man for you, they said.

Really? Liz asked cautiously.

He's really great - we've been friends for years. Nice guy. Never married. He's studying for the ministry right now, they told her.

Well, maybe, Liz said.

There's just one thing...

Oh I KNEW it! Liz thought.

He's a convicted pedophile.

Liz, stunned, said nothing. What would you say?

But he prays about it really, really hard! the friends continued.

No, Liz said. No. No thanks.

She later asked me if she looked so desperate that someone thought she would date a child molester.

No, she did not. Her fellow congregants were trying to upgrade the guy.

And yes, I, too, hope that his conviction will keep him away from any job involving contact with children.

In which two people who should have known better ask what my dad's rank was

Here's the deal about rank in the military: it is soooo much more than a job title. It endows status on the spouse (the general's wife is usually the president of the Officers' Wives Club), it confers privilege (size and location) in housing, it determines pay, it guides weight limits for moving.*

Job titles matter in the civilian world as well, but it's not the same. You don't live with, go to church or synagogue with, shop with and socialize with your co-workers in the civilian world the way you do in the military. They are not your next-door neighbors or your kids' babysitters. Title matters at work and work events, but outside of work, not really.

Some people are hyper-aware of rank, as my friend Michael remembers. He is black and his dad was a colonel. The (black) mother of another kid wouldn't let her son play with Michael because her husband was enlisted and she didn't think it was appropriate for an enlisted man's kid to play with an officer's kid.

Side story: Michael's dad retired when he was 14 and they moved to Memphis, where his dad became a chaplain at the VA. Michael says that's when he experienced racism for the first time in his life. When his dad was in the army, Michael was (if anything), the chaplain's kid or the colonel's kid, but in Memphis, he was the black kid. Except to the black kids, of course, who thought he acted white.

My dad was a bit anti-rank, at least when it came to his kids. We were instructed to call our friends' dads "Mister," not "Major So and so" or "Sergeant So and so."

"I call them that," my dad said. "But you do not. They are 'Mister' to you."

We kids knew who was who, but it didn't matter. We didn't care.

Civilians might ask me what rank my dad was when he was retired, which I always wonder about. Why do they care? Do they know how ranking works? If they do, then they know that they are asking a somewhat rude question. If they don't, then why are they asking at all?

I wouldn't ask someone whose mom or dad had been a college teacher what title they held. To me, all professors are equal, but apparently, there is an entire hierarchy. Big deal. Assistant professor, associate professor, plain professor: they all teach at the college level, right? That's all I need to know. Except the subject. That's important because who doesn't want to know more about the archaeologist dad and the summers spent on the dig in Egypt? Or the food scientist mom developing better ice cream?

But military people - a child or spouse of a serviceman - know what rank is what and what rank means. And they know you don't ask, or at least you don't ask unless it's relevant. It is not relevant in a social setting. Which is why I was so shocked when I attended the wedding breakfast for a friend whose father had also been in the military.

An older lady said to me, after explaining how her husband had retired from the army and how her son was the aide de camp to a NATO general in Turkey, "I hear you and Zoe were friends in high school."

"Yes," I answered.

"What rank was your father?" she asked.

I was stunned. She knew the protocol. She knew what she was asking was the civilian equivalent of, "How much money did your dad make? Even if he made decent money, did he earn it doing something icky like being a drug dealer?** Or was his job high status like surgeon? Did you live in an appropriate neighborhood? Did he belong to the right clubs?"

It was an attempt to place me socially, which is why I hate all "What do you do?" questions anyhow. First, if someone is unemployed, it really stinks to have to answer that, and second, too many people use it as a shortcut to the same thing: how useful can you be to me? I ask people I've just met what movies they've seen or what books they've read lately. I was on the jobless answering end for far too long. Plus I am just a superior human being who knows how to be polite to others.

But I was so shocked that she would ask that I blurted out my answer. She turned away from me without another word. My dad could not help her son be promoted to general.

Wow. I vowed that I would never be caught off guard like that again. Zoe later confirmed to me that the woman was kind of a bitch.

Years later, when I met Primo, Sly and Doris showed no interest in me or my family. Didn't ask me anything about college or my growing up or where my family was now.

Mi gente. I am not a boring person. OK, maybe I'm a bit boring, but I have not lived a boring life. I have lived under two dictators and been around for the aftermath of another. I speak Spanish fluently and can get by in French. I have been all over southern Europe. I was a Peace Corps volunteer and most people want at least to know about the food in my host country. I have lived in three foreign countries and Miami. There are things to talk to me about.

But nope. Not interested.

The one thing Sly asked Primo about me - and he didn't even have the guts to do this to my face because he knew! he knew! he had been in the navy and he knew! - was what rank my dad had held at retirement.

That was the one fact he considered important enough about me to know? What rank my father, who had been dead for about eight years by the time Sly met me, had held at retirement? Why on earth did it even matter? He was never going to meet my dad. My dad had been retired for years before he died and had three other interesting post-retirement jobs, including working on a shrimping boat for a season, just because he had always wanted to do that, teaching aircraft mechanics to members of the Saudi Arabian air force, and teaching junior high math and science on the US Navy base on Sicily. So much more to my dad than his rank and so many interesting things to know about him. But Sly just wanted to place my dad and to judge me by my dad's rank. Jerk.

* Primo laughs because I travel so lightly through life and refuse to buy books ("We can afford them, you know"), but when I was a kid, we couldn't accumulate books because they were heavy.

** Not that I am trying to compare anyone in the military to drug dealers - I am just trying to show that income is not the only way we label a person.

In which my sister gets in touch with her inner Rapunzel

I told you we lived in Spain from 1969 to 1973. This was the Franco era, only one generation removed from the Spanish Civil War, which was not a pleasant time in Spain's history. Read For Whom the Bell Tolls if you want to know more, but really, do you want to know about starving people and villagers making their neighbors run through a gauntlet of hoes and scythes until they are pushed off a cliff to their death? Nasty.

"Only one generation" diminishes the horrors, as well. Even in the past few years, in our trips to Spain (doesn't that sound fancy? "In our trips to Spain!" Us! Frequent world travelers! Thank you, Primo's hard, long hours and frequent flyer miles), Primo and I have seen the miniature elderly Spanish walking slowly on the sidewalk. The first time we saw a white-haired couple, each barely five feet tall, we didn't think much of it. But after the third and fourth and fifth and sixth, we realized there was something going on.

They had been children during the civil war. And had been starved. Their growth had been stunted. I saw an elderly, short couple in my grocery store here a few weeks ago. I didn't even have to hear them speaking Spanish to know they were from Spain.

When we lived there, Spain had not yet recovered. It was still a dictatorship. Many poor people. Where there are poor people, even soldiers can afford household help. Heck, even Peace Corps volunteers can afford help. I had a maid and a gardener when I was in the Peace Corps. Not because I am lazy, even though I am, but because it was cheaper to pay a maid to sort of clean my entire house than to take my clothes to the laundry. And it was cheaper to have a gardener than to buy a lawnmower.

My best friend Lisa's mom and dad had a gardener who undoubtedly worked for many families, maybe even ours, as there was simply not enough work at one house to keep a full-time gardener. But he stored his tools in Lisa's carport.

Lisa's brother, Stevie, who now goes by the more sophisticated "Steve," and my sister, Jenny, knew that's where the tools were. Undoubtedly, they had been forbidden to touch those tools, but is there any fruit sweeter than forbidden fruit?

Let me tell you about my sister at age four.

She was gorgeous. Drop-dead gorgeous. Rosy, chubby cheeks. Twinkling blue eyes. Infectious smile. And curly, long to her butt, flaxen hair.

My mom would take us into Madrid to go to the big market with the dead rabbits hanging from the ceiling. Spaniards would stop, bend down, pinch Jenny's cheek, and coo, "Ay que rubia! Que cute!" Vendors would give her strawberries. They loved her blonde plumpness.

They never pinched my cheek. At seven, with stick-straight, chin-length hair and slightly buck front teeth with a gap between them, I was not cute. I was definitely not cute when compared to my sister. I'm over it. Mostly.

My mom usually put Jenny's hair in a ponytail. Four year olds and long, curly, fine hair are not the most convenient mix, but my mom did not want to cut it. Can you blame her? She had a golden angel.

Then came the day that I returned from school to find my sister's hair - gone. When I had left for school, her hair was long. When I came home, it was short.

Jenny and Stevie had broken into the gardener's tool box.

They found the big, heavy, wood-handled pruning shears.

Stevie lifted the shears to Jenny's head and snip, snip, snip, the ponytail was gone.

They made the rounds of the neighborhood, leaving chunks of hair at each stop, chunks that my mother later collected as she tirelessly re-traced their route.

Jenny was scolded quite severely. She didn't need more than a few harsh words before she would burst into tears. Even now, she gets defensive any time I ask why she is still dating that loser.

My dad didn't think it was as big a deal as my mom did, which did not make my mom happy.

My mom had to trim the long hair on the edges to match the very short hair at Jenny's crown. Jenny looked like a little Mia Farrow when Mia Farrow still looked good and before she got involved with that quasi-incestuous creep.

Hair grows. Good thing, because even at 47, I have been known to take the scissors to my own hair. Jenny's hair grew back, but it grew back straighter and dark blonde. There is probably a moral in here somewhere, like lock up your gardening tools or don't let your four year old play with scissors. But if it hadn't been gardening shears, it probably would have been chewing gum in the hair or who knows what. Not that I ever took a nap with chewing gum in my mouth, despite my mother's warnings, and woken up to find the gum stuck in my hair.

Jenny's hair is now long and curly again. Except she blow-dries it straight. I guess she never did like those curls.

In which I finally kick the diaper habit

This might shock some of you, who think of me as this perfect being, a model to emulate in every way, but - I was a bedwetter.

Yep. I wet the bed until I was seven.

My poor mother.

I did just fine during the day. I was as toilet learned as the next second grader. But at night? Couldn't or wouldn't wake up. I understand that. Even now, I hate to get out of bed in the middle of the night just to pee. It's cold. The toilet seat is cold, although it's not so bad since Primo got me a wooden toilet seat for Christmas.

Oh yes this is a house full of wine, roses and romance. I wanted the heated toilet seat (you laugh, but only if you live someplace that doesn't get cold), but it costs $189, even at Menards, Primo's favorite place to shop, and you have to plug it in. The entire design aesthetic of our downstairs bathroom would have been ruined by a cord running from the toilet, across the vanity (which I hate and which will be replaced AA - After Alimony), and to the outlet.

Now, it's me who has to change the sheets if I wet the bed. I have a strong motivation not to, not to mention that I am 47 years old and bedwetting is not a big problem among women my age. As far as I know.

Back then, it was my mother's problem.

After taking me to the doctor and ascertaining that this was not a physical problem over which I had no control, my mom decided to put the burden of the consequences (or most of them) on me. She put me back in diapers.

Not the fancy diapers they have now, where a kid doesn't even know she's wet, a development that has been great for getting rid of diaper rash but not so great, I have heard, for encouraging toilet learning. (See? I am au courant with all the child-rearing lexicon.) But the old-fashioned cloth kind that fastened with pins and were covered by plastic pants. The kind that sat in a plastic bin with bleach until there was a full load to be washed. You wonder why moms in the 60s didn't have time to meet their friends at Starbucks for a latte? It's because they were washing diapers.

By the time I was seven, I was putting on and removing the diapers myself. Which is pretty sad. Even sadder than the kids who walk up to their mothers, unbutton mom's shirt, and hey! Lunch!

Go ahead. Flame me. But I maintain if your kid is old enough to help himself to the boobie, he is old enough to be weaned. And I would have said so to the women I worked with in Chile who would go through three-hour meetings with a kid casually latched on but it seemed like bad manners. Note that the director of my agency, who kept an infant attached to her naked breast, told me that I had to stop knitting during meetings because it was "distracting."

Knitting = distracting

Naked breast with baby attached = not distracting

We were in the Southern Hemisphere, where the water swirls down the toilet counterclockwise or clockwise but opposite to how it swirls in the Northern Hemisphere, so perhaps other things were opposite, too.

Every night before bed, I would put on my diaper. Every morning, I would take it off.

Not such a big deal, really. I wasn't the one washing them. I still didn't have to get up in the middle of the night to pee, so it was win/win as far as I was concerned.

Then my mom started bribing me. If I could go seven days without a wet diaper, I could have a prize, probably a piece of candy.

I can be bought.

I easily went the seven days.

But then started peeing again because what was in it for me?

Then we hit the trifecta, only with two things, so it was a bifecta.

I spent the night with my best friend Lisa, who lived in the same building we did. We were in Spain at the time and we lived in an off-base housing area with fourplex houses. We lived in 61-D. Lisa was in 61-C. Her phone number was 452, which I knew to say in Spanish to the operator: cuatro cinco dos. I don't remember our phone number because I didn't call it so much.

The housing area, which was not a restricted area the way a military base is, was a combination of US and Spanish culture. Little League, Brownies and Cub Scouts plus Spanish vendors and craftsmen passing through. The knife sharpener rode his bike, blowing a little whistle to announce his presence, and sharpened knives and scissors with a grinder powered by a chain looped to the back wheel. The candy guy sold not just red lollipops and gummy bears but also plastic strips for making lanyards, which was present #2 that we made for our parents after present #1, the clay ashtray from the school art class. Whether our parents smoked or not.

We took Spanish classes in school, wrote letters to the Three Kings at Christmas time, and took field trips to the wax museum in Madrid. This was Franco's Spain, so it was still very poor, which meant that even servicemen of modest means could afford household help. We had a maid who came once a week. First, we had Rosario and then there was Sole. Then there was the gardener and his tools, which he stored by Lisa's house, but I'll tell you about that adventure in another post. Let's just say that perhaps a gardener should not leave pruning shears out where there are little kids who have long hair.

The house isn't there any more, or not the way I remember it. Primo and I went to Madrid a few years ago and took the metro out to Royal Oaks, which had been several miles away from the outskirts of Madrid. Now the city is built all the way out to Royal Oaks.

About least 25 years ago, the Spanish government didn't renew the lease or whatever on Torrejon Air Force Base, where my dad had been stationed, and the housing area also reverted back to the Spanish government, who apparently sold it to private developers who knocked the houses down and built luxury villas with walls in front of them. My house was gone. My yard was gone. Nothing remained of what I remembered: our house, the pool, the school. There is a Facebook group for people who went to Royal Oaks Elementary. Everyone remembers their house number.

I was at Lisa's house. And I had to put on my diaper.

Well that's a little bit embarrassing. Second grade and wearing a diaper is not a big deal if nobody knows about it. But when your best friend finds out?

That's motivation.

Plus being sissy enough that at 10:00 p.m., I decided I didn't want to spend the night any more because it was scary, so Lisa's mom called my mom, who came and got me and my diaper-clad butt.

Shortly thereafter, my mom offered me a 30-day deal: dry diapers for a month and I could have the doll advertised on the back of the cornflakes box.

That, plus the allure of not having to humiliate myself in front of my friends any more, was real motivation. The bifecta. My mom had finally hit the proper combination of incentives, which is always so tricky in any management situation. How to align the interests of the individual (me) with those of the organization (my mother)?

My mom found it. Humiliation + desired toy = dry diapers. I kept dry for 30 days and after that, wet was not acceptable. I had been exposed: I could control it after all. No more cereal-box goodies for me.

In which my sister tries to frame my brother for the Eating of the Forbidden Fruit

When I was in high school, we lived on Howard Air Force Base in the Panama Canal Zone. Many of you may not know what life is like on an air force base, so I will give you a primer. The military person's family size determines the size of house he (in the late 70s, it was mostly "he") and his family get. His rank determines the location. As in, the higher the rank, the higher on the hill the house.

I had two best friends in high school, Jackie (whom I sent into babysitting hell) and Julie. Jackie's dad was a chief master sergeant, I think, and she had one brother, so they were in a three-bedroom duplex house on the flatland. My dad was a captain with three kids, so we had a full house (four bedrooms) on the rise to the hill, but very low on the rise.

Julie's dad was a colonel and the wing commander (he was the highest-ranking officer on Howard - the general lived on a different base), so they lived on the top of the hill. Even though Julie's sister was already away at college and there were just two kids at home, they got a big house because her dad had to entertain a lot. Julie's mom would pay Julie and me $5 each to clean up after the parties. Julie and I discovered that rum and Tab was an awful combination at one party. Nothing like something that tastes like crap to convince you that maybe drinking is not for you.

All the houses looked alike - white stucco with red-tile roofs, first floor open for a carport, patio, and maid's quarters. I don't know of anyone who had a live-in maid. My mom used our maid's quarters as a darkroom. We did, however, have a cleaning lady once a week, but she was not allowed to clean my room or my brother's or sister's room. My mom maintained that the cleaning lady was for her, not for us.

Four blocks away was the movie theater and the pool. Another few blocks to the base exchange, also known as the BX (PX on an army post), and the parade grounds. The parade grounds also served as the soccer practice field. Soccer practice usually ended around the time when the flag was taken down and Taps played, which meant standing still until the song was over. Traffic stopped for Taps as well. That's how we roll on a military base. The national anthem was also played before the movies. People knew to stand and to take off their darn hats and I'm talking to you, Memphis Redbird fans who don't seem to grasp that you 1. take off your hat and 2. quit talking on your darn cellphone for the anthem.

Now to the story. The point of all this background - well, just to give you a mise en scene. And to lead to this fact: on a military base, you know your neighbors. None of this going ten years without ever meeting the people who live next door. (It did take me two years to meet one of my next-door neighbors here, but not because I wasn't interested - I just never saw her.) Everyone is in the same boat. They all work for the same employer. Have the same mission. Everyone is moving in and moving out, so it's hard for feuds to develop and alliances to build. The downside is everyone knows everyone else's business.

To the story. When I was in high school, my mom opened the pantry one day to discover that her one precious can of mandarin oranges was missing.

Big deal, you shrug. So a can of fruit is gone. So what?

A couple of things.

1. It was very difficult to get certain items in the commissary, as everything had to be shipped from the US to Panama. It wasn't like now, where it's fairly easy to find what you want all over the world. It was a little bit like the old Soviet Union, I think, where scarcity ruled and you pounced on what was in stock. The irony in all this is that the oranges available from Panama's Boquete region were delicious and abundant.

2. My mother had made it clear that this item was off limits. She did not take threats to her authority lightly.

She asked which of us had eaten it.

Not I! said the first kid.

Not I! chimed the second.

And not I! claimed the third.

My mom was not satisfied with that answer. She asked again. She got the same answers again.

Fine, she seethed. Whoever ate them, leave the money on the counter and this will be over.

Nobody left the $1.32 on the counter.

My mom was angry. Must have mentioned it to her friend Sue. My sister, brother and I all babysat for Sue. Jenny was at Sue's when she casually mentioned, as she carefully studied her fingernails, that she had seen Greg with mandarin orange juice on his chin.

She whispered to me that she had seen Greg with a can opener a few days before the oranges were consumed.

I knew I hadn't eaten them. Which left my brother or my sister.

Greg protested that he had not eaten the mandarin oranges. He didn't even like mandarin oranges!

But Jenny was steadfast in her denial. Never wavered.

I don't remember what Greg's punishment was. Maybe he didn't get punished, as he maintained he had not done it. Alas, my brother had been known to bend the truth in the past, so his denial was not plausible. (He has since overcome this tendency.)

It wasn't until years later that my sister admitted that she had eaten the oranges.

She had done the crime. And then spread a vast, elaborate web of lies, all designed to take my brother down. My sister, criminal mastermind.

In which Primo and I go on a romantic ten-day vacation and don't wxyz once

This might be TMI for some of you, so I am putting an R rating on this one. If you are squeamish about women's things, then stop reading now. Otherwise, no complaining.

For my engagement gift, Primo got me a Simple Human fancy kitchen trash can because

1. I have fat little fingers that are not enhanced by a ring,

2. I am as thrifty as they come and of an age to understand that any money he spent on a ring would be money not available for other things we wanted, like food,

3. I was sick and darn tired of bending over his 12" ugly plastic kitchen trash can that had to be opened by pressing the release on the lid, which meant lifting my foot 13" and hitting just the right spot, so I could peel onions directly into the can and even then, not getting the peels into the trash because it was too darn small and yes, I learned to peel them into a bowl on the counter, but still, and

4. I wanted to use any extra $5,000 not for a ring but for a trip to Paris. We do not buy that stupid two months' salary bit dreamed up by the diamond industry.

Last Thanksgiving, we took that trip. Not for $5,000 - that went to re-surface our driveway last summer! oh how I love being a homeowner in a cold climate!

It was the perfect storm:

1. A foolproof reason not to visit Sly and Doris for Thanksgiving, as Primo, perhaps hoping for their early demise, has not yet informed his parents that we will never again spend a holiday with them. Not that our freedom has gone unremarked (how, how, how could he take a ten-day vacation to Paris with that castrating golddigging Catholic ho who won't get a job but not come visit them?), but I would much rather deal with an Airing of the Grievances from afar than in their living room. Let them complain. Let them complain from far away.

2. He had to use vacation or lose it.

3. He had enough frequent flier miles to get us there on business class tickets, which is the only way we travel now because we are fancy and enough hotel points for six nights, leaving only three nights for us to pay.

The idea was that we would have a romantic vacation: sleeping late in our Hilton Arc de Triomphe room with its thick walls and sturdy shower and free coffee in the executive lounge, although paying 4 euros at an exchange rate of $1.30/euro for a latte at Starbucks - what? that should bother me?, walking hand in hand through the City of Light, of laughing lightly - tralalalala! at the charming foibles of the French, feeding croissants to each other, kissing at all the romantic spots, like the top of the Eiffel Tower or on the Pont Neuf, and eating long, leisurely lunches at intimate cafes as we watched the world go by.

And, of course, of lots and lots of wxyz, which we are usually too tired to have because Primo works such long hours and I - well, I have no excuse except he comes to bed late and I get up early and we are no longer poulets de printemps.

The stars were aligned for a romantic Paris trip: Primo was going to take a real vacation during a slow time at work, so probably would not be up until 4 a.m. on his computer in the hotel lobby as he was during the first night of our honeymoon in Madrid, we were going to be in a nice, warm hotel, and I had checked the calendar, counted 28 days from the last "x" and discovered I was clear.

But then I didn't get my period. Late, late, late. Took the pregnancy test, drama, drama, drama. Not pregnant but no period.

We got to Paris. Went to our first hotel on Rue Cler, the one we were paying for ourselves. We arrived at about 1 p.m., but they wouldn't let us into our room. We were exhausted, but went out and walked for a few hours, trying to stay warm in the Paris cold that was 15 degrees below what had been forecast.

When we returned, they let us in. We snuck the bread and cheese we had bought past the clerk - no food allowed in the room!, took off our shoes, sat on the bed, ate, and fell asleep. No wxyz.

The next day, we went to the Sewer Museum and walked and walked and walked and walked. Returned to the hotel exhausted, ate, and fell asleep. No wxyz.

The next day, we drove out to Mont St Michel via the Normandy beaches. The sun set at 5:00, so we were navigating from Normandy to the Mont in the dark. In the driving rain. With a map designed to fool the Germans should they get antsy again. We had a crummy, overpriced meal in a restaurant run by a snippy waiter, then went to bed, exhausted. No wxyz.

The next day, we returned to Paris. Hit town at rush hour. Got in the wrong lane and were forced off the road we needed to be on. Lots of panic and Oh noes! Got back onto the spiderweb of Paris streets and made it to Hertz, but not without a lot of drama.

Some couples bond over this sort of thing. We do not. We fight and get cranky. By the time we got to the Hilton, which is where we were staying for the rest of the trip, we were not happy with each other and we were again, exhausted. Went to sleep. No wxyz.

The next day, we got enough sleep. We were in a good mood. We ate a delicious Paris lunch. SH did not work. We had a lazy, lovely romantic day. Returned to the hotel for some wxyz.

And discovered that guess what?

My period had waited until now to arrive.

Two and a half weeks late.

Which meant no nice romantic vacation wxyz.

In which Doris reaches out to me by sending me her used books and three mail-order catalogues

Doris complains to Primo that I reject her frequent attempts at friendship. Such recent attempts have included The Airing of the Grievances, Parts 1 and 2, at Primo's New Year's visit to them. Sly and Doris would probably be shocked to learn that what they tell Primo does not fall under the seal of the confessional but is in fact shared with me. Every. Single. Word. Some might say that in the interests of marital harmony, Primo should not tell me what his parents say, but I say in the interests of good blogging, he should reveal it all. Wouldn't you agree?

Other recent friendship attempts ("Reaching Out," as Doris terms it. She REACHES OUT to me ALL THE TIME) include sending a Christmas card. I don't send them one, but that's because they are Primo's parents, not mine. He is in charge of their birthdays and Mother's Day and Father's Day and their Christmas; I am in charge of these events for my own mother.

Marriage does not automatically confer responsibility for card and gift giving on the wife. They are still his parents. In Primo's defense, he has never asked me to take care of these things, although I was not pleased that we had to leave 30 minutes early for a play last month so we could go by the post office to drop off Doris' birthday card so it would get to her in time.

"Did you not know your mom's birthday was December 10th this year?" I asked him. "Did they change the date from its usual December 14th?"

Another Reaching Out was the request that I return to Doris her mother's wedding ring, which Doris gave to me when we got married. I actually don't mind sending the ring back so Doris can give it to Primo's niece (who is named in my will as the recipient of the ring), because I don't like wearing rings and it just sits in my jewelry box. I do mind that Doris asked that a gift be returned to her.

I mailed the ring last week. As my own Reaching Out. Doris sent an email to Primo yesterday telling him that she had received the ring and for him to tell me thank you.

Even Primo thought that was lame. "After you go through all that trouble to send it, she couldn't write an email to you?" he asked.

After New Year's, she sent some used placemats back with Primo. Told him we could give them to Goodwill if we didn't want them. As Doris and I do not share the same taste (see how gracious I am being? "we do not share the same taste" is a nice way to say that my house will never be filled with plaster, ceramic, bronze and iron pigs), the placemats will go to Goodwill after they have sat in a drawer for a suitable amount of time. I did not write a thank-you note.

The most recent Reaching Out was when Doris mailed me from her book collection a novel I had already read, a 30-year-old guide to opals, a gardening book, and three mail-order gardening catalogues.

No note.

Just used books. And mail-order catalogues.

I took the books to the library, tossed the catalogues, and debated what to write in my thank-you note because of course I have to write a thank-you note or else I am an ingrate.

First decision: paper or email? I prefer paper with Doris because it doesn't give her a chance to respond. If I email her something, she will answer and if I don't answer her answer, or even if I do answer her answer but my answer isn't long enough, then I am Rejecting Her Reaching Out and then I am stuck in an infinite loop.

But I guess I can exchange a few emails with her if it will make Primo's life easier. I guess.

I write her an email telling her that I had read the book for book club and had really liked it. I toss in the conversation-starting comment that the guy who always find something not to like didn't like the book because he thought the writer was too hard on the Germans.

It was a World War II novel. About the occupied Channel Islands. Written from the English perspective.

The Germans are not the heroes here.

I mention a few other books we have read in book club. Point out the cranky guy's response to those books, one of which was a memoir by a man who escaped from China. (We are being too harsh on Mao and the Cultural Revolution! Who are we to judge? a comment that got Lynn, the second-most liberal person in the group to snap that in this country, people are not shot or starved or tortured for their political beliefs.)

An email to inspire conversation, right?

No answer. None.

So now do I get to complain that I have Reached Out and Doris is Rejecting Me?

In which I am Late and decide to go back on the pill

Don't get all squeamish on me just because I'm going to talk about Female Things. First, this is the blog my mother does not read and even if she came across it accidentally, she would know to stop reading immediately because I had not told her about this blog and if I hadn't told her, there was a reason and even more importantly, she is not a boundary violator the way Sly and Doris are, and second, I wrote about having a miscarriage. Surely, I can write about a far more common occurrence. To quote my friend Heather, "We're not statues, you know." Although she used a modifier for "statues" that I am not comfortable typing, so your imagination will have to suffice. Basically, she was describing something statues can't actually do, so you're not missing anything.

I am 47 years old. Despite Kelly Preston and John Travolta's recent happy event and their claim that she conceived the old-fashioned way (and indeed, she may have), it is not that common for women of my age to find themselves in the family way without a lot of medical intervention.

Nature is smart: unless you are very rich and can afford a nanny to watch your kid, a maid to clean your house, and a cook to prepare your meals, it's not the wisest thing to have an infant at this age. We pre-AARPers need our sleep. I wear earplugs just so I don't hear the cats whining at 8:00 a.m., demanding to be fed.

I believe that sort of thing is frowned upon when it comes to human babies.

Yet it does happen. Change of life babies are not unheard of. I thought it was unlikely for me given the miscarriage so I hadn't bothered to go back on the pill after the miscarriage.

But a few months ago, I found myself with very bad skin all of a sudden. Not just the mild breakout you get on the forehead from wearing the same hat over and over to shovel snow. Who knew a hat could harbor acne bacteria? But the deep, slow, cystic pimples that take about a month to run their course, not including the fading of the scar, which takes months, and that meanwhile, sit on the forehead or the chin or both in raised, red, not coverable by makeup insolence, drawing attention to themselves so that they are the only thing visible. Neon flashing pimples announcing to the world that they are here! HERE!

What the? Why was I breaking out like that? It had been years since that had happened! I started slathering Clearasil on my face like it was sunblock.

Then I didn't get my period.

Shrug. OK. No period. Big deal. I'm a 23-29 dayer. Used to be a strict 28-dayer but that was in my 20s. I'm getting close to the Big M and these things happen. I thought the extra few days were just menopause sneering at me, spitting in my face and saying, Hahahahahaha! You might exercise and wear sunblock and color your hair, but beneath it all, you are still getting old and your ass is mine!

But then - still no period. Thirty six days and nothing?

"Maybe you're pregnant," Primo suggested.

"No," I answered firmly. "No way. I cannot be pregnant. I do not want to be pregnant."

Still, I was concerned. The formula for pregnant last time was bad skin + late period.

"You could be," Primo reiterated a few days later.

"I better not be," I snapped. I moped around the house, shoveling chocolate into my mouth. I was cranky and brusque.

"Maybe you should take a pregnancy test," he suggested.

"No!" I said.

"But why not?" he asked.

"I don't want to take the stupid test," I told him through gritted teeth. Then I moped some more. And moaned, "I don't want to be pregnant!"

Primo started moping, too.

"What is your problem?" I snapped.

He hesitated. "Is the reason you don't want to be pregnant is that you don't want to have a baby with me?"

"What?! No! No!"

He looked unconvinced.

"I just don't want to never sleep through the night again and I don't want to be putting a kid through college when we're going on Social Security," I told him. "I like our life the way it is. Yeah, it would have been nice to have a baby a few years ago and we would have adjusted, but now? We're just too old."

I also mentioned the bad genetics on his side: his sister was mentally ill and his nephew is retarded. Combine that with old eggs and it's a recipe for a sick baby. A healthy baby would be hard enough, but a sick one would be unthinkable. Who would take care of him once Primo and I were dead?

I convinced Primo that I loved him dearly (easy to do because I do - he is wonderful, lovely, the best thing in my life) but still there was no period.

Day 39, we were getting ready to go out of town. "Don't you want to know one way or another?" he asked.

"No!" I shouted. "I want to be able to hope that I'm not! If I take the test and it's positive, then it's all over. Our lives change completely. I want the possibility that I'm not."

Primo, who is, as you know, an engineer and very logical about almost everything, was baffled by my response. "You know that's crazy, don't you?" he asked.

"Better to cling to that sliver of hope," I told him.

But he prevailed. We went to Walgreen's, my face announcing that we should spend some time in the skin-care aisle, and bought a kit with two tests in it, just in case there was a positive that we wanted to double check. We went home and I drank a diet Dr Pepper, which takes about five minutes to run through me. (Like beer, you don't buy diet soda, you rent it.) I went into the bathroom, closed the door, because we do not pee in front of each other, and did what needed to be done.

Zipped, told Primo to come in. We both watched the stick, fingers crossed.

Negative!

Oh we were so relieved. Yes, we would have overcome our surprise and shock and would have converted the guest room to a nursery and we would have been happy to do it, not the least because a baby would have been the perfect excuse not to travel to visit Sly and Doris for at least the next five years because who exposes her kid to drunks? Or mean people? and of course they couldn't come here because there wouldn't have been room for them to stay, as Primo and I are no longer willing to sleep in the basement just so they can have our bedroom.

Plus who doesn't like babies? It would have been fun to have a baby. We would have adjusted. We would.

But. Negative.

Loved that pink line.

My period finally showed up five days later. I emailed my doctor and asked for a new prescription for the pill. I can't go through that kind of drama again, even if it means I throw away the unused test.

In which I take a customer to lunch and he gets way too personal so I slap him down

Back when I still had a job that paid money, as opposed to the bone-wearying labor I do now of keeping a house clean for two people and two cats and watching soap operas the rest of the time, just waiting for the moment that Primo goes on a business trip so my boyfriend can come over, I interacted with customers. I was the marketing manager for a corrugated box used for high-value produce, which might not sound very glamorous and that's because it wasn't, but I still liked it.

Not everything: there is nothing like going to a produce trade show in Orlando over the weekend because of course nobody would schedule such a show during the week because that would mean that people would miss work and we couldn't have that, could we?

But mostly. It really was fun and it dealt with food, one of my favorite subjects. I didn't travel that much, but when I did, it was to places like California and Florida and Chile to visit customers, who were grape or peach or pear growers and all of whom insisted that I sample their wares frequently. In Chile, even sent me off with a case of tree-ripe peaches (the peaches you get in the grocery store don't even begin to compare) that alas, I could not take back to the US with me, the USDA being the picky nitpickers that they are.

Oh yes I have a bone to pick with the USDA, who confiscated $100 of serrano ham from Primo and me upon our return from Madrid the first time. We declared it on our customs form and when the customs agent asked to see it, we were stupid enough to give him all four packages. We forgot about the sausage in our bag.

The sausage went unmolested because Memphis' sniffer dogs were looking for drugs, not meat. Our serrano ham?

Into the trash. Although we did tell the guy to please at least eat it so it wouldn't go to waste. But we could have given him a little decoy sausage and had the ham all for ourselves, except we were too honest. For dumb.

What made it worse? I called the USDA before our next trip to Spain to ask about the serrano ham rules and the very nice woman I spoke to said it was fine with the USDA if I brought serrano ham into the country. But Customs said no. I couldn't get anyone to come to consensus, so we just stuffed ourselves on serrano ham from El Museo de Jamon while we were there. We eat bacon while we're stateside now. It's easier. (Bacon-wrapped tater tots are on the menu for Superbowl Sunday. Don't you wish you were at our house, sitting in the cold basement with the big TV, eating bacon-wrapped tater tots, watching the Packers win?)

My other customers were the grocery store chains because they were the ones who could put the pressure on the produce growers to buy our very expensive box. The produce manager at the Albertson's a few miles from the office had been really helpful. We had shot some ads in his store. At 5 a.m. Oh that was a good time. He knew a lot about the industry and always answered my questions.

I wanted to talk to him in detail about some of the issues and asked if I could come by the store.

He suggested lunch.

Or maybe I did, thinking that if he was going to share his knowledge with me, I could at least buy him a hamburger. I had a corporate AmEx and wasn't afraid to use it.

I proposed meeting at the restaurant but he said I should come by the store. I said I could drive us, but he wanted to drive. Not unlike Primo, who is a complete control freak and who cannot stand to be a passenger, especially if I am behind the wheel. I am not a bad driver, but he thinks I am too cautious, which is probably true, as I am the one who always gets caught. He drove his car for seven years in Wisconsin without a front license plate as required by law. It wasn't until I was driving to my grandmother's funeral last summer that a cop noticed. I was the one who was stopped. Me. Always me. I am always the one who gets caught.

Back to customer (let's call him "Bert"). Bert wanted to drive?

Bert can drive.

I got into the car, which was one of those low-slung guy cars with only two seats. The kind I snicker at because I assume it is an attempt to compensate for a lack elsewhere, if you know what I mean.

Before I go any further, I should tell you more about Bert. He was a genuinely nice guy. Middle-aged, gray, balding, too thin, too much smoking, too worried. Recently divorced and recently moved to Memphis. Lonely.

Too lonely.

He radiated loneliness.

I had no interest in his loneliness. I wanted him for business purposes and nothing else. His loneliness was not my problem.

But after we got into his car, he put in a Kenny G CD and soft saxophone music wafted out of the speakers.

Then he mentioned his divorce. And his recent move to Memphis. And how he hadn't met many people yet.

I tried to steer the conversation back to plums and tomatoes.

Got him back on track for a little while until we had placed our orders and were waiting for our food.

He leaned over the table, looked at me earnestly, and asked, "How is it that you're not married?"

My eyes popped open in surprise. He was telling me all kinds of personal things - against my will, I might add - but I had not volunteered any such information to him other than my college and that was because his son was getting his PhD at the same place.

I had recently read a Miss Manners column on the etiquette of intrusive questions and thought this would be the perfect opportunity to put her advice into action. Actually, I had been dying to use her phrase.

"I beg your pardon?" I asked frostily.

He started to re-state his question, then my answer hit his brain and he realized I had understood him perfectly. He blushed and his words came to a mumbling end.

He got the point. My frosty haughtiness had put him in his place.

And I felt awful. He shouldn't have asked the question, but I was mean to him. I could have just laughed lightly and said, "Oh Bert we don't want to talk about such a boring thing! Now tell me some more about how you source your treefruit!" I could have re-directed the conversation just fine without shaming him. First, because I still needed his cooperation, but second and more importantly, there is no reason to be mean to someone who is just a bit bumbling. The response Miss Manners recommended was more ideally suited for someone who is obnoxiously pressing. Fight fire with fire. Frosty > obnoxious. But frosty is way overkill for nice bumbling.

We finished our meal. I asked him my questions and made notes in my spiral-bound notebook. We drove back to the store. No Kenny G this time. He understood.