In which I gasp in horror and astonishment as a co-worker uses a word he thinks he made up but is a real word not used in polite conversation

For a while, I worked in let's say Omaha at one of my company's factories there. I was there only for six months and then was supposed to move on. It was supposed to be a special project, developing a long-term strategy for the factory to take it beyond its current use as a milk carton folding equipment manufacturer, which might sound like snoozeville but really is not.

When is the last time you bought milk in a carton?

Ha. See? You buy your milk in a plastic jug. But remember when milk used to come in the same kind of carton that orange juice comes in now? That carton is called a gabletop carton. The carton flat is made at a combination cutting/printing plant that takes huge rolls of very expensive containerboard and prints them with one hopes a nice four-color roto design and cuts them into two-dimensional forms that are later folded and glued into milk cartons.

As you might imagine, the milk companies do not fold and glue these flats by hand. No, there are machines that assemble the boxes for filling.

My company had a factory that made the machines that assemble boxes for filling.

But a factory of this sort can make other machinery. My job was to explore the options: were there applications in the perfume market? In the processed food market? Where? I had six months to figure it out and help the plant manager develop a strategy.

The reason we needed the strategy is because the market for milk carton folding equipment was nosediving.

Plastics.

Plastic jugs. Plastic jugs were the culprit. Plastic jugs are not folded and glued on milk carton folding machines. Instead, they are blow molded on blow molding machines.

The blanks for the milk carton cost many dozens of cents, especially with nice printing.

The plastic per milk jug is just a few pennies per.

A blow molder?

Cost about $100,000.

So you. You might not be a business person, but analyze this:

You have just spent $100,000 on a blow molder (your fixed cost). It costs just pennies for the plastic for each milk jug the blow molder makes (your variable cost).

Are you going to keep putting your milk in paper cartons (at maybe 40 to 50 cents each) if you have a new $100,000 piece of equipment standing in your packaging plant? Or are you going to say, "Dang I've spent $100,000 on a piece of equipment that doesn't cost much to operate so I think I am switching to putting my milk in jugs?"

That was our problem.

One month after I had moved to Omaha, which is a lovely lovely city and I would move back in a second, my division got a new VP who said, This is our new strategy and you better do it or else you know what.

Which meant all of a sudden, I had nothing to do.

And I wasn't clueful enough to hang out in the plant and ask the machine operators, members of the autoworkers union even though what they did had nothing to do with cars (this is what I remember, 12 years later, but I can't find anything about it on the website, so maybe I am wr - wr- wr - not right about that), what projects they might have had for me or better yet, what problems they might have had that I could help solve, although there was this inventory analysis that I should have done and would have been a piece of cake with the spreadsheet and programming knowledge I have developed since then.

I blew it. Too shy. For dumb. I love manufacturing and processes and I would love to get my hands on that kind of thing today. When you're middle-agish, you don't care so much about what people think and are a little more intrepid.

The plant manager (PM) still wanted to work out a new strategy for the plant, even though we had our long-term marching orders. I facilitated meetings, developed presentations, and tried to make myself useful.

There was a management retreat. The PM wanted me to attend to facilitate, develop an agenda, etc. He had far more confidence in my abilities than I did. He had hired me out of the Miami office after we spent one day working together and one evening at supper (with a bunch of other people - sheesh - not like a romantic thing).

A week after he returned to Omaha, my boss came into my office (sigh - back when I had my own office) and told me that PM wanted me to come work for him in Omaha. I called PM and asked if he wanted to interview me or at least see my resume, but he said no, he knew enough. If only I could impress recruiters like that now.

Back to the management retreat. We went to this very nice golf resort. I got my own little cabin because I was the only woman. The five men shared a larger cabin and that's also where we had our meetings. I arrived the first morning to find about ten pounds of candy strewn around the room in small and medium bowls. Good candy, too. Three Musketeers. Reese's Peanut Butter cups. Almond M&Ms.

There were golf posters all over the living room. Not my choice of decor, but it was a golf resort. What do you expect?

We started the session. I was taping huge sheets of paper on the walls and writing on them with magic marker. We took a candy break and one of the guys, Gary, the plant accountant, was goofing off. He was describing their golf game the night before and how he had hit the ball into the smegma.

"Into the what?" I asked.

"The smegma," Gary told me. "You know - the tall grass near the pond, like this." And then he gestured toward one of the posters, which did indeed show tall grass near a pond.

"I don't think that's what that word means," I told him.

I did know what that word meant and I would rather I did not. A previous boyfriend - an eye doctor with a lot of arcane and trivial knowledge - had explained it to me once, perhaps as we were having an argument about circumcision and my position that it was mutilation no matter if it happened to a boy or to a girl but more likely just because he wanted to tell me something a little icky.

"No, that's it," he told me confidently. "I know because I made it up."

"Noooooo," I said slowly. "It's a real word."

All the other men were looking at us now, including my boss, the plant manager.

I should have dropped it. I should have just shrugged and said, "Whatever," then pulled Gary aside later to tell him what it meant.

But I didn't. I was a little rattled by the whole thing and not as poised as I should have been.

So I told him. In front of everyone, I told Gary what it meant. I was clinical, but I told him.

His jaw dropped.

Everyone's jaw dropped.

They looked at me kind of funny. Me, the only woman in the group.

The blood left Gary's face. "I didn't know! I mean it! I didn't know! I'm so sorry!"

"I know," I told him. "Don't worry about it."

He babbled. Apologized. I told him to stop. I left the room, took a bathroom break, gave the conversation a chance to change.

When I returned, nobody mentioned it again. But later that afternoon, Gary found me and pulled me into the kitchen, next to the caramel corn.

"You have to believe me, I didn't know," he pleaded. "I have three daughters. I really really didn't know. I wasn't trying to harass you."

What? He thought I thought he was trying to sexually harass him? What on earth was HR telling people?

"Don't worry! Really!" I insisted. I had thought it was just kind of funny, although a little uncomfortable. "I know you didn't mean anything by it."

I returned to Omaha that night, not because of the smegma incident but because PM had only wanted me there for one day of meetings - the single cabin was a bit expensive and I really couldn't stay in the big cabin with the guys.

We had the weekend to recover, but that next week at work, Gary sought me out again to apologize, explaining again that he had three daughters and was not a harasser. Poor guy. He really and truly had had no idea. Had probably heard the word once without hearing the context or definition and it had stuck in his subconscious, just waiting for the perfect moment to emerge and embarrass him.

Maybe I should have sued. I would be sitting pretty right now on my ill-gotten gains on the account of someone who spoke neither out of malice nor out of knowledge.

In which Primo reads this blog for the first time in a good long time

Primo: I thought your [double secret probation] blog was supposed to be about me.

Me: It is, mostly. But I have run out of material [which is why I am reaching back into my tortured, murky past and pulling out dreck to share with youse].

Primo: You could write about how I was a jerk about the bronze switchplates.

Me: Nope. I don't write about that kind of stuff. [When Primo is a jerk, that is. I do write - on my regular blog - about how we gently disagreed on the matter of how the bronze switchplates in the kitchen and the bathroom should have been cleaned, with Primo maintaining that Brillo pads were not the right way to go, even though "Brillo" comes from "brillar," which is Spanish for "to shine," and with my maintaining that Brasso was not doing the job so I had to escalate to steel. Which scratches bronze. In case you didn't know.]

In which I have a one-night stand with a guy in grad school and then I meet his girlfriend

Yes. Sleazy, sleazy, sleazy. Don't hate me. I am ashamed of what I did and have reformed. I do not sleep with anyone else's boyfriend or husband these days. Just my own.

First semester of grad school, I met this guy. Let's call him Zach, which nobody my age is named, but is a handy name. There is a tranche of men now in their early 30s, to whom I taught swimming in the summers when I was in college, who are named the "J" names: Joshua, Jeremy, Jason. There are also a bunch of Blakes in that age group.

The women in that group are Alexis, Crystal and Brooke.

What TV show was popular five years before I started teaching? What movie star was popular?

I think the Madisons/Madisyns/Maddesens were a few years after that. Although I should talk: I'm named after a Mousketeer.

I had them all in my swim classes. I taught four and five year olds how to swim. Or, better said, I taught four and five year olds how to hold their breath underwater and how to open their eyes underwater and how to jump off the side of the pool into the water. I did not, unfortunately, teach them how to tie their shoes and neither did their mothers, which meant that I spent my meager five-minute break between classes tying shoes. I was very happy the year that velcro fastenings appeared. Suddenly, I had my time back.

Back to Zach. I don't remember how I met him, but we would encounter each other in the atrium at UT's grad school. He was getting his master's degree in accounting, so we probably didn't have any classes together, as I took only the two required MBA accounting classes, financial and cost.

Financial accounting is the income statement, cash flow, and balance sheet. Cost accounting is figuring out how much overhead to allocate to each widget and how much to stock of the chocolate ice cream vs the vanilla vs the butter pecan so that you make money on all of them when you charge the same price for each scoop. Chocolate ice cream with nuts is a lot more expensive to manufacture than plain vanilla. Where do the overhead allocations go? How much does it cost to make each widget? If you don't know what your production costs are, then you can't set your prices accurately and you don't know if you are making any money.

But. I do not have an accounting mindset, at least not a financial accounting mindset. You have to care that everything adds up perfectly if you are an accountant and I just don't care. It will all work itself out is my attitude. Sure, I call Sendik's if it looks like they undercharged me $45 on a case of wine that Primo ordered and I picked up, but if they over or undercharge me by a dollar, big deal. Who cares. It evens out in the long run.

I am a strategy person and prefer to work in a manufacturing environment. Put me in a place where they make something and ask me to make it work better? Oh baby. You almost wouldn't have to pay me to do that kind of job. I do it as a hobby now: any time I walk into a store or other place of business, I am re-arranging things in my mind, developing a better checkout, billing or patient flow process. I am a nosy, bossy know it all and there are some jobs where that is an advantage.

If anyone who might ever hire me is reading this, do know that when I assemble a team to do a project, I make sure to have at least one or two accounting people in my group. If I were say a county clerk who was responsible for reporting vote tallies, I would make sure to have someone on my team who was an absolute stickler for detail who would review the unofficial results before releasing them so she could say, "Hey did you realize that the data for Brookfield didn't import? And that you left 15,000 votes out of the total?"

That's how I would do it if I were a county clerk, but I'm not.

I know my strengths and I know my weaknesses. I need someone to say, "But wait! Have you considered this and that?" My biggest strength is that I am not afraid to make decisions. It is also my biggest weakness.

I had met Zach. He wasn't that handsome at first glance, but he was very smart and had a dry, intelligent wit that appealed to me. I am so easy. Intelligence + humor gets me every time.

We spent a few months flirting. I think it was my prairie denim skirt coupled with the white blouse with blue and red flowers embroidered on it that did the trick. I looked so alluring. Honestly. Does anyone look good in that kind of outfit? Not even Chloe Sevigny on "Big Love" looks good in that stuff and she has a knockout figure. Maybe it was the too-long hair (my hair is very fine, which means it doesn't take length well) or the distinctly unfashionable glasses that a really good friend would have stopped me from buying but did I take a friend glasses shopping with me? No I did not and that was dumb. I looked tres geeky.

I knew Zach had a girlfriend because he had told me about her. She was an undergrad who was thinking about transferring to a school in Atlanta, where his post-graduation job was waiting. She was that serious.

I wondered why he flirted so heavily with me when he had this serious girlfriend. I thought maybe he wasn't as serious as he seemed. Or maybe he was just a jerk.

He went to Atlanta for more interviews or to talk about the job or something. He called me from his hotel. He paid attention to me.

One evening, he came over to my place to give me a cassette - an opera mix tape, I think, which is just nuts because I only like opera lite. Maybe I was just trying to impress him with my superior culturedness, which is silly because a round-heeled woman can have just about any man if s-e-x is all he wants and if he has low standards and morals. This was not an audition for a relationship. It was straight basic attraction.

We kissed and well you know.

Yes. Sleazy. I know. I know.

After he left, I found his watch on my dresser. I called him to let him know and he told me that he had done that on purpose so he would have a reason to return.

He did return. Only once. Ha. As if that "only" makes this not so sleazy.

There was a grad school happy hour at Scholz Garden, a bar near the school.

I went.

He went.

His girlfriend went.

Well this was awkward. Especially because she was so nice and so sweet and also so gorgeous - not just run of the mill gorgeous, but pale milky skin, green eyes, and long, thick, lustrous red hair, which really made me question Zach's judgment. And made me question my morals. What on earth was I doing?

That was it. It was over. Zach had a very nice girlfriend. I had met her, seen her in the flesh. She was no longer an abstraction. How do cheaters do it? How do married people who are fooling around with their friend's spouses take the tension? Aren't their consciences killing them?

Zach might have been a jerk, but I did not have to be party to his jerkness. Let him fool around with someone else. I was done. It is not a good feeling to meet a man's girlfriend after you have slept with him, especially if she is a nice person and if you have any morals at all. In the future, I decided, I would leave this kind of messing around to other women.

Which I did. No more partner to cheating for me. Not even kissing, which is what I had done before grad school. A kissing incident with a married man. Oh dear. I'll tell you about it later. For now, though, let me try to excuse myself by explaining that I ran with a fast crowd back then. I let myself be influenced by their bad behavior. No excuse. But I have reformed. No kissing, no s-e-x with married/involved men since 1991. Really.

In which I eat the Good Chocolate and then have to go all over San Diego to replace it

I'm running out of drama, or at least I am running out of drama inflicted on me by other people. What remains is the drama I have inflicted and that is not as much fun to write about because I want you to like me and it's easier to like someone who has not done crummy things to other people.

Today I am going to write about a small drama that ended up OK, but I will tell you about something mean and sleazy I did to another woman. As in, I had a one-night stand with her boyfriend even though I had met her and liked her.

Tres sleazy, I think you will all agree. Yes, I am ashamed and sorry and I never sought her forgiveness because I would have been easing my own conscience at the expense of her pain of being betrayed by her boyfriend, who had talked about marrying her.

Today I am going to tell you about the time I was staying with my Peace Corps friends Janet and Marty at their house in San Diego. They had very generously offered a spare bedroom and meals while I looked for a job in southern California. You may remember that I ended up working for the UT alum at his factory in Tijuana in the heroin district, a story that inspired an angry Tijuana commenter to claim that there was no heroin in Tijuana and I was a big, fat liar who was trying to discredit Mexico and Mexicans and whatever. I deleted him. I believe in free speech and if you don't like what I say, you are free to get your own blog and talk trash about me.

This was pre-internet days. Job hunting was done the old-fashioned way - by looking at ads in the newspaper or calling your alumni office for the names of alumni in the area who might be disposed to hire another alum.

All that work to find a job meant that I was not doing much work to find a job. Instead, I was spending a lot of time alone in Janet and Marty's house, riding my bike to the beach, cooking supper for all of us (at least I hope I did that - this was a while ago and I don't remember much) and looking in the fridge every five minutes to see if something new and interesting had appeared.

There was something interesting in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator.

An entire unopened, cellophaned box of Belgian chocolates.

Fancy chocolates.

Unopened.

I watched that box for days, hoping that it would miraculously open and I would be free to sample a chocolate or two.

It did not open.

Did not open. Did not open.

Finally, one day, I did it.

Janet and Marty were at work. I was alone with the dogs and the chocolate. The dogs were smart, but they couldn't talk. My secret would be safe. Except for the opened part, of course.

Reader, I opened it.

I opened the box of chocolates.

Tore off the cellophane. Lifted the lid. And ate of the Forbidden Chocolates.

Oh they were so good. They were filled with hazelnut praline.

Delicious Forbidden Chocolates.

But now I have a problem.

There was no way to conceal my transgression.

No problem! I'll just replace the box!

Remember. Pre internet. In those days, to replace Forbidden Chocolate, you had to open the yellow pages and call various stores.

Which is what I did.

Only to find out that not only were these Forbidden Chocolates but they were also Very Expensive Imported Belgian Chocolates.

Crap.

What to do? What to do?

I took the almost-empty box with me and set out to find Replacement Chocolate. I went to store after store. Most of them didn't even have Very Expensive Imported Belgian Chocolates.

I started to sweat. This was what I got for eating Forbidden Chocolates. My friends had opened their home to me and this was the thanks they got? A Forbidden Chocolate Eater in their midst? Could a guest be more ungracious than to consume the Very Expensive Imported Belgian Chocolates without invitation?

What was I going to say? Oh the shame, the shame! of violating a social norm.

I pulled into the parking lot of Trader Joe's. I'd heard about the store but had never shopped there. Might as well check it out. I like grocery stores. I like food, so what's not to like about a place that sells food? When I travel to a foreign country, I like to wander the aisle of the grocery stores and see what's what. In Bristol, we found a grocery store where vegemite and peanut butter were behind the counter, along with the cigarettes and booze. Who would think to shoplift peanut butter? Not me. But then, maybe I would, being the budding criminal that I was.

I wandered the aisles. Found frozen foods, a category where I usually do not shop as I prefer fresh and unprocessed. Why buy frozen pizza when it's so easy to make your own and homemade tastes so much better?

And there. Above the frozen french fries. There it was.

The Very Expensive Imported Belgian Chocolates.

The exact same box that I had opened at Janet and Marty's house.

Saved. Saved! I didn't care how much it cost, I wanted those chocolates.

I pulled the box toward me.

And discovered they cost about $5.

They were not Very Expensive Imported Belgian Chocolates, at least, not at Trader Joe's.

They were Rather Inexpensive Imported Belgian Chocolates.

Even now, they cost only $26 a pound on amazon.com. Well, $26 a pound is not an "only," but it also won't break the bank.

I bought the chocolates. Replaced the old, now-opened box with the new, pristine box. Kept my mouth shut. Haven't eaten Forbidden Chocolate since.

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.