In which my sister is completely, totally right about child rearing and her boyfriend with the fifth-grade son is wrong, wrong, wrong

My friend Anita always warned me never to say, "MY kid would never do something like that" because if I ever did have kids, they would 1. not only do Something Like That but 2. do it ten times worse. She also implied that those without children should not be in the business of judging the parenting skills of those who do have children, but mes amis, that is the main hobby of people who do not have children. To judge the parenting of the bad parents. You do not have to be a parent to know bad parenting when you see it.

NB: My friends are all excellent parents with delightful children. There is no reason to criticize their parenting. I judge and criticize the parenting of strangers only.

Back to our regular programming.

Sometimes, there is vindication. My sister, Jenny, found herself dating the wrong guy for a while.

Sigh. My sister. Pretty, warm, outgoing, liked by everyone who meets her. Deserves better than she has dated and that's all I'll say about that, although I will also say that Jen, I am sorry I told mom and dad that you were living with that guy 15 years ago. I thought they knew! I had no idea you had constructed an elaborate web of deceit, including separate phone lines back in the day when separate phone lines meant something. You know - when the phone was actually attached to the house.

These days, someone could be living in a crack house and you would never know because any time you would call, you would get the person's cellphone or her smartypants phone and not the house phone, answered in your friend's/daughter's absence by the nearest crackhead, maybe Duane, maybe Ginny, who would slur, in between puffs of the crack pipe, "She's not here, dude." And then never give her the message. And you would wonder what the heck is going on over there because every time you call, you get a different stoned person. But that wouldn't happen because you would be calling on a cellphone.

Back to Jenny. Who is not a crackhead. Who is violently anti-crackhead and against abortion but would be just fine with shooting druggie mothers who are delivered of sick, addicted babies who show up on my sister's ward in the hospital.

Jen was dating this guy, Brad, who was a very nice guy but I didn't think was worthy of her, as I have thought of most of the guys she has dated. She deserves greatness! But dating Brad she was and I have to say that he treated her very well. He was a nice, responsible guy. Sweet. Just no spark. But her life. Not mine.

He proposed after they had been dating for about a year. I have to give him major points for style. Brad was the fire chief and took the fire truck to Jenny's apartment building. He got on the ladder and extended it to her fifth-floor apartment. Or maybe extended the ladder first. Whatever. Holding a dozen roses in one hand, he knocked on her window with the other.

As his entire crew watched, he handed the roses to my sister. Then pulled a ring out of his pocket. Asked her to marry him.

She said she would think about it.

Ouch.

But she was right to do so because they had had a lot of conflict over one particular issue.

Brad's son, Billy. Which is not his real name: nobody is named "Billy" any more. Sad, really. If you call a three-year-old boy "Teddy" instead of "Edward," his mother will snap at you that his name is EDWARD. She is absolutely correct, of course. He is her kid. She named him. She gets to decide what he is called. It is presumptuous to re-name someone else. I get that. But wow. All these little little kids with huge names. I like nicknames. Sue me. I never had one - well, except for the nickname my grandparents used - so I was always envious of the kids who did have nicknames. I wanted to be Lizzie or Steph, not The Gold Digger. I suppose I could have started calling myself "Goldie," but it's not really Done to give yourself a nickname, is it?

Brad was a widower, so he did have that going for him. Ex-wives do tend to muck up the works - definitely the finances. And an ex-wife where there is a kid involved - well, now there is a lifetime connection that can never be severed. If you are getting involved with a man with a kid, it might be better for him to be a widower, at least for logistics, although it's sure not better for the kid.

Brad's wife had been dead for several years. His way of coping with being a widowed dad was to indulge Billy, who was about ten, in everything. Who wants to fight with his kid when the kid doesn't have a mother?

But my sister saw that this was going to be a problem. When Brad was promoted to chief, they had a big ceremony at the station. Jen was at Brad's helping him and Billy get ready. Billy came out in jeans and tennies. My sister told him to go back and put on nice church clothes - there would be photos and this was a big deal for his dad.

Billy refused and Brad backed him up.

Billy would eat almost nothing but broccoli. Which is so bizarre I can't even begin to fathom it, but such was the case. My sister, who has some awareness of good nutrition and a balanced diet, would try to get Billy to try other foods, maintaining that man does not live on broccoli alone.

Billy refused.

Brad backed him up.

Billy was the reason for their fights. Brad told Jenny that she had no idea what she was talking about. That she knew nothing, nothing! about raising children and especially about ten year old boys.

My sister informed him that she had a masters degree in neonatal nursing and that her coursework included classes in child psychology and other aspects of child health and rearing. She noted that she had been babysitting since she was 11 and that many of her charges had been young boys. She might have noted that she had more experience with ten year old boys than Brad did.

Brad was not interested.

Fine, she said. Fine. If you don't believe me, then at least talk to a counselor about the issues you have with Billy.

By some miracle - maybe it was when Jen told Brad she had to think about marrying him - Brad did go see a counselor.

Who - vindicated! so sweet! - told Brad that every single thing my sister had told him about Billy was correct and that Brad was doing it wrong.

Oh those are such sweet, sweet words.

But she told him no anyhow because she didn't want to spend the next eight years arguing about Billy.

Smart girl.

In which I get in touch with my inner manager for a change

When Primo and I moved into our house, the basement-flooding, heat-losing, 1928 brick moneypit that we call home, we needed a fair amount of work done. The penultimate penultimate owner had been a little old lady who became too frail and probably too cash strapped to do much maintenance.

The penultimate owner was a contractor who bought the house from her, discarded all the coal in the basement, ripped out the nasty carpets and replaced them with more nasty carpets, cut the gas line to the kitchen where it would have been useful for say a gas stove for those of us who hate cooking with electric, and installed new brass or bronze - whatever - switchplates while ignoring the cracks in the driveway and the carpenter ants in the balcony.

The owner who sold the house to us was a young single guy, Tad, who never shoveled the sidewalk and never wondered why the sidewalk was shoveled anyhow or at least never wondered enough to ask our next-door neighbors, who were the proximate cause of the shoveled sidewalk, as Eric's dad loves his snowblower and would clear Eric and Regina's sidewalk before the crack of dawn and would do the neighbors' sidewalks as well. That is, until he got tired of never being thanked, which meant that once we were in the house, Mr Eric's Dad did not clear our sidewalk. Thanks a lot, Tad.

Tad's other activities, besides not shoveling the sidewalk or thanking the person who had, were to sit in bed without a shirt and lean against the wall. Not against the headboard but against the wall. When a shirtless man leans against a wall every night or so for 15 months, eventually he leaves an oily man print on the paint, a print that is bright and clear once the bed and the man are removed.

Tad's other other activity was to use the microwave for everything - the oven was brand-new spanking clean - without covering his food, which would not have been such a problem except the penultimate owner, Mr Contractor, got the microwave at the scratch and dent center, which I am normally a big fan of, but the reason the microwave was there was because it was missing the interior plastic sheet that covers that little honeycomb screen in the door.

Must I get explicit and describe for you what happens when a person, Tad, heats his uncovered Spaghetti-Os in a microwave with an exposed honeycomb screen? There is tomato sauce and other stuff stuck on the inside of my microwave door that I will never be able to remove because I cannot clean through honeycomb.

What Tad did not do was diligent or even any maintenance.

It was left to Primo and me to replace the balcony that was being eaten by carpenter ants. You would think that carpenter ants + wood would be a good thing but no it is not. You never want someone to say the words "carpenter ants" and then say something about your house. It is a bad, expensive thing.

It was left to us to rip out the nasty carpet and polish the beautiful wood floors.

It was left to us to get the furnace checked. Actually, we waited until our furnace broke in mid-December on one of the coldest nights of the year before we thought to do this one. Oh sure we'd looked at the service record attached to the furnace, which we pass every single time we clean the cat box, and had mused to ourselves, "Well that's interesting. It's been over ten years since that furnace was serviced," but we had never actually considered taking drastic action like having the furnace serviced so we wouldn't be without heat on one of the coldest nights of the year. But if Tad had done it right, then we wouldn't have had plugged tubes so I'm throwing this one on him.

It was left to us to scrape the deep rust off that metal thingy that goes under the bricks at the top of the window opening. Apparently, if you leave these things to rust, they will eventually cause the mortar going on the diagonal from the corner of the window to crack and fall out and then your house will fall down.

By "left to us," I mean, "left to us to find someone who knows how to fix these things and charge us a lot of money to do it."

We had hired a man recommended by the pastor of Primo's church to help us move from Primo's apartment to the house. We called him "Amish Al" to distinguish him from our friend Normal Al. Amish Al had an Amish beard. Normal Al is clean shaven.

Amish Al was great when we moved into the house. He was strong and had his own tools and knew how to assemble Primo's big obnoxious desk and how to take the door off the hinges to get some things inside.

He had only one failing: he showed up too early, which is a common problem around here. I have mentioned my dad's cousin who showed up for lunch half an hour early. I no longer have Dad's Cousin over for lunch; instead, I meet him at a restaurant. He is always early. The past few times, he has called me half an hour before our scheduled meeting time to tell me he is at the restaurant. I tell him that's fine, I haven't left my house yet and I'll see him at 1:30 as we planned. The other day, he didn't call, but when I got to the restaurant ten minutes early, he had already finished his lunch.

When we moved out of Primo's apartment, I told Amish Al to arrive at 1:00. "We don't need you before then," I said. "Primo is not picking the truck up until 12:30. One o'clock or 1:30, even." I didn't need someone standing around on the clock when the clock was mine.

Amish Al showed up at 12:30.

Primo and I were just getting ready to eat lunch.

I had already moved all the food to the house. All the food except the last little bit of freezer crap that I normally wouldn't eat but was there and I will eat bad food before throwing it out, which is fine as a survival strategy if you are expecting famine but not so good if you want to stay in your thin jeans.

We had enough food for two people.

I should have told Amish Al that we weren't ready for him and to come back. But that seemed dumb. Then I made the mistake of asking him if he had eaten lunch because I was confusing the roles of employer and hostess.

He hadn't eaten.

Even though Primo was staring daggers at me, I offered to share our lunch. I should have told Amish Al there was time for him to go out and grab a sandwich. I should have. But I shared our lunch. Which Amish Al found too spicy for his taste. Really, Amish Al? You're complaining about a meal to which you were not even really invited?

But Amish Al did a good job of actually moving, so when we were looking for a handyman to scrape the rust from the whatever you call thems and then paint the metal, I called him. Primo was all, Why do we have to do this now? I have too much work! This is stressful!

And I was all, This needs to be done so we might as well get it over with before winter.

I impressed on Amish Al the importance of not arriving before 8:30 a.m.

"Primo works late and he sleeps late," I said. "Please do not ring that doorbell before 8:30. Not one minute early."

It must have killed him to wait until 8:15, which was when he did ring the bell. "I got here early," he told me.

The rule is if you arrive early, you drive around the block or sit in your car and wait. That's the rule. But nobody seems to know that here.

I have to admit it's not just here. I organized an alumni event for my college when I lived in the south. We were having a little party at Gayle and Jim's house for the incoming freshmen in our area. "Our area" included some towns 100 miles away. The party started at 6:00.

At 5:00, I was at Gayle's house helping put out dishes and silverware when the doorbell rang. It was a new freshman and her family from a town 80 miles away. An hour early. They must have decided they couldn't just take in the sights around town or wait in the coffeeshop. Instead, they came to the party, which was not a party yet. This would not have been a problem except instead of offering to help, they (well, the dad, mostly) expected to be entertained.

The next year, they showed up early again. That's when I realized the dad was just a complete boor.

Amish Al rang our bell early. Primo just sighed and went upstairs. I showed Amish Al what needed to be done and then came back inside.

He completed the rust removal. He did just fine on the rust removal.

Then he started the painting.

Primo went outside to look.

He ran back inside and hissed at me, "He's getting paint on the bricks!"

"So tell him to stop!" I said.

"It's your job to supervise! I'm working! I told you I didn't want us to charge forward on this!"

"Supervise?" I said. "Why on earth should I have to supervise?"

"Because he is getting paint on the brick!"

Here is my philosophy on painting: I should not have to explain to someone that he needs to stay in the lines when he is painting an object. As in, if I hired someone to paint the kitchen, I would not expect to have to say, "And remember: no paint on the refrigerator!"

But perhaps that level of detail and micromanagement is necessary.

As he stomped up the stairs, Primo yelled, "You need to handle this!"

Here's how good I am at confrontation:

Not good.

Oh sure yeah I am a bossy know it all who knows how everything should be done, but my style is to talk behind someone's back rather than address the actual situation. I am great in imaginary confrontations, where I seethe my disdain and contempt at the person who has done me wrong, but in person, I tend to suck it up.

For example, I just picked up a shirt from the tailor. I got this cool shirt at Goodwill for $7. It's black with pink ribbons sewn horizontally at one-inch intervals from top to bottom. It wasn't until I got home that I realized that the shirt had been mismarked and was much larger than I thought. It would fit me with some minor alterations - the zipper would have to be re-set, which would be tough because of getting those ribbons to match. It would fit my boobage-gifted sister as is.

I took it to the tailor and explained that 1. I didn't want to spend a lot of money to have it altered because it was from Goodwill and 2. if it was going to be too expensive or if it couldn't be done properly, I would just send it to my sister. So don't do it if you can't do it right! That was my message or so I thought.

A week later, I picked it up.

It hadn't been done right. The ribbons did not match in the back. And I was being charged $17 for it not being done right.

I said meekly, "So these don't exactly match, do they?"

The tailor looked at me impassively.

I muttered passively aggressively, "I should have just left it alone."

The tailor looked at me impassively.

I was waiting for him to say, "You are correct! This is a crummy job! I will do it over! And I will charge you less!"

But he did not say that so I gave him my American Express card and stomped out of there.

I am not exactly Miss Stand Up For Myself.

But. When it is a choice of a stranger being upset or my husband being upset, I pick the stranger.

I went outside and told Amish Al to stop working. "Amish Al," I said. "You are getting paint on the brick. That is unacceptable."

He looked puzzled. "Oh," he said. "Well I guess I'll clean it off."

"No! Stop! I'll take care of the painting. Wait here."

I went inside and got his money. "Thanks for what you've done," I said.

"So might you have more work?" he asked.

I felt sad because I knew he really needed the work and up to the brick painting, he had done such good work, but he had, in that one move, shown himself not to be trustworthy of working on our biggest financial investment. Plus I knew Primo would have a hissy fit if I hired him again.

I lied. "I'll call you," I said.

In which someone is having a romantic evening in Rome but it's sure not my friend Lenore or me

The summer after I graduated from business school, instead of doing the smart, practical thing and getting a job, I, fed up, fed UP I tell you with how The Corporate Man was Keeping Me Down, didn't even bother to look for work and used the rest of my money, the money I had not used on UT's fabulously low tuition and on my rent for Michelle McMichael the crazy landlady's place or on the car-vacuuming, marijuana importing neighbors duplex and went to Europe for the summer.

I had wanted to go to Europe for the summer after I finished college, but I had a job that started June 3 and what kind of idiot English major takes a trip instead of accepting a job? An idiot MBA will do it but not an idiot English major. English majors are far more realistic and practical than MBAs is what we can learn from this.

Still, I was anxious about the financial impracticality of my upcoming adventure and even worked myself into such a state of anxiety one day that I threw up. I threw up so hard that I burst all the blood vessels around my eyes and had red eyes for a day or two and then black/green/purple/yellow eyes. I was lovely.

Lovely and -- going to Europe. I had exams the first few days of May, then a seven-day interval before my last final, in microeconomics. I asked my micro prof if I could take the exam early so I could get to Barcelona earlier, but he said no, what if everyone wanted to take the final early? I shrugged and said what if? Then he rather implied that I might cheat, even though I scored the highest mark on the midterm in the whole class.

I had had a hard time with the material, so had studied and studied and studied. I was the last person to turn in my midterm because I had checked and re-checked everything. I thought I was the dumbest person taking the test.

This professor was not a fan of mine. I sat in the front row because I was a front-row sitter. I had learned my lesson from college, where I often did not wear my glasses to class because - get this - they were ugly glasses. Not wearing glasses = not being able to see the board, which is a necessary thing for oh, calculus and chemistry. Little wonder I became an English major, hey?

Anyhow, I was a glasses-wearing front-row sitter in grad school because by golly, I was paying for this myself (I also paid for college, but that was loans not cash out of my savings account and you pay a lot more attention to paying money you've earned than you do to money that has not yet been earned) and I was going to be darn sure I learned. One day, the prof was explaining in a very painful and convoluted way an algebraic process that was really just taking the derivative in calculus. I leaned over to the guy next to me, whose undergraduate degree was in mechanical engineering, and whispered, "Isn't he just taking the derivative?"

The engineer, who was from Argentina, whispered back, "Siiii."

The prof stopped. Walked up to me. Asked if I had something to share with the class.

Oh yes. Even in grad school, they treat you like third graders. Although we were acting like third graders, so there you go.

"Yes," I answered. "I want to know why you don't just say, 'Take the derivative.'"

"Because if I did that, half this class would pass out," he said.

Ever the smart aleck and has to have the last-worder, I said, "You're supposed to have a year of calculus as a prerequisite for this program."

He rolled his eyes at me as he returned to the blackboard.

Back to the midterm and we'll get to Rome, I promise you. The class after the midterm, I sat nervously, waiting for my score. I was early to class because that's how I roll. The professor saw me sitting there and walked up to me, holding a sheet of paper in front of him. He stood still in front of me, holding the paper out for me to see. It was a list of test scores, from highest to lowest. I looked in the middle of the paper for my social security number and score, but didn't see it. I went all the way to the bottom of the paper and still didn't see my number. Then I looked back up. At the very top of the list, with a score only two points from perfect, was my number.

I looked up at him and smiled.

"I'm reviewing the test today," he said.

"Do I need to stay?" I asked.

"I should think not," he answered.

And yet he thought I would cheat on the final? The scores were curved. I would never sabotage my own score that way.

I'm getting to Rome. I'm getting to Rome. He wouldn't let me take the test early, so I waited and took the darn test and then left for Barcelona the next day. I skipped my graduation.

Yes, I skipped my own graduation.

People.

You know how there are always these letters to Dear Abby in May about how Oh no! I won't have enough tickets to invite Great Aunt Joan to my son's high school graduation and she'll be soooo offended?

Great Aunt Joan is not offended.

Great Aunt Joan is thrilled.

I made a solemn vow after my college graduation that I would never attend another graduation again, either for myself or for another person. Circumstances dictated that I attend one graduation a few years ago, but with God as my witness, I will never ever ever sit through another graduation again as long as I live.

I will watch paint dry first.

Seriously, is there anything more mind-blowingly dull than watching a graduation?

No there is not.

I finished my tests, skipped graduation, and got on the plane to Barcelona, where my friend Lenore met me, and from there we took the train to Rome, where we were going to stay in her friend Bob's apartment while he was on vacation elsewhere. We had reserved seats in a compartment into which extra people, who did not have reserved seats, squeezed themselves and smoked. The window would not open. The corridors were filled with smokers. It was hot. Hot, smelly smokers. Not enough room. Oh how I treasure those student travel days.

After a very long, sweaty trip, we arrived in Rome. I had read in my guidebook that the Rome train station was rife with pickpockets and I was on guard. While Lenore went to call someone about getting the key to Bob's apartment, I found a strategically sound spot to stand and guard our luggage. My back was to the wall so I had only 180 degrees of area to patrol.

A tall Ethiopian man, holding an unlit cigarette, approached from my right. He gestured to me and I turned to look at him. Did I have a light? he seemed to be pantomiming.

I shook my head.

He pantomimed again.

I impatiently tried to explain that I didn't smoke and I didn't have any matches. Sheesh!

That's when I heard someone shouting on my left.

I turned to see a little Italian man grabbing the elbow of another Ethiopian man. Ethiopian Man #2 was holding my backpack. Which contained my laundry, an apple, some cheese, and my camera, back in the days when cameras were actually worth something.

I snatched the backpack from EM #2 and punched him in the arm.

The little Italian man scolded me. I don't speak Italian but I got the gist of what he was saying: Lady you need to pay attention. PAY ATTENTION!

Nothing like being chewed out in a language you don't speak by someone you don't know.

Lenore and I made it to the apartment. We were pretty tired after being cooped up in the reserved, we paid extra for our own seats but got crowded by seat cheaters, compartment. We boiled some pasta and ate it with butter, then went to bed.

Shortly after we had turned out the lights, we heard a noise. A thumping. A loud, rhythmic thumping. A loud, rhythmic thumping on the wall behind our headboard. A loud, rhythmic thumping that we would feel very lightly in our bed* but was enough to make the crucifix above Bob's bed move. (I don't think Bob was particularly religious - I think the crucifix might have belonged to his landlord. Or maybe there was no crucifix at all and I am remembering one simply because it makes for a better story.)

Then the moaning started.

Is there anything better than listening to someone else's oral delight in sexual activity as it happens?

You know - like those movies we watched in 7th grade history: You Are There. I just googled that phrase. I am not losing my mind. Walter Cronkite did an entire series of You Are There. It happened. I was there.

Lenore and I lay there, waiting. For you know. For it to be over.

And soon, but not soon enough, it was.

The next night, the same thing. Plus an encore presentation at 2:00 a.m.

Lord. Have. Mercy.

At the time, that did not seem so remarkable.

But from middlish-ageness, with job stresses and late nights working and taxes due and sleep so very, very precious, it looks completely different. This was before viagra. Although we have no way of knowing if the same people were involved in each event, if you know what I mean.

Every night while we were there, Lenore and I were treated to a show.

Our strategy was to wear ourselves out walking around Rome all day long and back up the long, steep hill to the apartment so that by nighttime, we were so exhausted that nothing could keep us awake.

We never did ask Bob if that was normal or if his neighbor had also lent out his apartment.

* If there is only one bed in a sleeping place, women friends will just share the darn bed. Men, I think, are more likely to insist that one man sleep on the sofa and the other sleep in the bed.

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.