Please Return This Passenger To The Upright And Locked Postition

I've always bristled at the stereotype that women prefer jerks. That
we're drawn, by some reptilian part of our brain, to guys who would be
capable of bashing in our heads with a rock – and then making us clean
up the mess.

Unfortunately, the stereotype is true.

I
had just boarded a plane the other day, heading from New York to Los
Angeles. A nor'easter threatened to smash the East Coast. Flights were
being canceled, and security lines at the airport pooled hundreds of
damp people in stagnant lines for more than two hours. I nearly cried
when I got on board, so grateful was I to have finally made it on – and
so relieved that I'd be going home.

The stewardess warned us to
turn off "all electronic devices" as the plane started to taxi. But a
young man kept yapping on his cell phone. He was having some kind of
issue with the airline, something about changing the date of his return
trip. I wasn't really listening, but he was three rows in front of me,
and speaking so loudly, it was hard not to hear.
 

The stewardess walked over to his seat and asked him to get off the phone.

"I'm almost done," he said.
 

"No,
Sir. You're done right now. We can't take off until you turn off your
phone," she said. The stewardess was British and quite a bit older, and
had it been me, I would have listened. But it wasn't me. It was
Obnoxious Man.

"I just need five more minutes," he said.
 

"You get off the phone, or you're getting off the plane. Is that understood?"

"Oh,
no," I thought. "We're going to have to taxi back to the gate. He'll be
apprehended. By the time things normalize, the nor'easter will have
hit, and I'll be stranded."
 

The stewardess huffed and puffed,
but ultimately, she let the guy finish his call. When she returned to
her seat, he got up from his.

"Can I just tell you why I was on the phone?" he said, walking toward her seat in the back.
 

"Sit down!" she said. She was annoyed, but not angry. In fact, was that … amusement I detected in her voice?

She
escorted him back, returned to her seat and had barely fastened her
seatbelt, when Obnoxious Man popped up out of his chair and headed to
the bathroom.
 

My jaw dropped.

"What do you think you're doing?" the stewardess asked.
 

"They made me drink my whole bottle of water at security," he said, shutting the door behind him.

I
looked around at my fellow passengers, most of whom were women, trying
to catch someone's eye and share a can-you-believe-this-guy moment.
Instead I saw a lot of smiles.
 

These women thought Obnoxious Man was kinda adorable. They thought he was funny. I thought I was going to lose my mind.

When
this overindulged man child finally sat down, the plane took off. And
almost immediately, the women around Obnoxious Man started chatting him
up. Where was he from? Where was he going? He ate up the attention, and
the women ate up his brazen cluelessness. Two middle-age women giggled
whenever he spoke to them.
 

When the captain turned off the
seatbelt sign, a cute teenage girl got up out of her seat and stood in
the aisle to talk to Obnoxious Man, hanging on his every word. I don't
know if he got her phone number. I couldn't watch any longer without
reaching for the airsickness bag.

I turned back to my magazine
and fumed. The guy is congenitally stupid, and now he's got a harem? I
understood then why Adam Sandler is a millionaire. All the women who
spoke with Obnoxious Man had the same look in their eyes – like they
were beholding a precious, silly little puppy. A cute thing they wanted
to take home and nurture.
 

This, I realized, is the true secret
of the jerk. It's not that women want to be mistreated; it's that all
of us want to coddle helpless men.

Well, almost all of us. When
we landed at LAX, I stood behind Obnoxious Man in the aisle, waiting to
get off the plane. Impatient, he whipped his head around and said,
"There should be doors at the back of these, too … oh, wait! There are
doors …"
 

"They won't open them," I snapped, so sternly it made the people around us titter. "Not even for you."

Partying With Mom Is No Day At The Beach

Mom turns 60 at the end of this month, and all she wants is a pony.

Actually,
she said, several ponies. And a clown. Oooh, and a bounce house, and a
guy who makes balloon animal hats. Maybe a magician, too. 

"I'm going to be 60, but I want to have a party like I'm going to be 6," she told me.

I
seized on the idea immediately – how adorable! We can have a Barbie
cake and a face-painter. Everyone can get little goodie bags filled
with candy and bubbles. Maybe we'll hire a guy to dress in an Elmo suit
and dance around. It will be perfect! It will be hysterical! It will …
never happen. 

Israelis have one party. It doesn't matter if the
occasion is a bris, a birthday or a bar mitzvah – if my mom's friends
are gathering in celebration of something there will always be obscene
amounts of food, a full bar, live music and, occasionally, a mime (your
guess is as good as mine).

Hubby and I had to hire three bands
to perform at our wedding in order to accommodate our tastes and Mom's
intractable image of a proper party. 

So, I should have known
that no matter how different a party Mom said she wanted, in the end
we'd wind up with lamb skewers and a lady with an accordion.

Still,
I held out hope that Mom was going to let us go off script for her
celebration. The whole thing set my imagination afire: Maybe we could
have it at Chuck E. Cheese or American Girl Place! Or maybe make it a
princess party and have Cinderella show up! What about hosting the
whole thing at Disneyland? 

"No," Mom said. "I want it at the beach."

A beach party! OK. We can have a big beach Twister game, maybe get a snow cone machine and a piñata.   

No. No. And no.

One
by one, all my ideas were shot down until this party started to
resemble every other party Mom's group has ever thrown and attended –
just with a better view of surfers. 

Her crowd wouldn't go for
face-painting, Mom said. They don't have any use for the Wiggles, and
princesses "just aren't me" (evidence was mounting to the contrary, but
I bit my tongue). Instead, Mom had a list of decoration and food
requests that were more Tutto Mare than "Sesame Street": Grand
Marnier-soaked asparagus spears? Having trouble finding that in a
Lunchable.

Mom did commit enough to the little-girl theme to go
with teddy bear invites, but only after a strange exchange in which she
violently rejected my idea of sending out Malibu Barbie invitations. 

"No!" She said, throwing her fist down. "I don't want Barbies! I hate Barbies."

She
collects Barbies. But that's not the point. The point is, she had
accepted my offer to plan her "little girl party" but hated every one
of my ideas. That's fine. It's her party. But after being shot down at
every turn – the food, the music, the entertainment, the location – I
was at wit's end when the invitations became an issue. 

I know
that Mom gets a little stressed out before a big event. Her temper can
flare. She can get a wee bit bossy (one of my favorite wedding pictures
is a close-up of my Mom's arm, outstretched and ending in a tautly
pointed finger). In the end, I know her control-freakishness will pay
off with a fun party, something she'll embrace and remember. But right
now, it's driving me nuts.

"I don't want Barbies! That's not me!" 

"Oof!"
I looked at my soon-to-be 60-year-old mom, my mom who told me that all
she wanted for her party were pony rides and a little-girl theme, and
found myself thinking: "I wish she'd just grow up!"

Ta Da! Now He's Gone.

No one would tell me why Zev's swim instructor left. One day, a few
months ago, the office staff at the school just said, "He's not here
anymore." And then followed that up with a heavy silence that
suggested, "And you know why."

Thing is, I didn't. 

I
thought Ta-Da (that's what Zev called him, "Ta-Da!") was a bit of a
diva. From what I could tell, he tried to change his schedule every
week. He insisted on eating his lunch in the pool. He was a bit snippy
with management.

But he was fantastic with the kids, really
able to read them and challenge them in a natural and gentle way. So, I
couldn't imagine what he could possibly have done to get kicked out of
the pool. 

Then a few days ago, a fellow Pool Mom asked me, "Did he ever hit on you?"

We
were sitting poolside, watching our little swimmers squirm and squiggle
in the water, and she explained, "He hit on all the moms. People
complained about it. That's why he was fired." 

"Seriously?" I said. " That's why he was fired?"

"Yes," she said. "He didn't hit on you?"

I
guess I have a different definition of being "hit on" than the other
moms. Yes, Ta-Da would often comment on my appearance. But it's not
like he ever asked for my number. Frankly, I thought his attentions
were exaggerated attempts at small talk.

Once, when I showed up
with unwashed hair, glasses and my favorite 17-year-old sweatshirt, he
said, "Damn, girl, you're looking fine." 

I nearly fell over laughing.

"I'm serious," he said. "Did you lose weight?" 

This
is not the stuff of a sexual predator. This is the stuff of someone who
wants a nice Macy's gift certificate at the end of the school year.

I
quizzed Pool Mom a bit about her own experience: Had Ta-Da been
aggressive? No. Did he use foul or explicitly sexual language? No. Did
he ever proposition her? No. 

So what was the problem?

"He really intimidated me," she said. 

Maybe
Ta-Da really did cross a line with someone – I have no way of knowing.
But if just saying stupidly inappropriate things is intimidating, then
I must come across as Andre the Giant.

When fertility
treatments failed me, I told curvaceous Lyn that I was going to start
burning incense at her feet. I compared a buff former NYPD cop friend
to an oak tree, ready to climb. 

If I had to communicate without innuendo for one week, I'd be reduced to shadow puppets by Wednesday.

To
me, flirtatious banter is the currency of everyday interactions. Maybe
I'm wrong to call a beautiful girlfriend of mine "Gorgeous." Or maybe
complimenting a waiter's smile can be constituted as harassment.   

But
maybe, just maybe, the complaining Pool Moms had their bikinis in a
bunch over nothing. Maybe Ta-Da wasn't coming on to
people, he was talking to them.

It's been nearly four months
since Zev has seen Ta-Da, but he still talks about him – a testament, I
think to the instructor's gift with kids. Ta-Da earned his nickname
because he taught my son to say "Ta da!" after every impressive
accomplishment – floating on his back, kicking his legs. Zev loved the
encouragement and will now routinely say "Ta da!" when he feels proud
of something he's done. 

I usually clap my hands and repeat the exclamation. But I think I won't just repeat his "Ta da!" anymore.

Now I'll tell him,  "And you looked good doing it."

Sis, Not Sissy

Growing up, Sis used to say she was scared of everything. We'd be in the house, with our parents home and all the lights on, and she'd call me on the phone in my room (she was too frightened to travel down the hall) and say, "I'm scared."

"Of what?" I'd ask.

She'd have to think about it for a minute.

"Burglars."

I always took her fearfulness seriously and tried to reason with her, tell her that burglars didn't want her Cabbage Patch Kids. Or that she wouldn't melt if exposed to rainwater, or that, no matter how big it is, a cat can't eat our dog.

She'd usually ignore me, hug herself and repeat, "I'm scared."

So I wasn't surprised, when we gave Sis a little send-off last week, that she expressed some fear about driving her new car to a new state to start a new job.

"What if they're mean?" she said. "What if it doesn't work out and I just wasted all this time? I'm scared."

This time I ignored her.

While it's perfectly normal for a person to express anxiety over big life changes, I don't buy Sis's shakes for one second. It's taken me a while to catch on, but I've finally realized: Sis – for all her apprehensive blubbering – is fearless.

She's not afraid to drive 130 mph without insurance in a car that may or may not have brakes – in fact, she's been pulled over twice for doing just that. And each time, she wasn't afraid to try to sweet-talk her way out of a ticket (once, it even worked).

She has no fear about sleeping with razors in her bed, eating at a C-rated Taco Bell or sharing an apartment with a mouse (which she eventually killed by accidentally sitting on it).

Plus, for all her alleged trepidation, Sis is no wallflower. She once asked the hostess of a fancy-schmancy L.A. restaurant, "Who here is famous?" I was mortified, but the hostess responded to Sis's chutzpah, and I'm happy to report that Aimee Mann and Michael Penn are truly lovely people.

Sis has no qualms about asking people to do the most ridiculous things for her: When she decided that her personal trainer, a buff gent with six-pack abs, wasn't adequately inspiring, she got him to take off his shirt while she did crunches.

"So he stands over you with his shirt off in the gym?" I asked, incredulous.

"Yeah, and when I'm working different parts of my abs, I tell him, 'OK, turn to the side.' "

Those guys from "300" got nothing on Sis. If she had been in the Greek army, the Persians would have wound up doing her laundry. So she can tell me all she wants that she's terrified. I'm not listening.

As I write this, Sis is on the road, her first road trip ever out of California (not counting a couple of weekend jaunts to Las Vegas – which I just consider really long drives to Disneyland). She's driving at night. Alone. It's probably a bit colder than she's used to, but I'm not worried about her.

She's heading to a new life in the Pacific Northwest, blazing a trail through a wild, wide-open future, all her possessions crammed into a car, eight hours of music that she ripped off of my iTunes blaring on her stereo.

I'm confident that, despite her worries, Sis will be ordering around some flannel-wearing gym rat, speeding through Oregon streets and barging her way into the hottest clubs in no time.

People of Oregon, Sis is coming your way.

You should be scared.

Got Any More Of That Cheese?

Lorene warned me that after I had a kid, two words would completely
lose meaning. The first was "fluid." The second, "disgusting."

I
thought about that when I watched one of Zev's play friends try to
shove a half-chewed piece of string cheese into her mother's mouth. The
mom refused it, and I did a double-take. 

"Wow. You can do that?" I asked. I would have just swallowed it.

"Oh,
believe me, I eat plenty of half-chewed food," she said, piling more
cheese onto her daughter's plate at our Mommy and Me class. "You know
what's really good half-chewed? Brisket. It pretty much maintains its
consistency." 

"OK, enough!" another mom said.

"But we all do it," a third chimed in. 

"I
know," the voice-of-reason mom said. "But it's one thing do it. It's
another thing to know that everyone else does. It's like a universal
embarrassment."

Embarrassment? That doesn't begin to cover it.
I compare becoming a parent to joining an underground S&M cult. My
son has pooped in my hand, sneezed in my mouth and wet on me.
Repeatedly. There are people in this world who would pay money for that
kind of abuse. I am not one of those people.   

But, I am not
disgusted by it, either. Lorene was right. I used to change my
pillowcase every day. I would wash my bras in hot (the integrity of the
elastic be damned!). I kept Clorox wipes in my car. But my threshold
for gross was tossed out with my first dirty diaper.

I have begun to wonder: Will I ever be normal again?   

"I also eat food off the floor," Brisket Mom said.

I guess not. 

The
thing about joining an underground S&M cult is that you'll always
have the cigarette burns on your body. I'm assuming the same is true
with parenting – that I'll never retrieve the level of shame and
propriety that separates parents from our nonparent brethren.

While
eating chewed food off the floor might not be enough to divide the
species (I doubt many of the "Fear Factor" contestants are parents),
nothing separates these two classes of primates quite like poop.

Friends
of mine were kicked out of a restaurant and told never to return after
they changed their kids' diapers at their table. While I don't think
the restaurant over-reacted, I can completely understand how the couple
could momentarily lose all sense of decorum – and hygiene. They've just
lost touch with what it means to be disgusting.

I’m not that bad. Yet. But it does look as though I’m in the poop too deep to ever turn back. When Zev used his “baby potty” for the first time the other day, I wanted to take out a full-page ad in the paper. Instead, I waited until the wee hours of the morning to log on to IM and regale the only person online with Zev’s tale of toilet triumph.

“Kevin!” I said. “Zev pooped in the potty today!”

I started to type out the whole story, about Zev’s cute reddening face. His little grunts. The proud way he hopped off the potty and crouched down dangerously close to examine his masterpiece.

But Kevin shot back a conversation-crushing non-parent reply, “And moving right along.”

"Seriously?" I wrote back. He didn't find this fantastic news?

"Seriously." He replied.

I was a little miffed, but I understood. He probably still thinks fluids come in bottles, full of corn syrup and carbonation.

For
me, those days are so far in the rearview mirror, I have to squint to see
them. And I realize that there are no U-turns on this road. Thirty
years from now, if I'm in a restaurant and see a woman slurp down a
half-chewed piece of cheddar while changing a dirty diaper, I'll
wind past the revolted crowd,  walk over to her table and ask,
"Got any more of that cheese?"

Britney Spears Is Eating My Brain

Britney Spears is eating my brain.

It's not just her, of
course: Shar Jackson is munching away, too, feasting on a good chunk of
my hippocampus and trying to tear the brainstem from the wet maw of
Antonella Barba.   

I used to know stuff. Important stuff. You
know – the death toll in Iraq. Who is running for the Republican
nomination against Rudy Giuliani. I used to be a newspaperwoman, and I
knew newspaperwoman stuff. I even managed to keep abreast of world
events when I had a newborn – a feat, I was told, that would be
impossible.

But after leaving my newspaper job for the
freelance market, I've gone where the money is – to fashion reporting
and celebrity gossip. And now … now I can tell you who dressed Forest
Whitaker's wife for the Oscars or how old Jennifer Aniston is without
looking it up (38), but I have no idea whatever happened to our
supposed treaty with North Korea. 

I can name Daniel Baldwin's
favorite rehab center (Renaissance) and tell you who gave Cameron Diaz
a nose job (Raj Kanodia, duh). I know Bridget Moynahan is pregnant and
that her baby daddy is dating Gisele. But, um, have we gone to war
with Iran yet?

My work schedule revolves around Zev's sleep
schedule, so my news catch-up time is limited. And since I've never
even heard of half the celebs I'm supposed to be writing about, I find
myself "studying," scouring Internet gossip sites – rather than my pile
of yellowing newspapers – whenever I have a free moment. 

As an old-school beat reporter, I have to admit that I feel a little proud that now,
when an editor asks me for a quick story about Kim Kardashian, I no
longer say, "Who?" But my increasing knowledge of the not-worth-knowing
comes at a price.

I used to make a ritual of reading the Sunday
New York Times to Zev. He'd sit on my lap and I'd read as much of the
paper aloud as my squirmy worm would allow. I always started with Frank
Rich's column, which I dubbed the "Karl Rove Story Hour." 

But
for the past two weeks, I have barely gotten a chance to skim the
headlines, let alone update Zev about the latest Scooter Libby subplot.
He doesn't seem to miss it much, having moved on to "One Fish, Two
Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish." But I miss it. I miss it terribly.

I miss my mind. 

I've
become the living embodiment of every stereotype people have of my
generation: that we're so obsessed with celebrities we literally lose
ourselves in their lives. The fact that I'm getting paid for this
obsession only makes it that much sadder.

The other day, I
lamented my newfound ignorance to Kevin over IM. "I don't know what's
going on in the real world," I complained. 

"Um, they just tried to kill Cheney today," he replied.

My blood froze. Was he kidding? I clicked away from Usmagazine.com for a second to find that, no, he wasn't kidding. 

"Yeah," I wrote back. "See, I didn't know that. But Posh Spice dyed her hair blond. That, I knew."

It's
not that celebrity reporting doesn't offer its own cerebral challenges.
To avoid lawsuits and other headaches, editors have asked me to do some
intense verbal gymnastics – getting me to, say, describe dirty photos
of an "American Idol" contestant in detail, without once saying what
the contestant is doing in those photos (I said her "head shot showed a
mouthy mug" and left it at that). 

It ain't an analysis of the
9/11 Commission Report, but it's something. And I was pleased, as I
quickly caught up with the news from Afghanistan, to learn that no one
bothered to wake up President Bush to tell him about the attack on
Cheney. I may be in a Beyoncé blackout, but at least I'm as well
informed as the president.

Still, Britney is chomp, chomp,
chomping away, and I need to watch out before I'm completely
lobotomized. A celebrity-trash compatriot of mine called me up recently
and asked, "Should I be alarmed that one of my co-workers doesn't know
who won the Civil War?" 

"Um, yes," I said. I wanted to cry. I
wanted to shake whomever it was by the collar and say, "Read a damn
book! And, no, InStyle magazine doesn't count!" I wanted to request a
moment of silence for our country's bleak, bleak future – but I was
interrupted by an e-mail from an editor requesting another story.

"Sorry. Gotta run," I told my friend. "Britney checked back into rehab." 

And she took my frontal lobe with her.

Ain't No Thing

Everyone tells me I need to do My Thing.

You know what Your
Thing is, right? You cook, or you write poems or you shave your head,
check in and out of rehab and get tattoos on your wrists. Whatever. No
matter what Your Thing is, it's yours.I don't have a thing. And, apparently, it's a cause of great consternation around here. 

Doing
My Thing, Hubby has informed me, will make me a happier, healthier
person. It will give me an outlet for growth, ambition and hope beyond
career and family life. Doing One's Thing is essential. If I don't do
My Thing, he tells me, I will be unfulfilled and angry. My soul will
wither on the vine. I'll come back in the next life as belly-button
lint. Or a barnacle. Or a newspaper columnist.

Fine. But how can I do My Thing if I don't have a Thing to do? 

My
friends have tried to come to the rescue. Leslie attempted to
reintroduce me to exercise. Hubby has been nudging me into movie
theaters and concerts. Keren has been trying to get me interested in
poker. So far, I'm not feeling at one with My Thingness.

I
thought that being a mommy could be My Thing, but it's not. Women who
are Mommies with a capital M are involved in various Mommy groups and
have Mommy blogs and write Mommy books and host Mommy networking
events. I just have a kid, and apparently, just having a kid isn't
enough to make being a mommy My Thing. 

I was perfectly willing to accept a Thingless life, but then Kevin started taking an improv comedy class, and I had an epiphany.

"Oh, yeah!" I said to him. "Improv used to be My Thing." 

Ten
years ago, I took a bunch of improv comedy classes. Every Tuesday
night, I'd come home as energized as a second-grader on a sugar high. I
laughed more, took more risks, felt more alive.

And, as happens
when you discover Your Thing, I became ravenous for more. I started
going to improv comedy shows. I watched improv programs. I even tried
to rally my pals together for an improv comedy party – but it wasn't
Their Thing. 

I did my improv thing for nearly a year before a
change of job/address/marital status all converged at once and made
doing My Thing nearly impossible. I took up gardening as My Thing for a
few years. MySpace had a short run as a Thing early last year. But I
never really lost my interest in improv.

So when Kevin told me
that he started taking the workshops, it awakened something in me. I
suddenly remembered what all the fuss over Doing Your Thing is about. I
loved being able to actually feelcreative juices flowing
through my veins. I loved sensing the blood rush to my cheeks when I
made a room full of funny people laugh. I loved improv. It was My
Thing.   

So what the heck was Kevin doing messing around with My Thing?

I
got more than a little jealous, but when I heard him talking about it
with the same kind of enthusiasm, I realized that there is probably
room enough in this Thing for both of us. I told Kevin that for the
next round of classes, I'd audition with him to see if we could take
the classes together.   

It sounded ideal. My buddy and I doing Our Thing.

But
now auditions are coming up, and I'm in a panic. It's been 10 years
since I did any improv at all. What if I'm terrible? Or what if I'm
fine, but I still don't pass the audition? And what if … oh, I hate
thinking about this: What if Kevin gets in, but I don't?   

"You've
seen me fail at plenty of things, and I'd be just as supportive as you
have been for me," he promised. "Laced with the same merciless mocking."

"
'There, there,' I'll say. " 'Don't feel bad just because the premiere
comedy troupe in Los Angeles decided you were too humorless to even pay
to take one of their classes.' " 

I can already picture the
glint in Kevin's eyes when he says this. I can hear the ceaseless
razzing. I don't know if I'm up for this. I love improv, but facing an
endless barrage of ridicule? Well, that's just not My Thing.