SELFABSORBED.ME

Saturday night I am sitting at one of those tables where you are not sure if you have a waitress or not to get you drinks, or if you have to go up to the bar to get your own drinks, or if you go to the bar to get your own drinks if the waitress will finally come by and scold you for having gone to the bar when clearly she is right there…it is one of my top dilemmas in life, the kind of quandary only some great Buddha sitting in a pile of leaves could possibly provide the answer to.

I choose the safest bet for getting my alcohol on time and decided to hit the bar. The blonde haired bartender stared at me from across the way. Was she going to take my drink order or what? What am I part of the 8 legged circus right now? Let’s get on it Miss Vodka Maker, go make me some vodka! But she was just standing there, staring. She finally walked over and said definitively, “I know you.”

Me: “Ah, you do?”

Starey McStare: “Yes I do.”

Me: “Ummm, I’m sorry?”

Starey McStare : “No no, you went to camp right? Camp Huckins?”

Me: "Ohh yes! Why yes I did, ahh some good memories…but what division were you? I don’t recognize you..”


Starey McStare: “Oh , I was your division… but you didn’t hang out with me.”

I just sorted nodded. Figures. All I want to get is some friggen vodka sodas and I couldn’t be bothered to hang out with McStare over here. I was probably 8 and more fascinated by how tampons worked.

She just smiled though and took my order.

One year ago prior, I had a similar experience. I was in midtown when some 5ft 11 blonde chic stopped me on the street wearing this red checkered bustier top.

Checkers: “Hey, I know you!”

Me: “No, I am not Ginger Spice from the Spice Girls…now if you will excuse me...”

Checkers: “No no no… you went to Camp Huckins right?”

Me: “Oh, um, yes, yes I did.”

Checkers: “You were a CIT when I was there.”

Me: “Oh well it was nice seeing you, I have to go get back to...”

Checkers: "Boy was I scared of you…”

Now I was the one stopping and staring.

Me: “Excuse me.. scared of me?”

Checkers: “Oh yeah…you were always the lead in every lip sync!”


The. Lead. In. Every. Lip. Sync.

Was I really hearing this correctly?

Me: “Oh, um, I was? I guess, maybe I don’t remember.”

Checkers: “Oh yeah, and you used to be in the middle of the circle in every dance party!”

The Middle. Of the Circle. In Every. Dance Party.

It was as though someone had just punched me right in my 10 year old stomach.

I tried to swallow back the vomit that was creeping up the back of my throat.

It was just getting worse and worse. In my head I was begging for Checkers to stop.

Checkers: “Oh yeah and in windsailing you used to jump off the boat to try and hit on guys on the neighboring island…”





Oh sweet chutney Lord in Heaven. Make it stop. Just make it stop.

Me: "Ok ok, you are going to have to stop… I didn’t know that I made anyone , um, scared of me, per say. I don’t remember being that way, but um, I don’t sing in leads anymore and um, I wouldn’t be scared of me now, that is for sure..”


Checkers just stood there, all 5ft 11 of her, her perfect body and bouncy blonde hair, staring at all 5ft 2 of me. I had nothing on this girl. Nor do I think I ever did. But apparently, in her mind, I was 6ft 9.

In your childhood, how do you remember if you were mean? If you were nice? If you were the lead circle dancing girl?

Do you grow up to be the exact same person you were? If you played Sandy in Grease once, will you forever be Sandy? Will you ever just get to be some lousy back-up singer, or Stage Dancer#3?

I am going to come to accept my days at Camp Huckins as days when I apparently used my formable personality to bully over girls who would later on turn into models. Funny how life works, huh? If Checkers and I had seen each other in some bar, her and her beautiful leggy blondeness would be my biggest fear.


But apparently, even after all those years, I was hers.

“He is a party-boy.” She said, staring at me from across the couch, running her blonde hair through her fingers.

“How do you know that?” I asked. “You just met him last night… he seemed fairly normal at the bar.”

Blondie: “Because I facebook’d him. I saw his pictures.”

Me: “Why did you have to do that, it just ruins it.”

Blondie: “I know, but when I saw the pictures, he was just drunk in every one of them.”

But isn’t that what Facebook photos are all about? If not to make people think we have better lives then we actually do, then what?

I was hoping that this “fake online life” craze had ended when MySpace started to go downhill. As one of my good friends put it, not switching to Facebook and staying with MySpace was like, “being the last one at that late night bar, where you are mid-dancing with your drink up in the air and suddenly you look around and realize that everyone has left.”

I know that whatever you put in your online Facebook or MySpace profile, is not the real you, but more an exaggerated, better looking version of you. If we all judged each other based on our online profiles you would think most of us had taken up residence at some Cancun foam party.

It is not as though Facebook or MySpace captures the “real” moments of my life. Moments when I am sitting at home reading- “Single Women Who Cry Every Night” -while clipping my snaggle-toe nail.

In fact I am fairly certain this boy’s drunken photos are simply a cover up for some kind of childhood abuse (I like to think positively). ..Or, as I assertively told her, to make up for, “his small penis”.

She claimed she hadn’t seen to yet to judge. That is rubbish.

Drunk frat photos are code for an alcoholic mother.

Similarly, drunk sorority photos imply abusive daddy issues.

I told her not to judge a book by its cover. And I meant it too, because this kid is hot, and who needs personality when your cover looks like Dean McDermott? No one. Not one damn person.

If she could eliminate boys now based on facebook, what is next? People eliminating each other based on some type of online “dating” site where they are forced to post pictures, bio information and whether they're single or divorced or what not? …. That sounds like crazy year 3000 talk. We are not that advanced here.

I myself, don’t go for all that online stuff. I like to judge people the old fashioned way. …by how much money they have.

Guest Blogger:...Drum Roll Please...NYMagazine.

Ummm..because they are NY?...And a magazine? ...And they have pictures and not a lot of words ...and that makes me happy?

NYMAG.com


Meet Winter Raymond, Overachiever







ElleWomen's magazines often make women feel inadequate. That's, like, what they do. But seldom do they make us feel quite so inadequate as September's Elle, which features a woman called Winter Raymond:



When 27-year-old Winter Raymond isn't slogging through her third year of law school in Boston, she's in Seoul, Korea, juggling a law firm internship, a fledgling company (Seoulplay, a concierge service for business travelers she launched last year) and burgeoning TV stardom on the Korean answer to The Dating Game, in which she hits the town with famous comedians.



Really? How is that even possible? It's like she's one of those characters from Heroes.




Also she apparently does all this wearing $1,500 Jimmy Choo sandals and carrying a $2,595 Gucci bag. We, on the other hand, can't even put on earrings in the morning (the effort makes us nauseated).





We totally hated her immediately.

If you would like to guest-blog for me this week, please email me something funny ( I will be the judge of what is funny in Jesus' book) and it may or may not get posted. And I may or may not have the bubonic plague, but hey, anything is worth a shot.

Email me to guest blog at Kim@NYCPonderings.com

“So” She said on the phone to me after a particularly late night at work. “I went to Bloomingdale's to pick out a new outfit for work…and I had to make the forever daunting decision…of whether to look like a mom or a hooker.”


Just thinking about “work clothes” I could feel the bile building up in the back of my throat. I, myself have had one too many encounters with ‘work appropriate attire’ that I will deem sole responsibility on being a young woman in my 20’s. I can’t seem to win no matter which route I choose. I always see commercials for young people going to “work” in hip little corduroy blazers and ripped denim, carrying large architecture cases. Who are these people? Because, let me tell you something it more or less looks like Corduroy McGee's so called “work” is the unemployment line.

Even if you do happen to work in a ‘casual’ work environment, women still have the ever mysterious task of looking ‘nice’, but not ‘sexy’. But sometimes how can you be nice looking and not appear sexy? Or sexy, but nice? Or nice, but in a nonsexual kind of way? Or not nice and overtly sexual? Or how much wood would a Wood Chuck chuck if a Wood Chuck could chuck wood?



The lines become even more blurred when you are blessed by the Greek Gods with things I would like to refer to as, “boobs”. These so called “boobs" may seem fine in everyday life, but in the workplace they are utterly shunned upon. These alleged boobs must disappear completely come 9am, and must magically reappear after the hour of 5pm. However, if they are a decent size, even a basic v-neck sweater suddenly makes your work outfit look more like a Cheetah Club after-hours audition.


Oh and sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph may you be struck down dead if you have one of those dresses with spaghetti straps. You want to show a shoulder?! Who are you?! Naked Nancy?! Put that shoulder away, dammit, can you not see how you are arousing the men of the world and no one can concentrate on the work at hand with you showing that damn shoulder of yours! Men wont be able to “email” or “fax" or even have a basic phone conversation if they get one whiff of that Clavicle bone of yours!

The sexiest bone EVER

Have you not received the memo? Men will not respect you if they think you have a (whisper voices please) “body”. Yes, that is right, let no man think you have boobs, or shoulders or anything else for that matter. “Look at Mary, look at her and those BOOBS. Right there in her high necked-turtleneck! I can see the OUTLINE of those things! Distracting everyone! Get rid of her! She is a menace to the community! You better send that child home right now before she disgraces us in front of the men-folk! Now please, will someone go to the kitchen and churn some butter..."


Now if you don’t want to go the hooker route to work, you next best option, is the mom uniform. Oh yes, let me tell you, Peggy in accounting has this one down very well. Peggy is about 25 going on 83.

She strolls in everyday in her pleated front khakis, heart-patterned turtleneck and a blazer that’s big enough to fit the small population of Asia underneath it. But you know what, people like Peggy for her MIND, and because you can’t see any of those distracting things like “boobs”…or even that Peggy has an actual vagina. Thank God!

God forbid people found out she has an actual vagina, she may not get promoted at all.

I prefer to go to work with my entire body covered. Mostly in sheets, with a ski mask and possibly some goggles. I find I am much less distracting that way. And more people can concentrate on their work when they are not being demonized by my body or by my outrageous good looks.

And if Banana Republic could please stop advertising some kind of ultra good looking architect staff wearing high waist jeans and wife beaters, I might be able to actually be able to figure out what is work appropriate.