Trail Blazers

In an effort to become a well-rounded person, I have decided to take up bike riding. Or, more accurately, it is because I have become a well-rounded person that I have decided to take up biking.

The last time I rode a bike I was in junior high. It wasn’t a pleasurable activity; it was more like a necessity because my abusive mother refused to chauffer me to school. So every morning I’d get up, slap on a half-inch of make-up, and hop on my bike. By the time I got to school there were a dozen gnat carcasses caught in the deadly web of my mascara.

The only good part about riding my bike to school was the crossing guard. We had to cross a busy street, and the crosswalk wasn’t near a traffic light, so a very pleasant old man was assigned to wear a bright orange vest and carry a stop sign out to the middle of the street to stop traffic. The old man took obvious pleasure in interacting with us young-uns, unless – unless – you did not dismount and walk your bike through the crosswalk, as per Crosswalk Law. If you didn’t abide by the law, this sweet old man would turn into a frightening nightmare who would clobber you soundly over the head with his stop sign, causing you to swerve dangerously towards the line of stopped cars before wobbling to a crash in the middle of the street while the other students peed their pants laughing at you. You didn’t mess with the crosswalk man.

My first time back on a bike in over 17 years was in a Dick’s Sporting Goods store. Dick’s Sporting Goods has helpfully provided wide, clean, smooth aisles on which to try, perhaps for the first time in 17 years, an array of potentially lethal sporting equipment. They have also helpfully lined these aisles with the sharpest objects they could find, like clothing racks and harpoons. So my first time back on a bike was through an obstacle course with extremely low odds for success. I spent most of the time scooting the bike along on the balls of my feet until the pain in my ass rendered me incapable of logical thought and I agreed that the bike would be an extremely sound purchase.

I bought what is called a hybrid bike. Hybrid bikes did not exist when I was a kid. When I was a kid, you started off on a My Little Pony bike with pink and white tassels until you could graduate to a slim ten-speed which you never learned how to operate. My fiancé, who I’m seriously beginning to suspect is mentally unstable, bought a mountain bike so that he can efficiently risk killing himself by sailing down mountains at a 45-degree angle over razor-sharp rocks.

As much as I am looking forward to “getting out there” and “falling down and hurting myself,” I was very hesitant about engaging in all this outdoor activity without taking the dog along. I always feel extremely guilty whenever I do something that I know for a fact Theo would enjoy a lot more than I would. The problem is, Theo is a dog whose main functions are to be affectionate and aesthetically pleasing. She wouldn’t be able to trot along beside the bikes – nor would she be inclined to. She would go maybe two feet before something fascinating caught her attention and she veered off into the bushes, never to be heard from again.

So what we did is, and I want to make it clear that I am extremely embarrassed to admit this, we bought one of those pull-along stroller carriages meant for a three-year-old human being. It is a sophisticated little thing with built-in screens and flaps that you can lower if it rains, a seat-belt system you need a Ph.D. to figure out, and a little pocket in the side in which the toddler might store his sippy-cup. This is what we bought for the dog.

It took only a day and a half to put the complicated carriage together, and then we rolled back the front screen and sat Theo in the little seat inside. She immediately fell off onto the floor. She couldn’t even handle just sitting there. So we took her out and adjusted the seat and put her back in again where she sat looking at us with cheerful, but uneasy, indulgence.

“Good girl, good girl!” we crowed, stroking her and carrying on and feeding her little tidbits so she would associate her fancy, expensive carriage with happy thoughts. Then we zipped up the flaps and dragged her around the house for a while. Theo maintained her kind, tolerant expression, but it was clear she was rapidly losing patience. “Look,” she said with her eyes, “I’m all for showing you two a good time, but this is getting a little ridiculous.”

So now that we’ve all been for a semi-successful practice run around the living room, this weekend we are going to tackle the actual out-of-doors. At my insistence Tom and I have acquired helmets, gloves, kneepads, elbow pads, and a first-aid kit. But of course we are beginners, so there is no reason to go overboard. By the way, does anybody know if they make doggie bike helmets?

Man and Machine: A Love Story

Oops, I did it again.

You’d think, after that time with the Nintendo, I’d have learned my lesson by now: when a guy says not to mess with his stuff, he means it.

When I was 15 my 12-year-old brother gave me his generous permission to play Duck Shoot on his Nintendo. I played Duck Shoot a lot, mainly for the adorable dog who would fetch your felled duck if you were skilled, or snicker at you if you missed. But then one day I took the game cartridge out before shutting off the Nintendo (or was it after? Whichever one you were not supposed to do is what I did). My punishment for this heinous crime was a two-year banishment from Nintendo. My brother, who could not remember that my mother told him five minutes ago to empty the dishwasher, enforced this punishment religiously for two years, reminding me firmly, whenever I ventured to task his memory once more, “You could have broken it, Karen!”

Then, foolishly, a mere twenty years later, I did it again. This time my uncle’s printer was my unwitting prey. Nobody in his household – not my aunt or my two young cousins – was permitted to touch my uncle’s computer. He was extremely territorial about it. He ran virus-checker software “more often than I brush my teeth” as he’ll proudly tell you. Really his fanaticism was well founded, since the other household computer, the one reserved for his kids, had so many viruses that it ran a temperature and had a sickly greenish pallor.

So it was a really big deal that I was allowed to use his computer. I was given permission to check my email only. Specifically, I was not to download anything (as if I knew how). My cousins hovered in the doorway of his study, watching me in complete awe. They were afraid to even be in the same room with their father’s computer.

I checked my email, a process with which I am confidently familiar, and needed to print one of them out. This is where my careless misjudgment comes in: I hit “print”.

The paper immediately jammed into the tightest representation of an accordion you can imagine, and lodged itself firmly within the mechanics of the printer. The printer was about eight years old – which is one thousand and twenty-two in computer years – so none of the tricks I knew to work on more modern equipment were helpful here. I was reduced to picking out pieces of shredded paper one molecule at a time with a pair of tweezers while my cousins shook with fear in the doorway, knowing that because I had busted their dad’s printer, I was probably not long for this earthly world. They liked me, and recognized the tragedy of my perishing so young.

Finally, bravely, I threw down the tweezers and informed them, “Well this is just stupid. He needs a new printer anyway.” I earned their undying respect that day, I’ll tell you.

When my uncle got home his fury was apparent. “You printed?” he asked incredulously, trying really hard to control himself since I was not one of his own kids. “You didn’t tell me you had to print!”

“I didn’t think it was that big a deal,” I whimpered. He went on to explain that his printer required extra special attention and care, what with its being geriatric. He explained how he had already had to super-glue several of its ancient parts back together, and that if you wanted to print anything, there was a gentle coaxing and tugging procedure involved which only he could perform, being so intimately familiar with it.

Buying a new printer, it seemed, was not an option. He and this printer had bonded.

I was an outcast in my own family, nearly thrown out into the cold for this horrific transgression, while we waited to see if the printer could be salvaged. My cousins treated me gingerly, as if I were on death row, but at the same time kept their distance for fear of being associated with me. Meanwhile my uncle prowled the house with tweezers and super-glue. We all waited with baited breath to see if the patient would pull through.

And then, three days later, my uncle emerged triumphantly from his study, tears of joy wetting his face. “I fixed it!” he cried. He had managed to finally remove every bit of jammed paper, and re-glued the piece that my willful printing had caused to come detached. The printer, he declared, would live.

I was saved.

But the more I thought about it, the more indignant I became. Why was I put through three days of fear and misery because of a printer that was so old it couldn’t perform its own basic function without human intervention? It wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford a new one. If it had been a dog, it would have been put down long ago. My uncle showed more affection towards that printer than he did towards most people, and when it was finally time to move on to the next grade of Nintendo I am fairly certain I saw my brother burying something in the backyard and weeping softly.

My best friend sent me a furtive email the other day: just a quick note saying she did not know when she’d be back online, if ever, because she feared she had broken her husband’s laptop, and was going into hiding.

I think about her, wonder how she is faring. I suppose I got off lucky, being merely banned from Nintendo and, now, from my uncle’s computer along with the rest of his family. My poor friend is out there cold and alone, waiting for the day she can return to her own home in safety.

I just hope she remembered to run the virus-scan before she fled.

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do -- B. F. Skinner

Battle of the Sensesless

Men and women have, over the centuries, developed many survival-essential skills and instincts in order to peacefully co-exist. Yet despite our pop culture fanaticism led by John Gray and the like to deconstruct, analyze and interpret each other, our capabilities in dealing with the opposite sex have actually degenerated. We have developed, often to our own detriment, a severe case of selective senses.

“Tomorrow is my birthday,” a wife reminds her husband at dinner the night before, casually brandishing a carving knife for emphasis.

“Yes, yes!” her husband nods emphatically. Yes, it’s her birthday tomorrow! Must remember her birthday tomorrow or no sex for the next sixty-two months! Birthday! Tomorrow! Hey…check out the two dogs humping in the front yard!

And then the next day, when she bursts into hysterical tears because she did not receive so much as a card, he will appear completely baffled by this reaction and protest in complete honesty that he didn’t know she wanted any big deal made of her birthday.

“Are you BLIND!” she’ll shriek, pointing at her favorite restaurant’s phone number circled in red by the phone and the date MARCH 19^TH written next to it, and the photograph on the refrigerator of the bracelet she subtly mentioned twenty-five times in the past week, and the words written in lipstick on the mirror: “CALL FLORIST.”

But he’s not blind, or deaf. He has selective senses. This would be extremely interesting from a psychological standpoint if we weren’t so consumed by mind-numbing exasperation. Do we choose to see and hear only what we want to as a means of self-preservation, or is this a subconscious mass-suicide pact?

For centuries women have honed their nagging skills to perfection, exhibiting a hairpin accuracy in determining the absolute worst possible moment to bring their nagging to a fevered pitch indicating that if the task in question does not get done that instant then the world as we know it will come to a violent, fiery end. So men have had to adapt to this behavior by carefully positioning themselves in advance of a big event that must, at all costs, be uninterrupted.

“Saturday is the big game,” a guy will announce for the seventeenth time that week.

“I know,” his mate will say, smiling indulgently.

“That means I’ll be hanging out with the guys,” he’ll state in no uncertain terms. “I will not be able to mow the lawn, or take you and your mom out to lunch. I’ll be with the guys. Watching the game. All day.”

“Okay,” she’ll smile.

Then on Saturday, he’ll wake up, pull on his team’s jersey, and settle himself into that little depression he’s created directly in the center of the couch. She will wait for the perfect moment after he has made himself comfortable and his eyes have gotten that pre-game gleam, to stand in front of the television screen and rattle off a list of chores that she has spent roughly three years storing up in her head for just this moment.

“But honey,” he’ll say in an I’m-trying-very-hard-to-restrain-myself-from-leaping-over-the-coffee-table-to-strangle-you tone, “I told you I would be watching the game all day today!”

“Well, not all day,” she’ll respond angrily. “You didn’t say ALL day! How long can a game possibly last? Besides, we’re having lunch with my mother today!”

This is another good example of selective hearing. Possibly also selective memory and certainly a propensity for putting oneself in dangerous situations, which is an entirely different type of disorder but not one to be taken lightly.

Given the fact that a male and female have, at best, three actively working senses between them in regard to each other, it’s surprising that we’ve survived as a species. I don’t claim to understand how we’ve managed this long, and yet I can promise you that the next time my boyfriend declares himself unavailable, every neuron in my brain will fire off warning sirens that if he does not pick up his dirty laundry from the floor RIGHT THAT SECOND the entire planet will self-destruct.

And when he starts violently slamming his fists into the wall, insisting he reminded me that today was his league’s basketball tournament, I will have no idea what he is talking about. But I won’t really be listening anyway. I’ll be too busy circling choice items in the jewelry catalogue in preparation for Valentine’s Day.

Adventures of a Lhasa Down South

You may have noticed that my Main Person (whom you know as Karen) has not written anything for about six months. Or is it 30 years? I’m not so good with time frames. Like this one time, my Person left for what seemed like many years, but she came back wearing the same clothes and she was the exact same weight, so I knew it was probably just an hour or five minutes, because my Person’s weight changes almost every single day, depending on if it’s a Fuck It I’ll Eat What I Want day or an I’m So Fat I HATE Myself day. I hide under the bed on the I’m So Fat Days because she tends to require a lot of cuddles which gets tiresome and cuts into my naptimes.

Anyway, my Person gets depressed when she hasn’t written anything in awhile, but she says there hasn’t been time. First she said she didn’t have time because of the Wedding, a day that was pretty much the same as any other day to me because I spent it napping. The next day was fun though because all the people I had ever met came over to the house and we ate cake. Then she said she didn’t have time because of the honeymoon, a time I also enjoyed because my Grandma came and stayed with me, and she doesn’t know the rule about I’m not allowed on the bed. Then my Person said she was too busy with the holidays.

But my Person still has not written a thing. And anyway writing seems to be something she enjoys, so I don’t understand why she finds excuses not to do it. Like for example I enjoy digging a hole in the couch and take every opportunity to engage in this. I never make excuses why I don’t have time to do it. Another fun thing is to bark at three a.m. at what I’m fairly certain is the Headless Horseman coming to kill us all in our sleep. It’s always possible it might just be a leaf scuttling against the side of the house but one can never be too careful. The point is I love the sound of a nice clear, sharp bark cutting through a peaceful silence so I never make excuses not to do it. But even if she insists on using an “excuse,” there isn’t one anymore, because the holidays are over. I know this for a fact, because People are very routine-oriented, and I’ve witnessed the Holiday Cycle this year from start to finish.

Every year when it gets cold out my People bring in a bunch of boxes from the Cold Dirty Room where they keep the Giant Box with Wheels that goes very fast. The Dirty Room has a massive iron mouth that makes a bloodcurdling noise that makes my ears and tail go down, but I like the Giant Box with Wheels because sometimes it goes to Grandma’s house. Other times it goes to the vet, a person who for some reason likes to shove her finger up my ass, so I try not to think about that. Anyway, they bring in these boxes and get all excited about the things in them, none of which you can even eat. My Main person always pulls out this dusty old toy shaped like an old man with a white beard, and exclaims like she just found the pot of biscuits at the end of the rainbow, “LOOK Theo! Look! It’s your SANTA toy!” and tries to shove it in my mouth. But it smells bad, like the cold dirty room. Blech.

The best part about the holidays is the Inside Tree, which is a thing that normally lives outside and smells of other dogs’ pee, but at this time every year my People decide to bring one into the house, and put it in a bucket of special delicious water which I enjoy at nighttime while the People sleep.

Then follows a period when lots of people visit and drink stuff that makes them laugh loudly and accidentally drop food on the floor. Then they tear open the mysterious boxes that the People put under the tree like six-week-old puppies like to do with socks. This tells me we’re getting to the end. But the real sign that the holidays are over is when my People move the Inside Tree to the Cold Dirty Room. It would be my worst nightmare to have to stay in the Cold Dirty Room by myself and I can’t imagine what the Inside Tree did that was so bad, so I do my very best not to repeat whatever it was. If the Inside Tree could learn to “shake” maybe they would let it stay, because the People really like when I do that.

Then while my Main Person puts things back in boxes to store in the Dirty Room, my Other Person takes down the lights that were on the outside of our house. I decide to help my Other Person, because he’s a lot more fun, although he can be scary when he is playing with his “video game,” which is a box that is smaller than the one in the cold dirty room, and does not have wheels, but makes lots of strange, unpredictable noises. Sometimes my Other Person gets very, very angry with this box and yells very loud at it and throws things, so I have to go hide under the bed until he is happy with the box again. So anyway he climbs up a ladder to take down the lights on the roof of the house and I help by wandering off around the neighborhood and pretending I don’t hear him when he says, “Theo get BACK here,” or, “Theo do NOT crap in the neighbor’s flowers! Bad dog, bad dog!” But even though he’s a lot scarier than my Main Person, he is up on the roof and can’t reach me so I don’t pay any attention. Besides he is too busy going “dammit” a lot and losing his balance which makes my Main Person laugh very hard. The taking down the lights part is a lot of fun.

So that’s how I know for sure the holidays are over, and that my Main Person is out of excuses. But her small box with a bright shiny white screen still sits untouched, gathering dust. So I thought maybe I’ll teach my Person a lesson by writing her column. When she sees that I have taken precious time off from my naptimes just for her, maybe she’ll start to realize that she needs to MAKE time for the things she enjoys. Maybe she’ll finally understand what we dogs have always known – that you’ve got to live for the moment. That you never know what might happen next, good or bad. If you are lying in a patch of sunlight taking a peaceful nap, you cannot worry that at any moment your Person may snatch you awake, throw you into the Giant Box with Wheels and take you to the vet. And you can’t tell yourself, “Oh, I just don’t have time to dig a hole in the couch right now – I’ve got so much to DO. I’ve got to blah blah blah…”

My point is this: it is a New Year. Make the resolution to take the time to enjoy the things that make you happy. Because you never know when someone might come along and try to shove their finger up your asshole.

The Shoe Fits

Recently I found a journal that my mother kept when I was a baby. At eighteen months my mother writes, “Karen is inordinately fond of shoes. Whenever she’s behaving like a miniature Fidel Castro, I give her a pair of my shoes to play with and she transforms into a baby angel.”

I was not at all surprised to read this. In fact, I wouldn’t have even noted the entry at all, except for the fact that I happened to read it just minutes after discovering I seemed to have lost the ability to operate my right foot. My uneducated diagnosis is that the five-inch platform heels I was wearing all day somehow caused a pinched nerve, rendering me a female Dudley Moore ala Arthur, dragging one useless foot around and disguising it as mere drunkenness.

Will this keep me from wearing high heels, or even these particular high heels? Of course not. Don’t be silly. These shoes cost $150, and Jessica Simpson was seen wearing them two weeks ago to a premiere, and they are on Oprah’s “must have” list, and they are so totally cute and make my legs look unbelievably sexy, so long as I’m standing still and leaning on something, and not trying to actually walk.

“Huh,” I said, sitting on the couch and staring at my right foot, which refused to move when I told it to and instead hung limply but beautifully adorned. “Look at that. I can’t move my foot.”

My husband was alarmed, but I was pretty sure it was temporary, and it was. When he tried to insist I stop wearing the shoes, due to the fact that mobility is an extremely handy trait to have as a human being, an argument ensued that very nearly resulted in a trial separation. You don’t get between a woman and her shoes. But men simply don’t understand the shoe thing. Men don’t understand anything having to do with fashion but I think shoes are particularly baffling, because they are the most likely to cause severe crippling. “If the shoe fits, who cares if it causes musculature damage?” is my motto.

“What’s so great about shoes?” my exasperated husband wanted to know as he vigorously rubbed my comatose foot.

So I’ll let you fellas in on the secret, which isn’t really a secret at all but just plain common sense: The great thing about shoes is that no matter how fat we get, no matter how bloated we are, no matter how many babies we’ve had we always wear the same shoe size.

Shopping for any other type of attire almost always ends in a week-long depression and crash-diet. Bathing suit shopping makes us suicidal and, incidentally, would be a very effective form of torture on female prisoners of war. (“Tell us where the plans are hidden or I will make you try on this thong in a size 6!” Shrieking: “NOT THE THONG! PLEASE NOT THE THONG!”).

But shoes always fit. There is no greater high than a pair of heels. I could be having the worst day, but if I slip on a pair of strappy silver stilettos, all is right with the world.

Also, shoes have the power to make a bland outfit fabulous. For example, if your skirt is too long for your short legs, slip on a pair of heels and oila! You are a 5’9” fashion goddess. If your jeans are outdated, throw on some jazzy suede boots and ta-da! New fashion statement.

Shoes are, quite simply, magic. Dorothy’s got her home from Oz. Cinderella would still be scrubbing stone floors if it weren’t for her glass slipper. And there’s that old lady who lives in her shoe, something I can only dream of, particularly if it was a giant Manolo Blahnik d’orsay pump.

I know what you guys are thinking. You’re thinking, “Karen, your arguments make very sound sense. But what about that movie The Red Shoes? Didn’t the ballerina shoes kill that woman?” To which I respond: “Some women just can’t handle their shoes.” A real woman would have sucked it up, told her shoes who’s boss, and gone to the chiropractor six times a week to have her spine realigned like everybody else. There’s never any reason your shoes should be the cause of your demise. If they are, then it’s because of something you did wrong.

Many years ago, before there was the Fashion Police or Joan Rivers (we’re talking centuries here), men invented high heels and they liked them so much they kept them for themselves. And they wore satin bows on them, because men have no fashion sense, and they wore them with white tights and shiny shorty pants for the same reason. And then one day they looked at each other, and they realized they looked like complete idiots. And so they gave the heels to women, who did cry in joy, and who did paireth them with gorgeous dresses and sparkly things, and everybody lived happily ever after.

You can’t argue with historical fact, and history shows us clearly that you guys only try to dissuade us women from our beautiful shoes because you’re bitter that you couldn’t handle them. But I think understanding the origins of this issue, not to mention the shiny shorty pants embarrassment, should help you get in better touch with your latent shoe insecurities.

So, ladies, go forth and prosper, but slowly so you don’t break an ankle, and men, now that you understand the logical necessity of a pair of $200 embroidered five-inch pointed-toe stilettos, you can release your own selfish issues and there should be fewer domestic arguments everywhere. My work here is done, and now I must sign off, because the air’s getting a bit thin up here and I feel like I might just fai…..

Bathroom Personalities

After working here for awhile I've accumulated an interesting list of Bathroom Personalities. You know, co-workers who seem to have some very interesting, oh, let's call them habits, in the restroom. Here is my list. Got any Personalities to add? Send them to me!

1. The Scrubber

This is a woman who is scrubbing her... well, we'll just imagine what she's scrubbing... for at least five minutes (that's as long as I've ever had to hang around to listen). The scrubbing sound is intermittently punctuated by frantic rolling of the toilet paper holder. She must use a whole tree's worth of TP per bathroom visit. My God, she must be sore. Is she hoping to rub it completely OFF?

2. The Prayer

This woman sings hymns on the toilet, and I'm not talking under her breath, but loud and free. Every so often she pauses to say, "Oh Jesus! Oh sweet Jesus!" Maybe she's got a horrible case of constipation?

3. The Flusher

This person has OCD when it comes to flushing. She flushes before she sits on the pot, several times while she is sitting on the pot, and, thankfully, when she is done sitting on the pot. Why?

4. The Person Who Seems to be Wearing an Inordinate Amount of Clothing

This woman takes forever pulling up and fastening her clothing. She must be wearing three pairs of pantyhose (yes, they still wear pantyhose in the South). She actually grunts and pants with all the effort it takes to re-clothe herself.

5. The Hairspray Lady

The woman who absolutely cannot visit the restroom without dousing her entire head with a can of aerosal, suffocating anybody else who is unfortunate enough to be in there to actually use the toilet. She also tends to be the woman who applies her make-up with a spatula.

6. The Lady Who Doesn't Wash Her Hands

That says it all.

7. The Mumbler

This woman carries on a conversation with herself, in low tones so you can't tell what she's saying, the entire time she's on the pot.

8. The Cell Phone User

Far more prevalent than any other type I've mentioned, this is the person who can't put down her cell phone even when she is taking a shit. Co-dependant much?

9. The Woman Whose Feet Point the Wrong Way

You can see her feet under the stall door, and they are pointing TOWARD the toilet. What the fuck??

That's all I can think of at the moment. I haven't made a single one of these up. In fact, I was just in there with the hymn-singer, which was what gave me the bright idea of making a list.