Pet Peeve Number 2: Life Jackets (A Bad Girl Mostly-True Story ...yet more proof that tragedy is the root of comedy)

  There are sporty girls. There are petite lassies.  And then there are those gals for whom serious undergarments are a necessity.

We’re the same gals who can’t wear button up blouses.  So why did I ever think it would be possible to buy a life jacket?

Me, in specialty sports store in front of a wall of marina gear:  “Do you have anything for women?”

Clerk (who is just out of diapers. Honestly, he can’t be more than eight.):  “Yes!  All our styles are unisex.”

Me (sighing):  “Yeah, here’s the problem with that.  I am not Unisex.”  

Usually males can tell this.  I’m taking this as a bad sign.

Clerk (handing me a life jacket):  “Try this universal one.  It’s adjustable.”

I look at it.  The only things adjustable are two straps that wrap all the way around.  Which means that if I were a barrel, it would fit me perfectly.

Me (shaking head):  “Nope.  No place for the suspendibles.”

Clerk:  “Huh?” 

(I flummoxed him with my command of language.)

Me, trying it on:  “See?” 

  

I do up the top strap. The thing balloons out like an isosceles triangle.  No way are those bottom straps coming together.  There’s a mountain range in between.

Me:  “Don’t you have anything that bends in the middle?”

Clerk (scratching nonexistent beard):  “Maybe try only doing up the bottom strap?”

I demonstrate.   Strap rides up to my waist.  Jacket rides up over my face.  I could do up the top strap, but then I couldn’t talk.  It might also be hard driving the boat.

Clerk:  “What about cut-outs?”

Me:  “You mean deface the product by cutting out two custom sinkholes to fit around the twin Rockies?”

Clerk (with far too much enthusiasm): “That’s the idea.”

Me:  “Won’t that affect the buoyancy of the product?”

Clerk:  “I don’t think you have a problem with buoyancy.”

Revising estimate.  Kid may be older than I think.

The Christmas Spirit aka "Get your own damned shopper" (Christmas post #2)

(Reprinted with permission from the places that pay me.)

Skip the fancy jewelry, fur coats, and dishwashers that do everything.  Let’s be realistic and talk about what we all REALLY want for Christmas…which is a parking spot at the mall.

Let’s face it.  Each year we spend hundreds of miserable hours driving round and round suburban parking lots, in sub-zero weather, during blinding snow storms, looking for a place to park the family car.  This is so we can fight our way into the crowded, outrageously noisy department stores, to buy obscenely overpriced gifts for people who don’t need them.

Who started this practice??

But you have to do it in order to get into the ‘Christmas Spirit,’ which is an essential part of the holiday tradition.  Christmas Spirit is evident in parking lots all over the world.  It begins something like this:

Having arrived at the mall, you spend the first twenty minutes driving up and down the parking lot, taking advice from every occupant in your car about where they ‘think they saw an opening.’  Then your spouse – whom you are beginning to hate – gets the bright idea of hovering like a vulture at the mall exit, and following someone back to their car.  At which point you find that there are four other clever drivers attempting to do the same thing.

You then engage in the time honoured game of ‘parking lot chicken’ to see who gets to the vacant spot first.  The spot, of course, isn’t available anyway, as the shopper exiting the mall only did so to dump a load of shopping off at the car before going back into the trenches.  I’m convinced that some despicable people sneak into suburban parking lots in the middle of the night, leave their cars in prime spots, and bum a ride back the next day.  It’s the suburban equivalent of lining up for rock concerts.

Meanwhile, back at the parking lineup, three of the four cars formerly involved in playing chicken are now racing back to the mall entrance to annex another exiting individual. By now, the windows are down, the drivers are yelling obscenities along the lines of ‘Get your own damned shopper!” and threatening to beat each other to the consistency of plum pudding.

By now, if you are not in the true spirit of Christmas, I suggest the following:  Go home, take an extremely large glass and fill it with equal parts eggnog and rum.  Drink quickly.  Refill Liberally.  Repeat.  This is the alternative practice of ‘getting into the Christmas Spirits.’

A Few Words About Turkey…the first of the Christmas posts (reprinted with permission from the loony people who paid me)

Today, we are going to talk about Christmas.  Basically, about the inequities between men and women, when approaching the subject of preparing for Christmas.

Woman, for example, approach Christmas from the point of view of shopping for presents, selecting and decorating the tree, cleaning the house for company, cooking the holiday dinner for 10, and flopping from exhaustion just in time to hear Dasher and Dancer on the roof.

Men, on the other hand, tend to regard Christmas as something that precedes the Superbowl.

In order to properly conduct this extremely scientific study, it’s necessary for us to delve deeper into the proverbial muckbin of sexual politics.  Let us look at the different attitudes between the sexes when considering the subject of turkey

Her job:  buy the turkey, defrost the turkey, stuff the turkey, cook the turkey, make the turkey gravy, serve the turkey.

His job: eat the turkey.  (Also, be the turkey.)

Let’s further examine the role of men and women when purchasing gifts for the average North American family.

She buys for:  the kids, the dog, the husband, his mother, her mother, his father, her father, Aunt Gertrude, Uncle Larry, his best friend, her best friend, the kids’ teachers, the crossing guard…

He buys for:  her.

Lest this seem a tad inequitable, let’s remember that there is a good reason the world is aligned this way.  There is no possible way a gal WANTS her guy to buy for everyone on the above list.  This is because most guys’ idea of a really neat and original thing to buy is a gift certificate from Canadian Tire or Fred’s Rods and Live Bait.

Which is why – although it is often the only present they have to get – many men revert to the time-honoured guy tradition, which is try to ignore it and maybe it will go away, aka “leave it to the last minute.”

This is why, on Christmas eve, you are apt to see hundreds of crazed men running through local shopping malls buying anything that doesn’t move, yell or bite.

Him (in department store, 9 PM Christmas Eve, clutching something that resembles a blouse):  “It’s perfect!  How much?”

Clerkette (world-weary):  “This blouse is a size 62.  Are you sure your wife is a 62?”

Him:  “Blouse?  I thought it was a tent.  Oh well, maybe it will shrink.”

Ca-Ching.

So darling, if you’re reading this, the tree is up, and I have a few things on hold at Tiffany’s.  You choose.