The Chronicles of Marge

Blame the Headband

I’m on day five of an emotionless funk. My demeanor has not wavered from its current trajectory during this time. I feel quite like a vat of mud. And before we blame it on My Female Hormones, let’s note the following: five days ago marked my arrival at the American Medical Writers Association conference in Louisville, Kentucky. I went for work to help present a poster, and I went to take classes so that one day, many conferences from now, I will be certified by the aforementioned association. Certified to do what? Not quite sure. But from the two classes I took last week, I can tell you that the introduction to your biomedical paper is too damn long and that you need to delete half of the text from your poster presentation—and really, is there ever a need to include a photograph of some geriatric man with his fluffy Gucci dog on a scientific poster? I mean, what does a dog have to do with prostate cancer? Anyway, I started to wonder if my funk was a byproduct of attending a conference in my career field in which I looked around to discover all these women in their 40s and 50s wearing Spirit of the Goddess Crystals around their necks and thinking that cocktail attire to a dinner means pairing a black shirt and pant set purchased at your local JC Penny’s with a pair of suede Birkenstocks. I mean, really—I’m sure these ladies can, using the correct punctuation, plead a bad case of arthritis in their feet or something, but I think they can still find footwear other than a Birkenstock for the occasion. I suggest Googling “Easy Spirit.”

So there was that, which could have single-handedly sent me into the depths of soul-searching that leads to the Bottomless Pit of Will This Be Me in 20 Years?, but what might have really ignited the funk was the really loud woman in my biomed paper class who was wearing—I am not kidding you—a velour hair bow attached to a headband. Hello 1986! (And I can see the cringing faces of each Daughter of the Eighties who is reading this and lived through that hell…the headbands as well as the big metal hair clips that acted as a host for some big-ass pink bow that your mother made you put in your hair before you left the house for church—and that was only after you spent 30 minutes with your neck slumped over like a slinky because you had to get that shit curly with a set of hot rollers first because, apparently, little Southern Baptist girls with straight hair were not on the fast track to heaven. It’s a miracle that any of us survived and didn’t end up like Pink n’ Pretty when her neck snapped off and all you could do—tears pouring from your innocent 7-year-old eyes—was force her head back on to her stub of a neck and think to yourself that one day Tyra Banks would shake her head in disapproval at the thought of Pink n’ Pretty with her head positioned firmly on top of her shoulders, no neck in sight.)

Yes, the conference may have instigated my current funk, and if that were indeed the case, then the next trip I make to Urban Outfitters will cure it. However, at some point this morning, while looking out at the gray clouds filling the sky and realizing that the temperature was dropping at midday, it hit me, and I said to myself, “Oh shit; it’s started.” This funk was not because I am one in a professional field of nerds. It’s caused by the fact that when I leave for work in the morning, it’s dark. And shortly after I get home from work, it becomes dark. And although we still have two months left in the glorious season of fall, winter is just around the corner, and my body has already welcomed it by finding comfort in a nice fleece blanket under which to hibernate until spring. 

The Junk Catalog of E-mail

I’m getting ready to piss off some people, but what the heck? I haven’t done that in awhile, and besides, some of you are going to raise your hand and THANK ME for this Public Service Announcement on behalf of people who e-mail…and yet have lives. (Nonetheless, I just felt the first one of you hit the “back” button and drop out of my life forever.) 

So the Large Marge PSA for the week: WTF? With the Prolific Use of “Reply-All” in E-mail? Is this the only button displayed in your inbox? Is this button the Death Star, sucking your Millenium Falcon of a hand into the bowels of its Dark Side? Does your Reply-All button appear as an image of Johnny Depp in jeans from the movie “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?” and thus you just can’t take your eyes (or hand) off of it? If so, then you’re excused from my ensuing tirade. If not, take a note.

You see, I think there are times when replying to everyone copied on an e-mail is necessary, like at work, when you are trying to CYA and want folks to know that, in fact, it wasn’t you who overlooked a mistake in the title of a very important file, and everyone in the health care sector now wards off eating chicken of any sort for the following reason: “Salmonella: A Pubic Health Scare.” Yeah, cover your ass, on that one, I say, and reply all to everyone. But is it necessary to do in a social setting? Is it necessary to do when there are 30 folks in the cc line, particularly when most of those people don’t even respond, don’t even care, and are sitting at work having just created a pubic health scare and therefore really can’t be bothered to read every response in an e-mail chain? And what happened to the “Reply” button? Is it now just the poor, forgotten stepsister of Look What Reply-All Can Do to My Ego? Apparently so.

I think we all need to be a lot more thoughtful about pulling the trigger on this button. Every e-mail in my inbox equates to time in my life—some of which can be time well spent, I will admit. But having to sift through someone’s intellectual thoughts on the subject of plastic versus paper plates at an upcoming pig-pickin’—that I’m not even attending—just makes me nauseous. It’s like receiving one of those catalogs in the mail that sells the in-car urinator for women. I’m not sure how that device works, but I sure as hell don’t want to know and I sure as hell don’t want to receive some catalog that gives me EIGHT DIFFERENT OPTIONS for how I want to pee with my pants on. I mean, hello, have you ever heard of stopping the car and squatting in the woods or—how did I come up with this?—McDonald’s (because that really is all that the Yellow Double Arches should be good for in anyone’s life). So every time you hit Reply-All, imagine receiving one of those catalogs in the mail. And the next time you start abusing your privileges of Reply-All, don’t be surprised if you get a reply-all message from me that reads something like this: “Hi folks! Just peed with my pants on using an in-car hand-held urinal. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help with constipation, so I’m going to head out to the Harris Teeter now to buy that enema.”  

I bet that will break your Reply-All habit right then and there.

A Week in the Life of a Lady Cyclist

Let me preface: I appreciate the Man Cyclists of the world, particularly the ones who commute to work. They are doing great things for our planet, but they don’t always do great things for their fellow Lady Cyclists. Two examples from the week.

On Tuesday, I was going up hill at my generally slow pace when Man Cyclist of the Week Exhibit A speeds by me. Fine. Whatever. It looks like you’re out for Ego Enlargement only because no one on their way to work wants to go that fast to get there. So at the top of the hill is a stoplight notorious for never being green when it knows I’m near. I encounter Exhibit A stopped at the curb several feet before the light, taking a swig of some energy-boosting liquid consumable. I pedal around and then take my normal spot at the intersection while waiting for the light to change. Two seconds after it turns green, Exhibit A flies by me like he just stumbled into a nest of fire ants that had breached the elastic security of his tighty-whiteys and he is trying desperately to escape. I’m subsequently left there in his wake, wondering why the hell he couldn’t have stopped to take a drink of his water at the light so that he only needed to pass me once.

And therein lies one of the most prevalent characteristics of the Man Cyclist: they want to pass you as many times as possible, as fast as possible, and they want you to feel it because if they think you feel it, then their ego feels it. And some of them are so wrapped up in themselves, as I feel is the case with our Exhibit A, that they also want you to notice them in their spandex. As if it’s hard to overlook anyone in spandex. I think the mere fact that I had the opportunity—twice—to check out his ass made this guy’s day. Or wait…maybe he actually wanted to check out my ass twice. (And as much as that should dehumanize me, I’m not going to let it. Hey, if it still turns heads at 30, then I’m pretty damn thankful.)

Moving on to Exhibit B: the fatherly figure. Today I was passed by a non-spandex-wearing Man Cyclist on the way home from work. I caught up with him at a red light where we exchanged pleasantries and he then asked me how frequently I commute on my bicycle. I knew what he was looking for: he was looking for a novice, someone on whom to unload his 50 years of accumulated cycling advice—you know, because he’s been doing this since he was 2 and it was through the snow and he had to climb 1,000 feet in elevation just to get to school. So when I said, “I ride every day,” he had no room to talk because he didn’t ride every day. However, rather than sulking along down the road, he said that was fantastic and told me to keep up the good work. I beamed inside and out: this man recognized that I cycle more for Mother Earth than anything else, and this is something I want people to know so that maybe they too will take up their spandex and come along for the ride. But then Exhibit B made a grave error: as he pedaled ahead to the physical distance known as “Last Word in the Conversation, You Lose,” he shouted, “I would recommend getting a blinky light or rear reflector.”

He couldn’t resist, could he? He just had to patronize me somehow, so he decided to pick on Miss Betty Blue, which is a grand offense in my book because she is My Girl and she takes care of me day in and day out, and Exhibit B’s words were almost as bad as saying something about my mama, and had he been within earshot, I might have said someone about his mama.

But I’m just going to have to let this one go because had Exhibit B actually paid any attention, he would have noticed Miss Betty’s red rear reflector, which at dusk, dawn, and during the night blinks a nice bright red so that all the world can clearly see where my ass is going.