On Having an Accident

I apologized to my professor for being late to class last night. Told him I had gotten sick, had to go home and change my outfit before I came back to class.

Well. That was kinda true.

***

Where were you at 7p.m. last night? I know where I was. I was just circling Central Square, right on time to find prime parking for my 7:30p.m. class, when suddenly, I felt some great discomfort running from my pelvis to my chest. I began to feel overheated and a bit bloated, so I adjusted my seat, unclicked my seatbelt. The discomfort worsened. It felt as though my baby was trying to blow a giant fart inside of me.

The situation was bleak. Where to pull over at Central Square? Where to find a public restroom?

I tried to burp. I tried to toot. The pressure was mounting. I heard a gurgling noise in my chest. The baby started doing Saturday Night Fever. I felt as though I was the pilot in that first scene in Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. What if I lost control of the wheel? What if my appendix burst, right here, in Central Square, where the looney per capita is, like, 3 to 1?

I finally tried the only thing that I thought might spell R-E-L-I-E-F and it wasn't Rolaids.

***

I called Lovey. "I'm coming home. I had an accident. Just calling to tell you so that you know why I don't talk to you when I get in the door."

"Poop or Pee?" he asked, because it must have been important in his brain to know this.

"Both," I said.

***

Driving home, I saw all of the teenage punks dressed up, making their trick-or-treating rounds, and I questioned for a half-second asking one of them to trade outfits so that I could go back to class.

***

There were so many cops swirling around Dorchester, keeping the streets safe on Halloween. I drove extra careful, even though I was trying to speed to get home and change. What if one of them pulled me over, I thought. "I'm sorry, Officer, but I'm 7 months pregnant and I just crapped my pants. Maybe you can let me off easy this time?"

***

At 7:30p, I reached home, showered down, ran out again and was back in class by 8p.m. just in time to talk about James Frey.

Inn Love

Dear Tori,

Girl, you know I've always been a fan. Way back when you were the above-average blond on 90210 with the beguiling eyes. My sister TP and I would take turns being the Look Out Girl in my parents' bedroom, since we were sheltered and therefore forbidden from watching mature programming such as your father produced. We had to keep an alternating eye out for the impending wrath of Mama Red. But it was worth it, because your outfits were cutting edge and cute, and occasionally, you would say especially profound things like, "If I had a swimming pool, and even though I put a fence around it, I'd still want to teach my kids to swim." You were referencing sex ed/safe sex at the time, which, of course you remember, but it kinda stuck with me, you know?

I'm still a fan, but I've got some constructive criticism for you. Now, first, girl, I know it's been a tough year with your father passing, and what with your not getting a proper good-bye with A-Spell. But I tuned in last night to "Inn Love," (thank you Comcast OnDemand, you're Comcastic) and, girl, I just don't think you were properly representin'.

I've still got to give you props for your adorable outfits. Even when you go to cradle roll with your 2 month-old son Liam of the perfect head. Your outfit is tres adorable, ma belle. Pigtails and pink flip-flops included.

It's just that I think the inner blond is shining through a bit too brightly. You're a little too Ugly American when you and your Scotsman hubs visit his mother land and you leave the B&B after "explosive diarrhea" and don't bother to alert the innkeeper that you weren't able to flush.

And when you brag about your stroller to all the other moms at cradle roll? Particularly noting the nice Paparazzi-proof feature? It's kind of ironic. Because, girl, you're on a reality show. If you're that concerned about protecting Wee Liam from the public eye, then perhaps this is not the year to invite rolling cameras into your love shack, n'ah mean?

I'm sure I'll continue to catch scant episodes via OnDemand to see how your own B&B, Chateau La Rue is doing, and to see how your wardrobe is unfolding, but in the meantime, one American girl to another, I'd try to project a little more of the astute Donna Martin and a little less NoTORIous, ya heard?

Ghetto Fabulous

Lovey Loverpants does most of the grocery shopping for the household, largely because he has sonic fruit-selecting abilities that I do not possess. If I am really honest about why I do not do most of the grocery shopping for the household, though, it is because I am not a proficient ghetto shopper; I am not conditioned for shopping in the ghetto. Now, I take care in using the word ghetto. And let me explain the implications of "ghetto" when I use it.

Ghetto, originally, from what I understand, just referred to a particular neighborhood where a particular ethnic or religious group settled. Greek Orthodox ghetto over yonder, Jewish ghetto just around the bend.

So when did ghetto become a derogatory? I knoweth not, historians, but I suspect it was somewhere around the time when the middle class began to dissolve in this country, when the chasm between upper and lower class widened, and the bridge between Brand Name Orange Juices and Generic Orange-Aid stretched much further than it had before. And suddenly, the kind of juice you buy manifests just exactly on which side of the tracks you live.

So to say that I shop in the ghetto is to say that I patronize businesses in a lower-income neighborhood. Sure.

But ghetto, in my mind, also refers to an attitude. Being "ghetto" is to be gritty, is to be not-to-proud, is to be unafraid to be loud. When I go grocery shopping in the ghetto, the experience is very sensual. Children scream and bash into my cart. At 10p.m. People smell odorous. People audibly express distaste for nasty looking foods.

And I? Am a little fawn in the forest who lost her mother.

I am not a snob. I am just ill-prepared to contend with the loud, the smelly, the all-up-in-my-grille when I am just trying to get some pita and hummus and soy milk and organic bananas for the week, for the love of my blessed little rations! I am so white for saying this, I know, but I just cannot be bothered, is all, and therefore I cannot appreciate the colorful, cacophonous experience of ghetto grocery shopping because I am five months pregnant and doggy-dog tired and I just want to get outta theya.

And for thinking those thoughts, I have been punished.

Last Saturday night, I headed to ghetto plaza. And, as five months pregnant had me, I decided I would get my exercise by parking in the most remote pocket of the parking lot. It was so remote, there were aboriginal tribes living there, who had never seen themselves in a mirror before, and had never heard of Netflix. I flitted from one store to the next, reserving my grocery shopping for last since I'd be hauling two big cartons of ice cream home.

Because the ghetto plaza is smart, ghetto plaza knows that its patrons will steal shopping carts. Therefore, the infrastructure of the ghetto shopping plaza's parking lot has cart-guards. That is, if you've stupidly parked in a remote corner of the parking lot, far far far from the grocery store whose cart you are using to transport your groceries, you will encounter a problem. Your cart will stop, abruptly, just as it passes over the invisible fence barring the cart from moving any further.

I glimpse my car, still parked in the remote part of the parking lot, forlorn and far far far away. Because I am in the ghetto, I do not have the option of leaving my cart where it is and to go run and fetch my car and bring it to the cart. Someone will pilfer my ice cream. And the rest of this bounty of groceries.

So I push. And then I pull. I am dragging a cart with no mobile wheels half-way across New England. And I am five months pregnant. And it is 10 p.m. at night in the ghetto shopping plaza. And people are pulling over to get a look at this crazy cracker who thinks she can outsmart the system.

Who's ghetto now?