Author: Suzanne Olsen Page 27 of 45

Horrorscopes

On April 24, 2010

I like to read my horoscope. It’s frustrating, though, because I want something specific. If I’m going on a trip, I want it to say, “You will have a safe trip and your luggage will arrive on time.” Usually all I get is some random words strung together that could mean anything at all.

Lately the horoscope person has taken to posting sage advice. Perhaps she moonlights as a writer of fortune cookies and confuse what she’s supposed to be doing. I’m getting advice like, “No one likes a stick in the mud. You must always allow a little wiggle room.”

What does this mean? That I should be more lenient with my kids? That I should not try to do everything perfectly? That I should go dancing?

Today I had a unique horoscope. It said that Saturn and Uranus are in a fight in the sky so I shouldn’t try to start anything for several days. Honest, that’s what it said.

First of all, you can’t think of the name of that particular little planet without laughing. And to think that it’s up there in the sky picking a fight with Saturn makes it all the more funnier.

Let me clarify this. My horoscope said they were at odds with each other. That’s the same thing as a fight, right? Are they getting in a shoving match? Are they calling each other names?

Uranus: “You’re just a big rock surrounded by a bunch of dirty rings.”

Saturn: “Well you’re such a little pebble they don’t even think you’re a real planet.”

Uranus: “Why are you such a jerk?”

Saturn: “You calling me a jerk? You’re the one who started it.”

Uranus: “Did not.”

Saturn: “Did too.”

Uranus: “Well, you are surrounded with dirty rings, so there.”

Saturn: “At least I’m not an asshole.”

Almost as amusing as these two squabbling is the statement that I’m not supposed to start ANY activity. Does that mean I should not shower, walk the dog, or go grocery shopping? Aren’t these all considered activities?

I’m going to cut this out of the paper and show it to my husband. “Look, I can’t do the laundry for several days. You’re on your own.” And, “don’t even think about waking me up at 2 am wanting some activity. You know what my horoscope said.”

Thinking of horoscopes makes me think about the mirror I broke two days ago. I’m supposed to have 7 years of bad luck. In an heroic effort to counteract that, I’ve avoided black cats and ladders. Plus I’ve picked up several filthy coins off the street.

I was at my daughter’s track meet this evening (she pole vaulted 9 feet!!!!), and a girl dropped some change on the bleachers. The bouncing coins made loud clanging noises that was music to my ears because I figured I’d redeem some of that seven years with a couple of lucky coins (“find a coin and pick it up and all the day you’ll have good luck”). I thought that girl wouldn’t bother picking them up because she was so embarrassed. But she soon recovered and said to her friends, “I’ve got to pick all of it up or I’ll have bad luck.”

So much for good luck for me. That darned mirror is probably why my planets are pulling each other’s hair and shooting spit wads at each other through space. And why I’ve got to avoid activity like shopping and getting a pedicure. It’s going to be a long seven years.

Happy Earth Day

By Suzanne Olsen

On April 22, 2010

In Weather

Today is Earth Day. I decided not to do laundry, run the vacuum, or wash dishes to save electricity. It was a sacrifice, but I figure if we all don’t do our part, we’re going to live in an ugly grey world pretty soon, and not because all the baby boomers are getting older.

I helped write a book about global warming (www.thebookfootprint.com). What I learned is that this is scary stuff. I would just as soon not know that humans are turning Mother Nature into a real bitch. She’s going to be hot and humorless and cut us all off out of spite. You know what they say about a woman scorned. It’s worse with a woman scorched.

Global warming isn’t such a hard principle to understand. If you’ve ever had a baby, my analogy is nothing like childbirth, although I have some good stories I’ll share one of these days. I’ve found that men especially love hearing about labor and delivery. No, I’m going to give you an analogy that will help you understand what climate change is all about.

New mothers worry that their babies will catch a cold, so they bundle them up from head to toe with little stretchy caps and booties and those one-piece things that don’t let a whisper of air in. Then they put them in a stroller padded with hot foam rubber. THEN they put a blanket over them.

I know this because it’s what I did with my son – my firstborn. He had awful colic and if I wanted even one second of peace from the screeching I’d have to walk him in the stroller. He’d either fall asleep or be entertained by the motion. Come rain, sleet, hell, or shine I’d walk him. If it was nippy, he got bundled up.

Once I remember bringing him in the house while he was asleep, and I was relishing the lack of screaming for a few minutes before he woke up. I can’t tell you how that child would bellow. Soon he woke up, and I took his hat off to discover that his head was soaking wet. Little rivers of water were running down, and his face was beet red. With all those layers of clothes, his body was reacting to the heat by trying to flood his head with cool water and turning his face red to let his stupid mother know she was roasting him.

That’s what global warming is like. CO2 wraps the earth in a layer of too many clothes and blankets. Mother Nature gets hot in there, and she starts to sweat. She’s sweating record hurricanes in New Orleans. This throws everything off kilter. Places that are usually hot get cold (record snows in Washington DC), and places that are wet get dry (Oregon has had more sunny weather this winter than I can ever remember). This is how Mother Nature is showing us that something’s wrong. If she had a face, it would be beet red like the baby’s, but since she doesn’t, she has to throw these weird weather events at us right and left. You can’t go a day without hearing someone say, “This is really crazy weather we’re having.” It’s Mother Nature trying to slap some sense into us.

As kids, most of us listened to our mothers because they protected us and fed us and we trusted them to do what was best for us. As we grew older, we started tuning our moms out. They nagged about the same old things and were so totally not with it. Then when we got even older, we started seeing that our moms had it pretty together and we should have listened to her.

Well, Mother Nature is talking to us big time, and we need to listen now. She’s saying, “Get out and walk instead of driving, turn off the boob tube, hang some laundry out and turn the heat down.”

There’s one thing I’ve learned. If you don’t make your mother happy, she will rain down a holy terror on you. We have to unite together as brothers and sisters to keep that from happening – and the sooner the better.

Today’s a good day to start.

Driving Me Crazy

By Suzanne Olsen

On April 21, 2010

In People

I don’t know what to think about drivers. I was taking someone home tonight and had to get back on the freeway. I’m rounding the curve on the entrance ramp, sandwiched between two other vehicles like we were boxcars in a train – all going equal speed.

Don’t worry, this isn’t an algebra problem (if three cars are on the freeway, and they’re all going the same speed, which car has a driver picking his nose, which driver had chili for lunch, and which one is illegally talking on her cell phone?) No, don’t you worry that I’m giving you a problem for you to solve, though I’ll give you a hint. The third driver rolls down the windows.

I might have written about drivers recently, though I’m pretty sure I was bitching about some other automobile behavior that annoys me. This is a vast and endless category for consternation.

So here we are swinging around that curve on the entrance ramp, and we get to the opening where we can actually get on the freeway. Wouldn’t you think that we would all merge gracefully like one synchronized unit onto the freeway? I would too. But the guy behind me whipped out of formation and buzzed up right beside me so I couldn’t get on the freeway. I had to either slow way down until he got past or do something else.

Granted, this guy may have been trying to get all the ventilation in the car he possibly could (see hint above), but what did he think I was going to do? Just drive in the grass when the ramp ran out? Was he in that big of a hurry?

I was miffed and annoyed. I yelled out, “What? You got a hemi in that Kia?” His windows were open but mine weren’t so I guess it didn’t do much good, but still it made me feel like I’d stood up to him, and I live for those moments.

After I finally got on the freeway, my nerves were shot, I was cruising toward the bridge that spans the mighty Willamette River (which is not pronounced Willa-met), when along comes a man walking toward me. Staggering really. I clutched my steering wheel like it was the armrests on an airplane getting ready to take off, hoping he wouldn’t stagger into my path. I would have nightmares the rest of my life if my car had gone “thump thump.”

I whished by him but in that glimpse I saw that he was a 40ish looking guy and a fine specimen at that. As I crossed the bridge I marveled that he’d walked all that way because he would have to come from the other side – there were no parked cars.

Once I walked across the Ross Island Bridge and it was terrifying. There isn’t much of a shoulder and the cars are just roaring. It’s deafening. Plus the bridge shakes up and down. That guy walking across the Markham Bridge tonight might not have been drunk after all – the wind from the semi’s could have been tossing him around. I wonder if semi’s have hemi’s?

Whiners Are Us

By Suzanne Olsen

On April 21, 2010

In Friends, Relationships

My husband is out of town and I was so looking forward to sprawling in that big bed without having a locomotive’s worth of snoring to listen to tonight, but I got a late night request to do some changes on a project and now it’s 1:20 am and all I can think about is whining.

Whining isn’t usually all that funny. I know some people can make it funny – wasn’t there a skit on Saturday Night Live with Doug and Wendy Whiner who had these nasal whines and dragged out their miseries in extended words that sounded like this? “Do-ug, whyyyy are you DO-ING tha-at? You KNOW it ma-akes me cra-a-a-a-a-azy.”

When I whine, people leave the room. I usually whine that I get no freaking help around the house. “Why do you people throw your coat in the floor day after day after day when you know good and well that I’m going to yell at you about it and that makes you mad so why do you do it?”

My kids whine constantly about the food for dinner. My husband is a gourmet cook, which to a kid is worse than feeding them dog food straight from the can. “What’s this? It’s gross? Are we supposed to eat that? I’m not eating it. I can’t even look at it.” They were describing yellow squash which they both loathe like a cow hates flies.

My friends whine to me. They call it venting, but when the vent’s always open and it’s always blowing hot air, it can get pretty annoying. In fact, I get sick and tired, just plain sick and tired of them spouting off about their spouses. The guys are idiots, I’ll concede that, but telling me what their newest outrage is, especially when it sounds pretty much like all the other outrages, gets old. I don’t need to know every single day that Bill was late for supper the night before and didn’t call so the food got cold and the kids were starving. Night after night this happens, and day after day I listen to it. Give it a freaking rest.

Did someone say rest? That sounds like a great idea – if I could only manage to GET some which I won’t be able to since it’s so late and I have to get up at the crack of da-awn.

Picture Imperfect

By Suzanne Olsen

On April 19, 2010

In Gadgets

I have been desperately seeking a point and shoot camera. The problem is, there are a million of them, and new ones spring up like popcorn every 30 seconds.

So much selection would seem to make it easy, and they all have a gazillion features, but not one of the camera companies combine them in the way I want.

When you go to websites like photographyblog.com, they start describing a camera as if it’s finally the answer to everyone’s prayers. “The long awaited Canon ST Two Million is packed with so many features you need a database to keep track of them all.”

This is good news, because in all those features, could it be they have the three or four I’m really interested in? I hold my breath and read further. “This camera can make your mother-in-law look like she’s human and fill in the missing teeth of your redneck friends.”

That’s something I’ve always needed in a camera, especially the filling in teeth, so I check that off my list. But what about the rest? “This camera has a built in hover system so you can set the timer, run over and join your family, get in the picture, and run back and catch it so you don’t have to worry about propping it up on a table and everyone having to be on their knees.”

Now THAT’S definitely a clever feature, and not one I’d thought of but I add it to my list because I now feel like I can’t live without it. But will the camera take a good picture? That’s high up on my list, right under “Will the camera break before the warranty runs out?”

Image quality is a tricky subject. It’s subjective, and there are many variables. Most cameras pitch a fit about being required to do something they don’t like. Yes, they’ll gladly take a nice picture on a sunny day, but if it gets cloudy they’ll coat the scene with a grayish tinge. Or they may not like it inside, so low light pictures have the people in the arc of the flash looking like surprised albinos while anyone a few feet back looks like they’ve been painted with roofing tar.

The sample images are not much help, either. If the scenes are picturesque, then any camera takes a good shot. It’s a little like going into Costco and all the big screen TVs are showing the same thing, and they pretty much look identical except for size. I recently bought a TV for my son and ended up picking one by saying, “Eanie, Meanie, Miney, Mo….”

What I’m looking for in a camera is manual controls so I can override the camera’s stupid Auto Mode on those occasions when it doesn’t know as much as I do, which granted is rare but still. I want a big enough screen so I can at least make out the big objects in the picture I just took without a magnifying glass. And I want it to not be so complicated I have to lug around a phone-book sized manual. If on top of that it takes good pictures, that would be a plus. Oh, and I want a super-zoom so I can take pictures of wildlife, but I don’t want one of those huge ones that’s the size of mailbox. I can see myself swinging one of those hunkers up to my eyeball to look through the viewfinder and knocking myself out cold.

I’ve narrowed my choice down to a Canon because you can practically have the DT’s with a Canon point and shoot and the picture will still come out in focus. The model I’ve been waiting for did not get a good review from photographyblog.com. Actually, it got a glowing review, but only a 4 star rating out of 5, which is hard to understand. It’s like a critic saying he loved a movie but only gave it a B rating.

I’m going to get the camera, though. I’m sick to death of looking, and I’m tired of lugging my Nikon dSLR around for snapshots. I don’t think I’ll have buyer’s remorse when another new model comes out in two days, because I’m certain it will not have all the feature I want either.

I will let you know how the camera turns out, and what model it is once I get it straight. It might be an SX 200 IS but could be an SX 210 IS, though I was also looking at an SX 120 IS. As if the camera features weren’t enough of a headache, they’ve got to make all the numbers the same, too? Jeepers!

Dog vs. Vacuum

By Suzanne Olsen

On April 18, 2010

In Pets

Yesterday was a gorgeous day so I decided to take my camera out and get some shots of spring flowers. I took my little Yorkie Poo along, and on the way to the park we passed a carwash, so I decided to give my car a bath.

My dog doesn’t like the carwash. She freaks out when the giant shammy cloth starts slapping against the car. I have to hold her and reassure her that the blue monsters are not going to get her, but she still shakes like a vibrator the whole time.

Yorkie Poos shake for any number of reasons. If they’re happy, they shake. If they’re nervous, they shake. My dog will shake if she needs to do #2 and no one’s jumping off the couch quick enough to suit her.

“Oh your poor little doggy must be cold,” people will say. It can be 90 degrees outside, but people see a vibrating dog and they think it’s shivering. Once my daughter’s friends were over and someone made a loud popping noise. Did I mention the dog shakes whenever anyone bounces a ball or pops a piece of bubble wrap or slams a door?

“Or your poor little doggy is scared,” one of the friends said, sounding like she was heartbroken. I wanted to cheer her up. “She shakes all the time. Do you have any aches and pains? I’ll press her against your back and you can get a free massage.” All the girls giggled about that, and I pressed my dog against one to show I was serious.

The dog shaking has nothing to do with the story I’m telling about the carwash, I just thought you might find it interesting.

So before I went through the wash I decided to vacuum the car. My dog is not nuts about vacuuming, either. At home she tries to bite the vacuum cleaner. You’d think she’d just go to another room, but instead she plops right in the middle of the rug and waits for the vacuum to come close. She stands her ground, and when it gets inches away she lunges at it, baring little teeth that look like rice stuck into bubble gum, and tries to bite it. Of course the vacuum is too big but that doesn’t stop her. She would rip the thing like Henry the VIII tearing at a turkey leg if her mouth was bigger.

At the car wash, they had a really nice vacuum hose with a wide, narrow end that you can get into tight places between the seats. I love those things. This baby knew how to suck, too. Pine needles held on like leeches but they were no match.

I was really getting into vacuuming the driver’s side floor while my dog was on the passenger seat eyeing the vacuum like it was some alien beast encroaching on her territory. When I went to vacuum the passenger side, she dove onto the floor and attacked the thing. Because the nozzle was narrow, she could get it in her mouth and she clamped down like an alligator. I tried to wrench it away but she held on like it was a juicy bone and wouldn’t let go. Meantime seconds were ticking away on the timer and I didn’t have any more quarters. I kept trying to wrestle it out of her mouth but she hung on like it was one of her tug of war rags. The vacuum was sucking up her ear but she didn’t care. All those years of attacking the giant vacuum at home and getting nowhere – she wasn’t about to let this thing get the best of her.

Desperate to finish before my time ran out, I forced the nozzle down onto the carpet and moved it back and forth, dragging the dog along, back and forth, back and forth, until I got the passenger floor done. I jerked the hose out of her mouth and was headed for the back seat when she pounced on it again, teeth bared like a piranha. I got her tucked under my arm and freed the vacuum again and lunged for the back seat. I worked like a dervish on those little back seat squares, trying to beat the timer. When I got done, the thing was still sucking so I let the dog have another go at it. She sprang forward like she’d been catapulted and clamped down, tugging with all nine pounds of her might. The motor gave four or five warning beeps and the vacuum stopped. The dog let go immediately. She’d killed it. I guess there’s no sport in gnawing a dead vacuum.

I checked the nozzle for damage and, I’m sad to say, there wasn’t even a scratch. The pitiful little dog chewed and tugged with all her might and didn’t even make a dent. But she didn’t know that. She thought she’d killed the hissing beast.

When we went through the carwash, little Miss Mighty Dog didn’t shake. Not even once.

Vows and Frogs

By Suzanne Olsen

On April 17, 2010

In Relationships

Tonight we went to a party at our neighbor’s house to celebrate their 25^th wedding anniversary. On the invitation, they asked people to dress like the wedding party – to come as a bride or groom or mother-in-law.

This kind of thing absolutely drives me insane. You never know if other people are going to do it or not. What if you’re the only one who shows up in a bride’s dress?

I decided I’d put an old bridesmaid’s dress to see if I had the guts to wear it. I was fixing my hair when my husband said, “What are you doing dressed in THAT??!! Actually I thought I looked rather fetching. I was proud I could even get into it, but that was because it was cut on the bias which means you could stick a hippo in there.

I looked out my bedroom window when I started hearing the guests driving up to see if any were dressed in costume. The men were coming in suits and bow ties, but the women were just in regular party dresses. I changed out of my pretty, shimmering floor length dress and put on something more practical.

When we got to the party, there were a few people dressed in bridesmaids dresses, a few men in tuxes, a man dressed like a priest, and a guy in judges robes who turned out to be a real judge. He told me he was ready to officiate in the event the celebrants wanted to officially renew their vows.

I don’t know about these vow renewals. If you make it 25 years, you’d think you’ve invested enough time that you’ might as well go the distance. On the other hand, I went to one of these ceremonies that was actually in a church because the young couple had run off to get married. A priest said a Mass, and then we enjoyed a lovely reception. Seven or eight years later they were divorced, and both have remarried.

I suspect people renew their vows as an excuse to have a party. These neighbors have quite a few of them – Christmas, birthday, summer parties. Why not throw in a wedding vow renewal?

The highlight of the night was walking outside where all the teenagers were hanging out around the frog pond. You can hear those frogs a block away. They’re so loud you’d think there’re millions of big frogs in that pond. The kids had flashlights, and I saw one little frog doing the – you guessed it – frog kick across the water. He wasn’t much longer than a golf pencil. Cute little thing glistening in the spotlight of the kid’s flashlight beam. The frogs weren’t shy. They were just sitting on rocks or swimming. One of the girls crouched down and caught one. It was little, curled up in her cupped hand and looked dark purple in the black night.

Not that the party wasn’t a whole ton of fun, but I listen to those frogs every night from spring through summer and I’ve never seen one. They’re funny the way they will all get immediately quiet at one time, and a couple of minutes later they start their froggy chorus like they’ve got a conductor keeping them in sync.

All in all it was a great party with a whole lot of very good food and a two tiered cake that melted in your mouth. The couple said some very touching things to each other during an informal re-affirming of their commitment, and there was plenty of wine. If I can have all that, AND FROGS, I won’t turn my nose up at the vow renewals we’re bound to be invited to in the future, as long as they don’t make us come in costume. Did I mention how much I hate that?

Email Plagiarism

By Suzanne Olsen

On April 16, 2010

In Computers

I got this email a while back and it’s funnier than anything I can come up with tonight. Is it plagiarism to copy emails? If it is, who’s going to sue me? No one knows who puts these emails together. I get whole slide shows of beautiful pictures with music that must have taken someone forever to do. Don’t people have to work? Perhaps this is how they pass the time while the boss is off at a meeting.

The original of this email had lots of different font styles and colors. Someone had put it together with a creative eye, and they had to gather these tidbits of humor – or did they make them up? How come they’ve got all this extra time and I’m lucky to get six hours of sleep a night I’m so swamped?

I get these well-crafted emails everyday. If you’re female, you probably receive those “sisterhood” emails – the ones with that cartoon lady, Maxine. I get a ton of those, and I have no idea who draws the cartoons or makes up the captions, or who gathers all those pictures of kittens in unnatural positions. I haven’t thought about it much but right now I’ve got a burning curiosity. What kind of people do these things? Would someone tell me? And they get no credit for them – there’s no signature or link to their website so you can purchase something.

I get a million pictures of animals doing things you don’t see in nature. Most of them have been Photoshopped. Dogs and cats don’t assume the missionary position while somebody is standing there holding a camera. I guess they could be animal porn stars. Some pictures are obviously real – the ones where a person with way too much time on their hands has made little outfits to dress up their dogs to like a devil or a Harley rider or Elvis. What I love is the look in the dogs’ eyes. They are not happy. They do not think they look cute.

The world is a crazy place, and that’s affirmed everyday in the emails I get – some from Nancy Pelosi-hating republicans who are trying to incite me to do something – anything – to put them out of their misery. They want me to AT LEAST forward their despair on to someone else so the recipient can be miserable, too. I hope these little tidbits will take you away from the craziness for a couple of minutes and brighten your day. The really crazy thing is – they’re true.

Mathematics & Arithmetic

Romance Mathematics

Smart man + smart woman = romance

Smart man + dumb woman = affair

Dumb man + smart woman = marriage

Dumb man + dumb woman = pregnancy

______________________________

OFFICE ARITHMETIC

Smart boss + smart employee = profit

Smart boss + dumb employee = production

Dumb boss + smart employee = promotion

Dumb boss + dumb employee = overtime

_____________________________

SHOPPING MATH

A man will pay $20 for a $10 item he needs.

A woman will pay $10 for a $20 item that she doesn’t need.

_____________________________

GENERAL EQUATIONS & STATISTICS

A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.

A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.

A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.

A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

_____________________________

HAPPINESS

To be happy with a man, you must understand him a lot and love him a little.

To be happy with a woman, you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.

______________________________

LONGEVITY

Married men live longer than single men do, but married men are a lot more willing to die.

______________________________

PROPENSITY TO CHANGE

A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn’t.

A man marries a woman expecting that she won’t change, and she does.

_____________________________

DISCUSSION TECHNIQUE

A woman has the last word in any argument.

Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

_____________________________

HOW TO STOP PEOPLE FROM BUGGING YOU ABOUT GETTING MARRIED

Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, “You’re next.” They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

Yearbook Quotes

By Suzanne Olsen

On April 15, 2010

In School

It’s that time of year when kids are getting their high school yearbooks. They go around and have their friends sign them. I like reading the comments.

We used to get these nice little notes from people saying what a nice person you were and how fun it was to have you in class. Of course people elaborated, but it was pretty standard unless you had done something memorable in which case there’d be an inside message like, “be sure to call me next time you want to lay on the runway,” referring to times we would sprawl on our backs and watch planes soar a few feet over our heads.

The comments in my daughter’s book are from girls just gushing with enthusiasm. “You ROCK girl! You are so sexy and funny. I hope you will be my bff!!!!!!!!!!!” In your head you can hear their breathless exclamations, and you roll your eyes.

Why the girls are telling their girlfriends they are sexy I haven’t quite figured out, unless that’s the new compliment, like we used to say, “You’re so cute!” to each other. Girls are definitely more sexy than cute these days – I was at the school tutoring today and saw shamelessly short shorts, strapless dresses, plunging tank tops. There’s no question these girls are sexy.

What I liked about my high school yearbook were the ads in the back. Nice businesses around town took out quarter or half page ads to help sponsor the school, and we paid absolutely no attention to them except if they could give us a chance to be creative. Everyone’s favorites were the funeral homes. Why funeral homes advertised in books being thumbed through by teenagers is beyond me, but I didn’t question their motives at the time. I was delighted because you’d give your yearbook to some guy and he’d open it straight to the funeral home and start writing little poems:

You kill ‘em

We chill’em.

You slice ‘em

We ice ‘em

You stab ‘em

We slab ‘em.

You break ‘em

We bake ‘em

You marry ‘em

We bury ‘em

You squeeze ‘em

We freeze ‘em

Good stuff. The other ad I can remember was some business with a picture of a big mousetrap. Apparently they were trying to show that their business was preferable to the competition. The caption read, “Build a Better Mouse Trap…” Vince Quinn got a hold of my yearbook and drew a large, belly-up rat with x’s for eyes with the caption, “Catch a Better Mouse.”

Ah, those were the good old days. There were other drawings and captions in there – anything at all that could be made naughty, funny, or trashy, the guys were all over it, and I loved seeing their creativity.

Kids today may use the f-word like it’s the only adjective in the English language, and they may be scantily clad, but they got nothin’ on us when we were that age. We had Hot Pants and Mini Skirts, after all. When we cussed, it meant something and sounded shocking. And, as demonstrated above, we were quite the poets back in the day.

Your f-word

Is simply absurd

We laid on runways

Those were the fun days

Greetings!

By Suzanne Olsen

On April 14, 2010

In Relationships

I have recently been intrigued by people’s greetings when you pass them on the street or in parks. I used to never know whether to say hello, look away, or what.

I didn’t like having to make this decision every time so I decided I’d say hello to everyone. Usually I say, “Lo.” This seems to be friendly enough without going overboard. I don’t want these strangers to think I’m flirting or being overly familiar by saying the entire Hello.

Once I consistently started saying a greeting, I found it interesting to see people’s responses. I’ve broken them down into a few types.

(1) The kid. These people have speaker buds in their ears and even if their iPod isn’t on, they pretend they can’t hear you. I suspect all teenagers have fake speaker buds to avoid talking to adults.

(2) The fast walker. This is usually a woman on a mission. She’s trying to get her workout done in record time. She’s in stretchy black pants and takes long strides, swinging her arms forward and back briskly to help propel her at optimal speed. If she responds at all it will be with a chopped off, “Hi!” as if anything more will slow her down.

(3) The guy with the little dog. This guy has a small, curly haired dog on a long leash that is lolly-gagging along, sniffing everything and then peeing on it. The dog pees a lot, too. This guy has got plenty of time to talk. He’ll respond by saying, “What kind of dog is that?” It’s his lead in to asking more questions and engaging you in a conversation. He doesn’t want to try and pick you up, he just wants to chitchat. He’s probably got a nagging wife at home that he’s trying to avoid.

(4) Two-somes. If it’s two women, they’ll ignore you because they’re engrossed in gossip. If it’s an older man and woman, they want to exchange pleasantries, probably because they’ve run out of things to say. Two men want to talk as well. When you say, “Lo,” they say, “Good day for a walk.” They are easily distracted from their conversations, if they were having one.

(5) The shy man. This guy will not make eye contact. He thinks a single woman in a park is out to lasso him, and he wants no part of it. He will not respond come hell or high water.

I used to get irritated when people didn’t respond to my greeting until I started classifying them. By doing this I can make them seem like misguided stereotypes rather than rude people or, worse still, people who aren’t so totally into me. Quite frankly, I now see that those who don’t respond are losers. As such, I’m more than happy when they don’t respond. Who wants a loser chatting you up in a park anyway. It’s creepy.