The Lesson

“I’ve been learning to drive my whole life.” – Arcade Fire, “In the Back Seat”

I want to obtain a driver’s license before my five-hour class expires for a third time and, since I haven’t practiced the art of driving a vehicle in several months, I set out to find a superior driving instructor. All of the driving schools back home charged $90-120 a lesson, but here I can get a lesson for $50-60. And how many lessons can I possibly need? I’ve been practicing since I was seventeen years old and sometimes I can even parallel park.

I set an appointment at eight in the morning on a Wednesday to ensure that the lesson would not conflict with my work. At six in the morning I dragged myself out of bed, got ready for work, and went outside clad in an over-sized polo and nametag to meet my instructor.

Unless my instructor was a fourteen-year-old boy in a backpack, a middle-aged man with a lawnmower, or a sentient parked vehicle eager to impart its wisdom, there was no driving instructor to be seen. I checked the mail. I gazed into the eyes of the figure of a plastic owl in a nearby tree. I waited. No instructor.

I went back inside and tried to call the driving school to no avail. It seemed safe to assume that there would be no driving lesson and I was free to waste the next hour per usual. I checked my e-mail. I ate a bowl of delicious lentils. I read a passage of Lolita.

Suddenly the phone rang. I picked it up.

“Hi, Brittany? I’m outside of the country club but I can’t seem to find your house.”

It was the instructor. From this first sentence, I believed she might be more neurotic than I am. I wondered if she was like that all the time or only when losing a potential customer.

“I don’t think I live near a country club,” I explained. “I’m near a cluster of Chinese take-out restaurants.”

“Oh, I don’t know where that is. I looked your address up on MapQuest and I just can’t seem to find your house, but I’m really close.”

“You used MapQuest? Actually, I have to leave for work really soon. It’s been forty minutes and I assumed you weren’t coming…”

“No, I’m coming! I’m really close now,” she said.

“I work at nine-thirty…”

“Well, maybe we could go for a half hour?”

I considered.

“Would a shorter lesson cost less than an hour?”

“Oh, yeah, you only pay for how much time we drive. So we’ll just go for forty minutes and I’ll drop you off at wherever you work.”

“I think I’d rather just reschedule.”

“But I’m so close!”

And then the call dropped. Now I’m reconsidering whether I want to reschedule my lesson with this instructor. The last thing I need is another neurotic person in the car. And do I really want to take lessons from someone who talks on their cell phone while driving? Reflecting on this morning, I'm rather happy that I didn't spend the fifty dollars.

Tales from the Leaky Basement

I dreamed that I was in my kitchen and I found a crustacean with an elaborate shell tapping its fingers against the floor. I picked it up by the shell and entertained thoughts of eating it with a hot, buttery sauce and using its elaborate shell to listen to the ocean. Then I heard a sound like a fountain trickling water and wondered if the rest of the ocean was coming with the crab.

When I awoke, I was still in my apartment, cocooned in a duvet and clad in squirrel pajamas. I leaped out of bed in a frenzy, wondering if the source of the trickle was the leak over the window in the living room or the leak over the porthole in the kitchen. It seemed that I had not dreamed up the trickling after all. A cascade of water was streaming from the frame in between our kitchen and living room area, forming a little lake of water that was stretching its arms towards Dave's desktop computer.

I laid out a huge towel and made a run for the landlords upstairs. Olive made a dash for the door, too. She probably was attempting to swim for dry land. 

I burst through the door and cried, "Is your toilet overflowing again!?!"

This actually happened months ago and produced a rather surreal rain shower indoors.

The person who opened the door upstairs did not live there and didn't know the protocol for the leaky basement. She tried waking everyone else up to no avail and then called the handyman, who was an hour or so away.

I returned to the basement, assured that someone would be down to look at it in an hour. The leak had stopped spewing and the towel was soggy from end to end. Olive tried to dash outside again, ready to brave the floods. At this point, I think just about every segment of ceiling in our kitchen has erupted with a leak at some point. Surely this apartment is for the fishes.

You Can Count on Me

A snowy-haired father is dying in his bed, surrounded by three sons. There are cats walking on the headboard, on the dressers, on the carpet. The father coughs and waves over his eldest son.

ELDEST SON: What is it, father?

FATHER: I have something for you…

The father extends his closed hand and the oldest son puts his hand out tentatively.

ELDEST SON: What… is it?

FATHER: It’s a Petco savings card. Don’t lose it. The cats are your responsibility now…

The oldest son takes the savings card.

FATHER: Buy the Science Diet. It’s still on sale….

The father dies. The eldest son clutches the savings card to his heart with a dutiful expression.

ELDEST SON: I love you, Dad.

Fade to black. On the screen, the following appears:

Petco. It’s what your father would want.

Let's Learn Spanish

I want to live in the world of virtual language learning software – a Garden of Eden full of Spanish-speaking families, running horses, and women eating rice. Some of them live in apartments; some of them live in houses. Some of them live near the street and some of them live far from the street. They are all happy, regardless. They play a lot of soccer with children and go bowling with their families. There is no friendlier sub-species of Homo sapiens than the people who populate the world of language learning software. A man can simply walk up to another man who is sitting on the hood of his Cadillac and say, “Hola. You are a man.”

Thirsty people of all ages, races, and nationalities sit around the dining room table together, thoroughly enjoying tall glasses of milk. They relish in each other’s company so much that they laugh in every frame. And let’s not forget the rice. People in language learning software love rice. Nothing gets their horses running quite like it. Bowls of white rice consumed with dexterously maneuvered wooden chopsticks are the social lubricant of their utopia.

If you ran into a man and woman sitting on logs at a camp in the woods – a common occurrence in the world of language learning software – you would casually join them upon that log. They would introduce themselves and tell you they are from Italy. They would give you water. They would give you a bowl of rice. They would take you back to civilization on horseback and many old men on the street would stop and pet that horse and say with great satisfaction, “This is a horse. I am a man” The couple from the woods would introduce you to everyone they know. “This is my mother. This is my sister. This is a police man. This is a Russian. This is a baby.”

You would struggle to figure out what ending you’re supposed to use to address someone new when you say, “Enchanted to meet you.” You would regret leaving your Rosetta Stone lessons to gather cobwebs for five months and mix up the verbs for eating and running. You gloomily recognize that you still can’t make that double-L sound as impeccably as the charming Spanish man who does the voice-over.

But you know it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, you know all of the Spanish you need to thrive in the world of virtual language learning software. The man, the woman, the Russian, and the grandmother will still be smiling when you use the wrong verb tense. If they are aware that you’ve made a mistake at all, they don’t have the words to express it anyways. The world of language learning software is a far simpler one than ours.

Confessions of a Fire-Breathing Brontosaurus

I used to be obsessed with hot wings. I would order them at the highest level of spiciness offered in a restaurant, usually extra spicy with fire sauce, a side of death, and a stack of napkins to cry into. The waiters always raised their eyebrows and asked me if I knew how powerful extra hot really was, to which I would arrogantly respond, “I think I can handle it.” My personal chicken wing philosophy at the time: If it doesn’t make you cry, it’s not worth it.

In high school, one of those school magazines that recognize precocious young artists printed a poem I wrote, a passionate sonnet to the chicken wing called “Chicken’s Kiss.” My passion wasn't limited to tasty birds, however. I had an impressive assortment of hot sauces lined up in my refrigerator, like Dinosaur Duels the Devil hot sauce. The label depicted a fire-breathing brontosaurus sword fighting Satan. Sometimes I dribbled hot sauce on a bowl of ice cream because I liked to eat my pain for dessert.

In college, I stopped eating meat. Hot wings were removed from the dietary equation, but my cravings for foods that burn only multiplied. I couldn’t even take a whiff of the dining hall air on Wacky Wing Wednesday without my mouth watering. I flipped open a Thai food takeout menu searching for answers and discovered drunken noodles, a sort of string bean and bell pepper stir fry with a spicy sauce speckled with Thai chilies.

Every Thai restaurant menu has a spiciness scale of one to five chilies, with one chili representing mildly spicy (or American spicy, as Thai folks surely call it) and five chilies indicating Thai spicy. One might notice, scanning through a menu, that there are no more than two chilies in a row beside the titles of spicy dishes. Sure, two chilies on the scale of one to five (Mexican spicy?) is pretty hot, but it seemed important to experience the particular burn of five chilies for myself.

The Thai food restaurant in the area where I grew up used to employ a totally Thai staff. Smiling Thai women in traditional Thai garb used to pour our Thai tea and bring us complementary Thai soup. Then all of the Thai ladies were slowly replaced with white guys in button-up shirts. One day, while out to lunch with Dave, I asked one of the waiters if I could have the drunken noodles at the highest level of spiciness.

“Are you sure?” he asked wryly. “That’s really hot.” I assured him that I could handle it.

When my meal arrived, I ate half of the plate with my eyes streaming and lips burning. I must have downed five or six glasses of water. It was glorious.

“I hope you’re enjoying that,” Dave said, watching me sob into my napkin.

Homemade salsa became another source of spicy indulgence. My brother and I would stay up late chopping up tomatoes from the garden and variety boxes of hot pepper from the farmer’s market. The first time I cut a jalapeno, I ingeniously used my bare hands. The acid got under my fingernails, singed my skin, and sizzled into the wee hours of the morning.

Following advice from a forum I found from a Google search, I soaked my hands in straight-up white vinegar, scrubbed them with dish soap in the hottest water my hands could stand, and washed them in ketchup. In the end, I drifted into an uneasy sleep in bed with plastic baggies full of ketchup tied over my hands.

It’s funny to think that a jalapeno, barely spicy enough to tickle my taste buds, could cause so much agony on my skin and I can only imagine what hot peppers do to my internal organs. Why do I eat these things and why do I enjoy them? There certainly is a hint of masochism to adoring spicy food.

Last night, Dave refilled our jars of curry and red pepper flakes while I did the dishes. He peered into the enormous bag of red pepper flakes and took a sniff.

“Red pepper smells really weird,” he said. He brought the bag to me. “Smell this.”

Dave accidentally squeezed the bag and a red pepper flake popped into my eyeball. It felt like fire under my eyelid. Wailing, I ran to the bathroom and doused my eye with cold water to get the pepper flake out, but the burning sensation lingered. Once my eye cooled down enough for me to see, Dave consulted the internet, finding amusing anecdotes about people burning themselves with hot peppers and how to keep cats out of your garden with a barrier of red pepper flakes. The burning stopped before “how to get red pepper flakes out of my girlfriend’s eye” turned up with any useful answers.

Somehow, after all of this, I’m not in the least put off by hot peppers. I’m am no less interested in a plate of Thai food or a salsa that needs to be chased with twenty gallons of cold water. Recently, I read in a nutrition book that cold-blooded, reptilian monsters like me crave spicy food to warm our bodies and increase circulation to our extremities, which explains a lot. But it doesn't explain why I’m drawn to food that makes me cry.

You Mean Business

I'm judging you.

If you’re like me, you’re a neurotic woman who spends several days before a job interview anxiously clicking through dozens of contradicting videos on Youtube about how to dress for a job interview. Look no further, for I will summarize it all for you here.

BUY A SUIT

She's doing it all wrong. WHERE ARE THE PINSTRIPES?

First, you will need to buy an expensive, black, pinstriped suit. Pinstripes trigger psychological impulses in your brain that make you more ambitious. Get that suit professionally tailored by a seamstress because you mean business. The suit should have a skirt because you’re a woman, unless you’re a woman who would prefer to wear pants. A dress would be even more formal, and therefore better, because it shows that your dressing for the job you want.

Wear a plain white button-up shirt underneath the suit, because anything else might be considered a brazen display of personality. And save the cleavage for the club, skankmuffin! When the interviewer is yawning under a flickering desk lamp of despair at two in the morning deciding whether or not to employ you, you want her to imagine you as a blurry, floating head and not the girl who wore a pink shirt. Remember, this isn’t Legally Blonde. This is your dismal life.

DON'T LET THIS BE YOU!

And whatever you do, don’t show up in nicer clothes than the person who is interviewing you. If you find that your interviewer enters the room a frumpy expensive suit, quickly saw a run in your pantyhose with a Swiss army knife and deposit your accessories into a nearby potted plant before she imagines that you think you’re better than her. Turn that ambition down a notch, tiger!

WEAR BORING SHOES

You should wear high heels – but not the same ones you wear to the Jersey Shore, silly! They should be plain, professional, black heels. You should definitely wear panty hose under those heels, but keep in mind that this will only impress old people. If your interviewer is under the age of thirty-two, she will cross you off of her list as soon as she sees your panty hose and begin composing a saccharine rejection email while you explain why you’re leaving your current position. And while you are sobbing next to the silent phone a week later, your interviewer will be at that the office making fun you with the free-legger she hired instead. They will all judge you.

ACCESSORIZE

Wear accessories! Show your personality! Woo! But keep in mind that your accessories will be judged mercilessly. Stick to chunky bracelets. No one is ever offended by chunky bracelets.

I hate chunky bracelets. I stopped listening to you fifteen minutes ago.

HATS

No.

LEAVE THE PURSE AT HOME

Remember, a purse is just one more thing that an interviewer can make subjective judgments about. Do you think you should bring the big ol’ hobo bag with your entire life in it? An interviewer might assume that you’re a kleptomaniac who casually shoplifted a purse full of bat-wing tops from the Forever 21 on your way to the office. Do you think you should carry in a little clutch containing your keys and cell phone? The interviewer will probably assume that you wore it to a high school dance and couldn’t be bothered to procure a purse that is appropriate for a job interview. How will you know if your purse is job interview-approved? Condoleeza Rice will come to you in a dream and deliver you a plate of homemade fudge. If this has never happened to you, you do not have the right purse.

But how do you carry your keys without a purse? Swallow them and regurgitate them after the interview. You know, like a fugitive! You can have the festering stomach lesions stitched up once you have a job with healthcare benefits.

HOW TO CARRY YOUR RESUME

Some people think they need a large purse to carry their resume. Instead, carry your resume in a briefcase. But keep in mind that a briefcase is just one more thing that an interviewer can make subjective judgments about. You can carry the resume in your hand.

IT’S RAINING

If it’s raining, don’t go to the interview. Rain makes interviewers irritable, so they probably won’t hire you unless they decide that you’re even more dedicated for coming in during a downpour. No, you can’t wear galoshes. Still carry your resume in your hand because if you really want that job, then the force of your tremendous will and ambition will be enough to keep it crisp and dry.

You're resume may be dry, but that's still a pink shirt.

YOU’RE SICK

Don’t go to a job interview sick. Coughing up blood will make your interviewers irritable, so they probably won’t hire you unless they decide that you’re even more dedicated for exposing the entire office to tuberculosis. You could cancel, but keep in mind that they probably won’t reschedule. You didn’t really want to write television advertising copy directed towards children anyways, did you?

We learned something important today.

Like a Cat in Heat

Yesterday the vet removed Olive’s reproductive organs. It was for the best. If the vet hadn’t done it, I surely would have done it myself. Dave and I left her in the animal hospital overnight and sensed her absence when there was suddenly no cat to play fetch with or to urge us to produce Feline Greenies from the top bookshelf with persuasive high-pitched mews. I felt listless at home, stuffing my mouth with kalamata olives and marveling at the significance of my subconscious choice of soul food. Olive.

If only there had been another way!

The night before Valentine’s Day I sleepily spooned my cat for hours, waiting to be magically instilled with the desire to write about IV technicians. It never happened. Shortly after Olive pried herself away from the spoon-fest, she began mewing and crouching low to the floor, pattering around like an alligator with a toothache. I panicked, determining that she had some sort of bladder infection or feline meningitis and wondering what kind of animal hospital was open at eleven at night.

Ever the voice of reason, Dave insisted that the body language was speaking loud and clear: Take me. Olive started rolling sensuously with a come-hither glint in her eye. Perhaps Dave is right, thought I. My cat is just trying to seduce me. My concern melted into amusement, because there is something inherently funny about a horny cat.

Dave suggested that the dashing asthmatic tom with whom she had spent the weekend carousing might have released this hormonal kraken. I supposed that a pleasant treat-filled encounter with my friend Abbey had triggered her kitty-puberty. The vet informed us that it was, in fact, the spring-like weather transmitting high-frequency make-a-kitten waves to Olive’s pituitary gland.

Yes, those are the exact words that he used. I imagine it was the same exact weather triggers that caused everyone in my town to get pregnant at the same time. Pregnant with kittens, no less.

Once the hilarity of Olive’s hormonal surge wore off, it became rather annoying. Olive was deeply worried that her demand for tomcat penetration was not blatant enough with mere bottom-lifting and sumptuous rolling. She chose the kitchen table as the stage for her cat-calling because there are so many fertile male cats on our kitchen table. Olive made a point to rub her horny cat face against the bananas and the tea cups and the salt shaker.

I removed her from the table once every fifteen seconds. It took much vigorous scrubbing to remove the cat pheromones from the bananas. This all happened while I was still trying to write about IV technicians, to no avail. Frustrated and unproductive, I wished that Olive would repress her sexuality for even just one hour.

During lunch the next day I placed a freshly assembled salad of baby romaine lettuce on the table and left it alone for a few seconds. As soon as I turned around she was on the table, caressing the lettuce with her face – sensuously. I removed the top layer of lust-lettuce before eating it.

Olive tried to push a glass off of the counter with tender caresses from her face. She reasoned that if she broke something, I would get fed up and inseminate her. She planted herself on the stovetop, confident that I would get distracted from my pot of soup and fill her with one thousand kittens. I discovered a great trick to make Olive forget that she wants to make babies with me: When Olive starts putting on the moves, I throw her a jingly ball or a hair-tie. Her other strong feline instincts take the helm and guide her in the direction of that compelling ringing noise.

The third day we felt certain that she was no longer in heat. Dave left for work with little unwanted attention from a certain lust-filled feline. Shortly after, Olive was presenting herself on the desk before me. During the subsequent days, she waited until Dave left for work to commence sexy-time. It seemed that Olive had narrowed her list of potential mates down to me and for some reason I didn’t feel very flattered. Fix the cat, fix the problem, I grumbled at the blank page titled “IV Technicians.” Dave called the vet to plan a hasty hysterectomy and we had to wait a week to wedge her in the horny cat queue.

Now Olive is back at home, lounging luxuriously on her blue pillow and licking her sutured wound, slathering it in naturally occurring painkillers from the feline opiate-gland. We have to swab her belly with hydrogen peroxide twice a day to keep the surgical area as sterile as she is. The wound on her freshly-shaven Franken-belly is gruesome, to say the least. It looks like a preteen attempted to turn her abdomen into a stylish drawstring pouch and used a contrasting color of thread just to be a rebel.

Olive stiffly saunters around the apartment, mostly avoiding high places that used to fill her with lust, like the stovetop and the kitchen table. She looks skinnier now, short one sizable organ. Sometimes I wonder if she feels its absence, or if she only knows that she has a mysterious, throbbing belly-wound. Perhaps she even suffers from phantom uterus and feels imagined phantom kittens growing within it. I like to think that she forgot she ever had a uterus in the first place.

You know what? I love my sterile cat.