Archives for September 2006

Dr. Harvey Karp said in his book, The Happiest Toddler on the Block, that toddlers should be thought of as little cavemen. His website explains:

Cavemen were stubborn, opinionated, and not too verbal. They bit and spat when angry, were sloppy eaters, hated to wait in line, and were negative, tenacious, distractible, and impatient…sound familiar? (No wonder, the first chapter of THE HAPPIEST TODDLER is named “Help! There’s a Neanderthal in My Kitchen!”)

I always thought this was a funny comparison, until yesterday.

After completely trashing the living room during a tantrum, Cordy grabbed her Dora doll by the hair and dragged her away in a huff.

Suddenly, it all makes sense. She is a little cavewoman.

I guess I need to brush up on my caveman-to-English translation.

Ug.

A husband and wife are meeting in a restaurant to finalize the terms of their impending divorce. Write the scene from the point of view of a busboy snorting cocaine in the restroom.

I’m a busboy at La Snobberie. I don’t want to tell you the real name of the restaurant–for reasons you will soon find out. It’s a pretty good job—they’re willing to work around my class schedule.

I wish I didn’t have to work, but my mom thinks that I should Experience The Real World. Also, I need money for things that the ‘rents just won’t understand—blow. Yeah, yeah. I know. This is your brain on drugs, blah blah. I keep my grades up. Look me in the eye and tell me that YOU spent your college days studying the Bible and drinking herbal tea and I’ll just laugh.

So anyway, back to La Snobberie. Since I’m studying Psychology, I enjoy watching the people come into the restaurant and trying to figure out where they’re coming from. I have them divided into categories:

DATES: The girl always has perfect hair and runs to the bathroom every five minutes to spray some more gook on it or slap on another load of lipstick. The guy always thinks he looks great, but ½ the time I can tell from the look in his date’s eyes that he should have sent that shirt to Goodwill a long time ago. They both drink lots of wine.

MARRIEDS: Does everybody get tired of being married? It sure looks like it to me. Do married people ever actually TALK to each other? Most people don’t bring their kids to La Snobberie, but I go past the table and I hear things like Tonya’s SAT scores weren’t real good or Joey’s not behaving during Circle Time and I have to run to the head and snort just because I’m getting bored to tears just listening to them. Mom always whips out her cell phone and calls the sitter while Dad’s sitting there checking out all the cute young girls waiting tables.

But I want to tell you about the couple I saw in here the other night. Her name was Darling, I guess, because that’s all he called her. She didn’t call him that, though. I think she wanted to call him Asshole, but she called him Jason.

I heard him say “Sometimes old dreams turn into new dreams and all we can do is watch,” and I saw her nod politely and make stabbing motions under the table with an imaginary knife.

I heard her say, “don’t know how the house will sell in this market…” and “who will take the Citibank Visa..it’s mostly your golf stuff, you know!” and I realized that they were getting a divorce. That made me sad and I had to go snort some more blow. I saw that she was just about to break down and he looked sad but yet somehow strangely triumphant. It was plain that he had some new bimbo waiting in the wings.

“He’s taking it hard,” I heard Darling say. “He needs his father.”

Asshole, I mean Jason, arranged his face into a semblance of grief. “….be there for him…” I heard before I had to go clear another table.

….”years we spent together mean nothing?” I heard her say. God, it was frustrating! I wanted to just park my chair down next to them and pretend to be Dr. Phil and lay the smackdown on Asshole.

“…..always be very very special to me…” I overheard and touched the little happy stash in my pocket for comfort. I wished I had a real knife.

Look, I liked Darling and if my parents were any prediction of the future, Darling and Asshole were going to find that life after divorce was exactly the same as life before divorce—hard and lonely. They’d end up with other partners that gave them exactly the same amount of grief. God knows my stepmom is no angel, and now her dad has to go in a nursing home at like five thousand dollars a month. My mom’s dad is still healthy and even takes me fishing sometimes just like on the laxative commercials.

Darling’s phone rang. I liked her ring—it was “Sexual Healing.” Those old Motown tunes are pretty awesome, really, but don’t tell my friends I said so. Anyway, she apologized and left the table, and came back ten minutes later glowing all over.

…”just somebody I met on Match, we’ve had a few dates, that’s all..” I overheard her say with a big smile on her face. It was a smile of hope, and excitement, and anticipation. You could tell that she thought this one would be banging her night and day on alternate custody weekends. Doing her in the shower stall right next to the toy sailboats. Bending her over the easy chair that Asshole left behind because his new girlfriend wanted him to have fancier furniture. I was sort of enjoying the whole thing, too. I even mentally picked out a teddy for her—I thought black would look good with her red hair. They have some rad ones at Victoria’s Secret (My sister gets the catalog).

Well! You would have thought that somebody lit a fire under Asshole’s butt. By the end of the dinner they were holding hands and he was telling her that maybe they could park Taking It Hard And Needs A Father with his parents for a “rejuvenation weekend.”

I was so excited that I went to the bathroom and snorted a little more. Because even though I didn’t much like Asshole, it was clear he had something that Darling wanted. Maybe she didn’t want to stash the wedding pictures in the attic. Maybe she was remembering the day that Taking It Hard was born, or just needing and wanting the familiarity of an old love, one who knows you inside and out and still loves you in some weird way.

I was still taking it easy in the stall I saw some real flamer come in. He took a quick whiz and whipped out his cell phone.

“I think it worked,” I heard him say. “My! Playing Cupid is exhausting. Wanna meet me at Barnes and Noble for cheesecake?”

—————

Lorrie http://cluelessincarolina.blogspot.com is a southern belle from South Carolina who enjoys cursing, smoking, teaching college and raising her adopted Chinese daughters with her husband, who bears no resemblance to Jason, but several ex-boyfriends just might. She likes long walks on the beach and dining at expensive restaurants.

This post is part of the September Blog Exchange. This month’s exchange is a little different – we’re all writing short (fictional) stories based on the 13 Writing Prompts found at McSweeney’s. You can find me at Lorrie’s site today, and the full list of participants can be found by clicking here.