A Picture of You, In Uniform

The phone rings. I let go of my end and click on the receiver. It's Paulie Gonzalez asking if I remember where his tax forms went.

Tata: Sharkey's here.
Paulie: Oh yeah? What's he doing?
Tata: Standing in my bedroom holding a tape measure.
Paulie: Stuffing your pinata?
Tata: Measuring my windows for new shoes.
Paulie: Do you remember where you saw my W2s?
Tata: In the living room, with that highly flammable pile of 2005 receipts.
Paulie: I should turn them in, huh?
Tata: Or take up decoupage, you betcha.

Paulie's dad's moved into the one bedroom apartment with him. Paulie's thinking about buying a house because if he doesn't he's going to the Big House for tossing his dad into the Raritan.

Now, that's a fridge you'd clean with a chisel.

Sometimes when I watch TV, I recognize the conversation has taken a turn to the code-wordy. There's a Stanley Steemer commercial where the white lady in the white sweater talks about her almost-white carpet. She's gabbing and gabbing and then she says this weird thing: "When I called [someone else], I didn't know who was coming over." If you don't have the secret decoder ring I didn't know I didn't have, this phrase might mean she exchanges Christmas cards with every professional carpet cleaner in a ten-mile radius but sometimes they bring dates. I don't know what she's insinuating, but what she's saying sounds more like every carpet cleaning brings her a factory-fresh bunch of potential emergency organ donors.

There's a new Bally's commercial for month-to-month membership that tosses around the word commitment like signing a contract gives you herpes. I don't know what that means, since Bally wants you to pay them and break your commitments. But still pay them. When you break your commitments.

There's a whole series of diet code words I don't understand. There's one commercial for cortisol fighting snake oil that turns my brain on its z-axis. The spokeswoman says, "When is a diet pill worth $150 a bottle? When you've tried everything else and failed." I suspect this pill solves your weight problem by making you lightheaded when you open your credit card bill. There's also a bunch of really hinky-sounding ads for some vague get-rich-working-from-home scheme where those testifying say things like, "Last month, I made 75,000!" They do not mention money. I wonder if they're making 75,000 phone calls to ask Dad for ten bucks.

We are definitely standing at the corner of What? and WhatEVER!

Recently, I received a very strange phone call at work.

Tata: Ta speaking!
Nurse Addie: This is Nurse Addie from KGB Dental. Are you Tata?
Tata: I am.
Nurse Addie: Are you a patient of KGB Dental?
Tata: I am.
Nurse Addie: Are you a patient of Dr. Newsome's?
Tata: I am. Listen, we've met. You know me, Nurse Addie.
Nurse Addie: I see. You have an appointment with Dr. Newsome today?
Tata: I do. At 3:30.
Nurse Addie: No.
Tata: No?
Nurse Addie: No. Dr. Newsome no longer works for KGB Dental.
Tata: Get out! What happened?
Nurse Addie: (Squealing) I so don't know!
Tata: (Yodelling) Omigod, you so have to find out and tell me!
Nurse Addie: (Back to droning) You'll have to see the new orthodontist on the 16th. After we hire him.
Tata: NO!
Nurse Addie: Oh yeah.

Today, I met my new orthodontist, and he, poor soul, met me. He is less than thirty, and still has that dewy complexion that is the red flare signalling youth. He restrings rubber bands around my mouth. Though he's dressed as if I'm radioactive, I feel a little bad that it's been more than five minutes since I brushed my teeth. He drops the spool of rubber ring ribbon down the side of my face and behind my neck.

Tata: Now I know what it feels like to be gift-wrapped.
Young Doctor: Gift-wrapped!
Tata: My days of answering the doorbell in a red ribbon are over.
Young Doctor: You did that?
Tata: Of course. Say, isn't that a ten-year-old in the next chair?

I considered adding, "...and aren't I nine hundred years old?" but saying that to the bespectacled doctor whose eyes are less than six inches from my crow's feet seems rude. After all, if he's looking down my sweater I'd hate to interrupt with You, my sweet, are too young to fit under my Age Limit Limbo Pole, too young to play original Trivial Pursuit with me, too young to discuss movies or music all night with over a bottle of buttery shiraz, and I won't be old enough to flirt shamelessly with medical professionals until I'm twenty years closer to actually being nine hundred. I laugh and skip the euphemism. He might not understand.