(Part of the Ebola Mom series)
Tag Archives: social skills
Ebola Mom, Part 75
My Job is a Real Job
An acquaintance who lives in my building stops me in the lobby.
Woman: “Oh! Emily! You’re a tutor, right?”
Me: “Yes, I am!”
Woman: “So you walk dogs?”
Like a Robot
There is an old cantankerous man who lives in our building, and every time he walks into the elevator and sees me on my phone (which is always), he makes a snide comment about it. Normally I just smile awkwardly and sort of ignore, but today I decided to defend myself.
Old man: “Those things are ruining people. Nobody talks to each other anymore.”
Me: “Yes, you always say that to me.”
Old man: “Well, it’s true. How’s anyone supposed to meet if they’re always looking at their phone?”
Me: “Actually, I met my husband on my phone.”
Old man: “You mean you were talking on the phone when you met him?”
Me: “No, I literally found him BECAUSE OF my phone. I was in an elevator like this one, and instead of talking to people around me, I was scrolling through a dating app. I came across his profile, read it, and I liked it, so I connected with him and we started talking.”
Old man: “I see…”
Me: “Right, so, if I hadn’t been looking at my phone, if I had been talking to people around me instead, as you always say I should be doing, then I wouldn’t have found my husband.”
Old man (long pause): “Well, young lady, I guess that’s a good point.”
Me (smiling, resisting the urge to literally pat myself on the back): “Thank you.”
(We both step out of the elevator and into the lobby)
Doorman: “Hey there, Eddie!”
Old man: “The whole world’s gone to shit. This girl met her husband INSIDE A PHONE! Like a ROBOT!”
Conditions for Eloquence
I gave a speech at a friend’s rehearsal dinner last weekend and someone came up to me after and said, “You are an extremely eloquent speaker.” And it got me thinking, you know what, yeah, person I don’t know at all but who is now my new best friend, when it comes to verbal communication, I am extremely eloquent!
….as long as I have an entire 16-size-font, double spaced script in front of me (rehearsed for a minimum of three weeks and approved by no less than five trusted individuals), have at least one glass of wine but no more than three in my system, I am not interrupted once, it’s neither too hot nor too cold in the room, there are zero weird noises, no one looks at me funny, I’m not hungry, the lighting is friendly, I am feeling good about my outfit, my acne is under control, I’m not PMSing, and I remembered to take my Prozac.
Otherwise when I talk it’s this:
Deena
Me (to my building’s gym receptionist, who I’ve seen almost every single morning for over a year): “Hi Deena!”
Her: “It’s Daysha.”
So I turned around, left, and can never go back.
Etiquette
Given the tagline of this blog, or what anyone can decipher from reading no less than three random posts, etiquette is not really my thing. I just don’t know the rules, and somehow I’ve reached age 35 without developing any kind of learned or innate sense for them. So help me out here.
Eric and I received a card from people who attended our wedding. We are prettttttty sure, given the wording of the card, and given who these people are, that they meant to include a check, but forgot.
Now, to be clear, it’s not that we’re so concerned with getting a gift, we just think these people would want to know if they forgot to send it. Right?
Also we want our fucking gift.
No no jk. Seriously, it’s the first reason I said.
So what’s the next step here? We considered calling them and being like, “Hey, cool card! I think the money fell out!” but there’s still that 5% chance they purposely chose to not give a gift.
Here are some ideas we’ve come up with:
- Write them a thank you card for their card.
- Split Uber fares with them until we’ve totaled the amount we’re pretty sure they would’ve given us.
- Have another wedding and let them try again.
- Instead of posting this post, “accidentally” email it to them.
- If doing #4, erase #4. And #5.
- Buy a corgi, send a thank you card for said corgi, include receipt for corgi, along with this emoji
. When they call us to be like “Um, we didn’t buy you a corgi,” be like “You didn’t? The corgi guy said it was from you! Sorry, what DID you get us?” and when they’re like, “We sent a check,” we’ll be like, “Ohhh, funny thing, we actually got a card from you and there was no check in it!” and then we all laugh and they re-send a check and we pay for the corgi ourselves. - Do #6, but if instead of saying “We sent a check” they say “We gave you a card,” say “WELL NOW YOU GOT US A CORGI TOO, MOTHERFUCKERS!” and hang up. Laugh maniacally. Stroke corgi.
- Post this post, have everyone who sent us a card wonder if they are the subjects of it. Field many texts.
Ebola Mom, Part 73
(Part of the Ebola Mom series)
Zero time passed between these texts. For all she knows I am, in fact, on my honeymoon.
Also #4 is not hard.
Ebola Mom, Part 72
Oh. So you’re taking a different approach to this game.
At my bachelorette party, my friends had Eric record answers to a bunch of questions, which I also had to answer, then we checked to see if our answers matched up.
First question: WHAT IS YOUR “PET NAME” FOR ERIC?
Me: “Oh, well. I usually just call him ‘Babe,’ but I also sometimes refer to him as my Corgi. My little Corgi. [confused friends faces] You know, because he’s really excitable and has short little legs!”
Eric (on video) “Just ‘Babe.'”
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