Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life Read online

  At toy store, the kids had to go to the bathroom, so they let us go in back to employee restroom. Spotted a sign from manager reminding employees to BE PROFOSSIONAL!

  Abrupt receptionists who transfer me without any verbal niceties or warning.

  Restaurants that put quotes around words that do not require quotes. Usually on window signage. For example: Freddy’s Authentic “Greek Food.”

  Former Seinfeld actor Jason Alexander doing Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial.

  Newsletters from school that are chirpy and congratulatory: “We raised $4,000 at last month’s Bowl ‘n’ Bake Sale—great job everyone!!!”

  this page of a book titled Mastery. The word it’s is misused.

  DESSERT

  My kids keep asking me at dessert time, Mom, can I have this little pack of Skittles and this piece of gum? or (looking through their Halloween loot) How about this mini Baby Ruth and a candy cane? I take a quick look at the items they are holding up in their hands and, without hesitation, assess the inventory and respond accordingly. You can have half the candy cane and the mini Baby Ruth. They accept my arbitrary ruling as gospel, as if it stems from some great unwavering truth.

  DIALOGUE

  Charise (blonde): How would I look with red hair?

  Doug (husband): Lonely.

  DIRECTIONS

  When someone gives you directions to their house, there is always a point where you realize, I think they are giving me way more detail than necessary. People think they are helping you by saying You’ll turn left at the first light. There’ll be an Arby’s on the right and a little church with white shutters and this funny dolphin sculpture on the left. If you see a Blockbuster—and I think there’s a Hooters there, too—then you’ve gone too far. We could all be a little more sparing with the landmark usage.

  DIRECTOR’S COMMENTARY

  I originally thought the DVD Director’s Commentary feature was a cool idea, an enriching bonus for the viewer. But after listening to a handful of them, I’ve come to realize that they are really nothing more than a love-fest opportunity for the two commentators. Take The Contender, for example. I am way into that movie, and couldn’t wait to hear what the director and Joan Allen had to say. But then, this:

  Director: Remember we first met at that one award banquet? I knew then that I just had to write a movie for you.

  Joan: I get a lot of scripts and have developed a healthy skepticism, but wow, your script really stood out.

  Director: Jeff [Bridges] wouldn’t sign on until you were officially on board.

  Joan: I just love Jeff’s work. I think he is simply brilliant.

  I’m all for mutual admiration, and I agree that Jeff Bridges is brilliant, but this type of banter is really not for public consumption.

  DISHWASHER

  It is very difficult to try to load someone else’s dishwasher; everyone has their own method. Glasses stacked in this row, bowls this way, silverware facing up, down—it’s a highly personal thing. The few times someone outside the family has loaded ours, I open it up and am disoriented, dismayed even, to find plates in the wrong slots, bowls on the top (the top?!), and even a skillet crammed in there. It’s just too counterproductive and unsettling, even though it is nice of them to try to help.

  DISTRACTION

  I recognize that everything I do, from my work to going to the movies to raising children to vacuuming, might also be viewed as just one big distraction—Hey, look over here! And now, over here!—from belaboring the real issue at hand: One day I’m going to die.

  DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE

  At Rosh Hoshana services, a man scurried up and down the aisles asking, “Is there a doctor in the house? We need a doctor. Is there a doctor?” There was much scuttling about, heads turning this way and that, what happened, who’s hurt. When I saw a woman dash to the exit, it took a moment for it to register that the doctor had been located, that she, this woman, was the doctor. Despite my supposedly liberal and feminist leanings, I’d imagined a man—older, with S.O.S-pad eyebrows—emerging heroically from the crowd.

  See also: Feminist

  DOING SOMETHING

  It is so much easier to not do something than to do something. Even the smallest task, like filling out a Scholastic Books order form or putting away the butter, requires time, focus, and follow-through. It’s astounding, actually, that anything gets done at all, by anyone.

  But then, let’s say you finally are prepared and determined to do that thing, whatever it is, but you wake up to find that your basement has flooded and you must spend your day making phone calls to the contractor, plumber, and carpet people. Or not that but something else—perhaps you must stand before a committee for approval, a committee that neither grasps your intent nor appreciates your ingenuity, and anyway, they are in a bit of a hurry to break for lunch.

  Yet. Still. Somehow. I am encouraged to see that despite the colossal effort, despite the odds against one, despite the mere constraints of time and schedules and sore throats, houses do get built, pottery gets glazed, e-mails get sent, trees get planted, shoes get reheeled, manifestos get Xeroxed, films get shot, highways get repaved, cakes get frosted, stories get told.

  DOOR

  At the restaurant, we were seated by the door. Throughout the course of our meal, we observed dozens of patrons do the following, in this exact order:

  Walk up to the door and try pulling it.

  Confused, they would try pulling it again, only to confirm that it was indeed locked.

  Then they’d cup their hands around their eyes, put their faces up to the glass, peek inside and see people sitting down, eating, and then be more confused.

  Finally, they’d notice the sign taped to the door:

  Simultaneously relieved and annoyed, they’d walk toward the other door.

  It was intriguing and comforting to watch this, something about the rhythm and the predictability of it, the succession, one after the other, of happy endings.

  DOORBELL

  The doorbell rings. You are either expecting someone or you are not. If you are expecting someone, you think, Yes, okay, they are here. If you are not expecting someone, you think, That’s curious. I am not expecting anyone—who could it be? Now, if the phone rings, whether you are expecting a call or not, you think, Oh, the phone is ringing, someone is calling me. With the phone, you know it is just as likely that it could be a person you are expecting to call or any other number of people you are not expecting, or even know.

  DRAWING

  I can’t really draw. As a kid, though, I drew all the time; by middle school, even though I wasn’t all that good, I became known as the artist. Markers and paints and ink pens were what I knew, what was readily available. It would still be awhile until I discovered how words and writing could be used as a possible creative outlet.

  If I could draw, I would have been able to figure out how to make a woman with long hair pulled back look different from a woman with short hair. If I could draw, I wouldn’t stop at the face, I would enjoy adding arms as well. If I could draw, I would have a lot of excellent art supplies in my house. And I would probably sketch people and then give it to them as a present.

  See also: Toast

  DREAMS

  I am an avid dreamer. I have multiple epic dreams nearly every night. When this fact comes up, I usually work Yeah, I always say I should go to sleep with a bowl of popcorn into the conversation. I rarely share my dreams because I believe dreams are only fascinating to the person who had them. The exception to that is if you are in someone else’s dream—then of course you want to hear about it. My old journals are full of dream descriptions. Though this contradicts the sentence before last, here is one uncharacteristically brief entry from March 2, 1984: I was in this dark little room and I started dancing real seductively up against the wall. Then I did a front walkover across the floor. Inconsequential, I know, but I do like that on that day exactly seven years later, I married Jason.

  See also: Husband; Jason />
  DRY CLEANERS

  Today when I was picking up my dry cleaning, the owner said, “Wait, before you go, this envelope—we found ten dollars in your pocket last week.” It was a white envelope, with these words in blue pen: “Rosenthal, $10, from the pocket on shirt, March 6, 2000.”

  Such a gesture, putting aside this found money, money he could have so easily taken—we would have never known. The sealed envelope sealed the money’s fate. So honest and kind. He wrote our name on it to be sure to give it to us. Rosenthal. From the pocket on shirt.

  See also: Rosendal

  DRYING OFF

  When I get out of the shower, I never dry off properly—that is to say, slowly and thoroughly dry my entire body, limb by limb, torso, back. I simply wrap the towel around myself, and then, feeling dry enough, start getting dressed. My old boyfriend used to comment on this: Why don’t you ever dry off? My husband occasionally comments on me dripping from the bedroom to our closet. I don’t think that I’m in a rush exactly, because I often take very long showers. It’s more that when the shower is over, I seem to just want to proceed directly to the next phase: being dressed. I am accustomed to feeling a light dampness, particularly on my legs under my jeans, the first couple minutes I’m dressed.

  DYING

  There are so many ways to die at any given moment. Just look, look at all those ambulances in your rearview mirror. There are crashes and wrecks and collisions galore: cars, planes, Amtraks, ferries. You could have a heart attack; it’s not unlikely. A terminal illness you didn’t even know you had could, minutes from now, live up to its defining adjective. Now turn your attention to all the freak accidents lurking in the wings. A massive store display tips over (happened). A soccer goal post unroots itself and crushes a skull (happened). Shelving holding five thousand pounds of sheet metal or lumber at Home Depot collapses (imagined). A top bunk falls onto the bottom bunk (imagined). A strong wind unhinges scaffolding and blows it directly onto a sports car; inside are—were—two twenty-year-olds out shopping (happened). Aneurisms that burst midsentence, ending the life of an advertising executive, a promising playwright, a children’s book author (happened, happened, and happened). I think almost weekly about an article I read years and years ago in Reader’s Digest: A mother and daughter were driving along when an overhead highway sign fell, instantly killing the girl and removing her face. The timing of that—the position of the car, how fast they were driving, where and when the sign landed—was horrifyingly impeccable. And this: A young couple killed in a car accident on the way to her father’s funeral. Have you ever? And I’m not even touching on the human-calculated varieties: shooting, stabbing, strangulation by (a) someone you know, (b) someone you don’t know, (c) someone disgruntled (postal worker, unappreciated employee, failing student). And we can’t forget malpractice. My sister-in-law died at the age of thirty-two during childbirth because the doctors and nurses missed the red-flagged allergic to anesthesia warning on her medical chart. People don’t die anymore in childbirth, everyone knows that, but yet they do; sweet, stunning, silk-scarf-wearing, multilingual Hilary did. People are just dying everywhere, all the time, every which way. What can the rest of us do but hold on for dear life.

  E

  E

  The French writer Georges Perec is most famous for writing a three-hundred-page novel without using a single e. One can envision the everyday small talk that must have occurred while Mr. Perec was working on this book.

  Bonjour, Georges.

  Bonjour, Pascal.

  What are you working on these days?

  I’m trying to write an entire novel without using the letter e.

  Silence

  Did I tell you, Georges, about our new porch?

  EGG-WHITE SCRAMBLER

  I went out for brunch with my dad. I ordered the breakfast burrito. It turned out to be way too much: too many eggs, too much cheese. A few bites into it, a waitress waltzes over to the table next to ours with two orders of this happy light plate of scrambled egg whites and diced tomato and a touch of cheese. Their waitress had obviously let them in on this special-order item. It was the dream version of my dish. The women were oohing as she placed it before them. Yeah, it’s my favorite, the waitress cooed with them, only adding to my misery.

  The ridiculous thing is, I couldn’t get it out of my head for the rest of the afternoon. I’d be driving or washing my hands or looking up a word in the thesaurus, and my mind would keep going back to the egg-white scrambler. I imagined how it would taste, thought about when I’d go back to that restaurant, imagined how my day, my entire life, would have been so much better if only I’d had that egg-white scrambler.

  EITHER

  It’s either I don’t like you. You are just like me. Your presence confirms much of what I don’t like about myself or I like you. You are just like me. Your presence confirms much of what I like about myself.

  ENCOURAGEMENT, EXERCISE VIDEO INSTRUCTOR WHO TRIES TO GIVE

  When the instructor on an exercise video says great! and good job! and yes, that’s it!, it’s so patronizing. She can’t see me; how can she possibly comment on my performance? Are we humans that pathetic and praise-thirsty that an instructor spewing generic affirmations to an invisible audience is considered helpful, effective, and believable? I put on one such tape and felt not encouraged but rather enraged by the unfounded compliments. When her fifth yes, there you go! elicited an under-my-breath shut the fuck up, I knew it was time to turn off the tape.

  ENCYCLOPEDIA SPINE

  I was talking with my friend Marie-Claude shortly after finishing the first draft of this book. She said, Speaking of encyclopedias, I have to tell you this unreal but true story. You know my friend_______, right? Well, she used to work at Encyclopedia Britannica. She was working on a new edition. And I’ve actually seen this at the library, so I promise you I’m not making this up: On the spine of volume eight, it says Menage—Ottawa. That was her doing. The editors apparently never picked up on it. I ran to the library to see for myself.

  ENTRANCE SIGN

  There’s always the option to process it not as the intended noun (point of entry) but rather as the verb, to fascinate.

  ESCALATOR

  One would think that by this point in my life, I would have outgrown the fear of getting my shoe caught in the escalator.

  See also: Anxious, Things That Make Me; Fears

  EUPHORIC

  The child is euphoric because there is an elevator button that needs pressing. Or perhaps a moon is spotted in a daytime sky.

  F

  FAME

  When someone becomes hugely famous and they go home for the regular Thanksgiving and Passover family gatherings, it must be weird for everyone else, pulling into the driveway of your aunt Barbara and uncle Henry knowing that your cousin Cameron (Cammy to you) Diaz will be there.

  FAMOUS, HOW YOU KNOW YOU ARE

  Table

  You have a level of a parking garage named after you, with accompanying sound track. “Remember where you are parked: You are on Level 4 Barbra Streisand: The early years.”

  An article written about you in a magazine or newspaper has a photo of you from your high-school yearbook, so the world can see what you looked like with feathered hair, pre-fame.

  Kraft Macaroni and Cheese comes out with a special noodle shaped in your likeness. Note: This is usually reserved for cartoon celebrities, such as the Rugrats, Pokémon, or Blue’s Clues.

  You get stopped on the street, not because you are famous, but because you look familiar. “I’m sorry, but did I go to school with you? I know I know you. Wait, were you at Lindy’s fortieth last weekend? Oh my God”—click—“I’m so sorry, you’re Neve Campbell. I knew you looked familiar.”

  FARMER

  There is a sentence in a book called Paris to the Moon that goes something like this:

  We had a framer who regularly did all of our framing for us. But when I first read the sentence I thought the author wrote, We had a FARMER who r
egularly did all of our framing for us. In the flash of 1.5 seconds my mind processed this misinformation and produced, rather clearly, the image of a farmer (somewhere in rural Vermont?) who, either in need of supplemental income or just out of a love for framing, developed a little frame business out of his farm, attracting a small but loyal customer base from nearby towns and even New York (where the author was living, I know). It wasn’t exactly the typical kind of frame business I’m accustomed to, but somehow, for that split second, I was intrigued by and accepting of this farmer-framer situation. I could picture his wife coming into his barn/work space. Another great frame, honey! You’ve been working so hard, I brought you a glass of lemonade. When I reread and correctly comprehended the sentence, I was instantly sad to let go of the eccentric character I had come to know, to find that the framer was just like any framer—that is to say, nondescript, cynical, urban, working part-time at a shop with overpriced frames and Henri Cartier-Bresson posters on the wall.