In the Restroom of The Pink Pony

Here is what it's like in the ladies' room of The Pink Pony, which is a strip club. Yes, with female strippers. Don't worry how I know these things; just read.

First of all, if you are a female customer, you will be sharing a restroom with the strippers. Just outside the restroom is a rack with all manner of costumes hanging on it, but you never really get to look at it because you're trying to act like you're very cool as you stroll into the strippers' domain. You also wait as long as you possibly can to pee, which actually works out well because by the time you finally have to, you're too drunk to care that you're the least attractive woman in the vicinity. Oh and you are--I can promise you.

As you walk into the restroom, to your left there is a bank of small lockers, just big enough to hold a purse, maybe. The lockers are decorated with stickers, with names written in sparkly nail polish, with photos of babies who are presumably sleeping peacefully at home. To your right there is a counter with sinks in it, and a big mirror that you never ever look in, again not wanting to know how you compare to the strippers. All over the counter are bottles of perfume and lotion, a hundred bottles, or two hundred. Strippers always smell good.

There is an older black lady (hmm, wait a minute, you might be as cute as she is) who sits under the paper towel dispenser and will hand you one when you finish washing your hands. And of course there are strippers in there: talking on cellphones, changing, smoking, fixing their hair and makeup. Stripper wannabes are filling out job applications. All these people ignore you, not unkindly.

There are only two stalls in the bathroom and neither has a lock. You pull your shirt down to cover as much of yourself as possible, just in case somebody accidentally busts in on your fat ass, but nobody does. A sign on the wall says, "Only one person to a stall, please." You have to wonder about that. Do people go in together to do drugs? To have girly sex? Hmm. Signs on the inside of the stall door instruct the strippers as to what drinks to order if a customer offers them one (high-priced champagne cocktails). You make a mental note to share this tidbit with your husband. Then you sashay back to your table where your husband has no idea what you just saw.

Shopping for Clothes with Bliss

Bliss needed some "date" clothes. Her taste in everyday-wear dismays me, as I've mentioned before. She likes beat-up Converse sneakers, holey jeans, and silly T-shirts with pictures on them.

But we were in agreement that she needed something a little more upscale to wear on actual dates with actual boys, and she had such a date coming up on a recent weekend. It wasn't my pay week and I'm diligently trying to pay off my credit card, so I figured I had about $40 I could spend.

"Can we go to the mall?" she asked. Though my bargain-loving heart sank, I agreed. But first, I suggested, maybe we could try Plato's Closet, which is a "gently-used" store that seems to cater to young people. She didn't seem too interested, but (probably to avoid irritating me) she said she'd take a look.

We went in and she quickly gathered an armload of clothes and disappeared into the dressing room. At one point she asked me trade the jeans she had taken in for a size larger, and when I went up front I caught sight of my reflection in the glass door. I looked old. My hair looked bad, and my clothes had done that trick where they look fine in the mirror at home and terrible out in public. I also looked exhausted, which I was.

I went back to the dressing room and handed Bliss the jeans. Then I stood nearby, waiting for her, and began to feel bad about things in general. What kind of mother was I to send this beautiful young girl out on a big date in thrift store clothes? What kind of life do I live where I work so hard all day and don't feel able to buy her something new? The excitement of her date would probably be diminished for her by the knowledge that she was dressed in second-hand clothes, and that would be my fault. I got a lump in my throat.

Then Bliss came out of the dressing room. "Both the jeans fit," she said. "But should I get this shirt or the other one?"

"How much are they?" I asked. We added up the cost of everything she liked. Two pairs of jeans and three shirts came to thirty-eight dollars. I shrugged. "You can get them all."

"Oh my gosh, this store is AWESOME," she said, with stars in her eyes. "I want to come back here all the time!"

Leaves

We have what they call a “wooded lot.” Real wooded. We’re knee deep in leaves right about now, and just for the record, I ain’t rakin em. I work really, really hard all week, and since my enjoyment of yard work is less than zero, either we’ll hire somebody or we’ll stay knee deep in leaves. I don’t care either way.

But I digress. I was in my bedroom the other day when a whole bunch of leaves fell from the tree right outside the window. Something about the way they looked reminded me of people jumping from a building, so then I thought of the way it seems like a great tragedy when a number of people die all at once… in a natural disaster, or a terrorist attack, or a plane crash or whatever. But really, whether three hundred people die or just one, it doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. Whether one leaf falls or a whole tree full, we were knee deep already.

I thought about that Bible verse that says if God cares about a sparrow falling, you can rest assured he cares about you, too. But I have this tendency to turn Bible verses backwards and look at them another way, so I thought, yeah, that’s about right… people are about as important to the universe as sparrows. I can picture a bunch of people crowded around the deathbed of some loved one bawling “Oh Lord, please save my mama/daddy/husband/wife. We need him/her so much.” But the dying person falls off the tree anyway and joins the umpteen zillion others that have fallen, and nobody really cares but their families.

I have a theory about people who pray not to die and then die anyway. I figure maybe it’s like when children cry and beg for something ridiculous and parents ignore them. I was telling Brandon the other day that we’d like to move from where we live, and he got all worked up about negative aspects he imagined. I tried to tell him that if we moved at all, it would be to a BETTER place, but he can’t imagine it because all he knows is THIS place. Maybe dying’s like that, so God pays you no attention when you whine about it.

Anyway, as I’ve said many times, if something happened to me or any of my coworkers on the way to work one day, the survivors would all be shocked and horrified.We'd weep and moan for a while. But by ten o’clock we’d be thinking about where to go for lunch.

Not real uplifting today, am I? You should really go read Amanda. She’s much cheerier than me. www.nazarativity.blogspot.com.

Family Heirlooms

When my mother was sick recently—so sick we all thought she might die—she mentioned some pieces of family furniture she wanted to make sure were passed to me. Luckily, she got well and is now at home using her furniture herself.

But this afternoon while making gingerbread men with my son Brandon, it occurred to me that the items of my mother’s that mean the most to me have already been in my possession for many years. Her set of heavy glass mixing bowls, faded pink in color and decorated with a very retro design of some indistinguishable fruit or vegetable, were passed down to me when her remarriage (when I was twenty) led to my striking out on my own. One bowl is big, one is little and they both have handy pouring spouts. I use one or the other practically every time I cook, never without remembering all the times I saw her use them.

My mother—though she was a working woman of the 70’s with a wretched, evil husband, an elderly grandfather in residence, and me—put an awesome meal on the table every night. I had to grow up to realize the talent and creativity that went into that, not to mention the energy.

I’m glad to have been able to have her pink bowls for so many years. Using them now enables me not only to look back at my mother’s life, but also to view my own at various stages: I made tuna casserole in the big bowl as a single girl on a budget, I mashed up sweet potatoes in it the first time I hosted a family holiday as a young wife, and now I mix gingerbread dough in it to entertain a child. The years go by so fast.

When I’m gone I might expect my kids to want to keep copies of my written work or valuable items (like there are any) from my house. But wouldn’t it be special if one of them took the pink mixing bowls home and used them to prepare meals for their families, and thought wistfully, as I always do, “I remember Mama using this all my life.”

Don't Even Start

Of all the asinine topics of conversation that have bugged me throughout my life, the most moronic of all is the question of whether we DREAM IN COLOR.

Right off the bat, before I can delve any deeper into the topic, let me answer it by saying Don't even start with me--OF COURSE we dream in color. I do, and by God so do you and so does everybody else with normal vision, so don't make me lose my mind by even insinuating otherwise.

My half-brother, when he was little, once asked our father, "Was everything in black and white when you were a kid?" And it's funny when a kid reasons that just because all the pictures he has seen from 1940 or '50 are in black and white, it indicates that life itself was colorless. It is senseless, however, when grown adults seem to think their dreams are on FILM.

You SEE in color, don't you? Well hell, when you remember the sandwich you ate for lunch, do you REMEMBER it in color? Then who do you suppose swoops in and magically turns your DREAMS to black and white?

I nearly wrecked my car the other day when some news report came on the radio announcing that older people, who grew up watching black and white TV, are more likely than the younger generation to dream in black and white. AARRRGGHH!! Following this brilliant theory, I wonder what people did before there was TV at all. Maybe around the turn of the century their dreams were silent, with subtitles. Perhaps people of Van Gogh's day dreamed in frickin' OIL. I suppose cavemen dreamed of rudimentary drawings instead of thundering herds of real buffaloes.

Just don't start even start.

Strangers Like to Dine with Me

Try to have a little sump’m & cain’t.

That’s a hangdog expression (culled from my in-laws and their parents) that my husband and I jokingly use on occasions when some modest attempt at enjoyment goes wrong.

Well, this past Sunday, my husband, son and I decided to have lunch at Taco Bell—and I think you’ll agree that enjoyment doesn’t get a whole lot more modest than that. There were maybe three other families eating at the same time and we were all on one side of the restaurant, so that means the whole other half was completely empty. Brian and Brandon were seated in chairs, but on my side of the table was a long bench, serving several tables which were separated by no more than a foot of so of empty space.

So there we were, minding our own business, when a lone Pentecostal woman decided to ignore the entire empty side of the restaurant… and plop herself down beside me on the shared bench-seat. Sure, she had her own table-top, but the point is, she was mere inches away from me. She was invading my personal space! Also, since she was by herself, there was nothing for her to do but listen to our conversation. Brian was talking, but we both widened our eyes at each other, telegraphing, “WTF?” Then we fell silent, and shook our heads in disgust. Try to have a little sump’m & cain’t.

This stranger-in-my-space thing happens to me often. Brian and I once nearly spewed our lunch from trying not to laugh out loud at the sudden invasion of an uninvited table-sharer at Mamie’s Kitchen. And just last week, I was trying to write at Dunkin Donuts—a place I had especially selected for its lunchtime emptiness. With my notebook and papers spread in front of me and earbuds plugging both ears, I was doing everything short of posting a sign that said Leave Me Alone when another Pentecostal woman once again ignored the entire empty restaurant and chose the table right next to mine, which makes me nervous when I’m trying to write.

I originally feared that both of these women were working up their nerve to proselytize me, but that was not the case. The lady at Taco Bell did alarm me momentarily by slumping into a sudden seizure-like prayer over her burritos. She was probably just blessing the food, but I for one hoped that she was whispering, “Dear Lord, please get all those stray cats out of my house so my clothes can quit smelling like old urine.”

Goats

My new friend Amanda lives in New York City, and though I haven’t seen her in her home environment (we met elsewhere), I’ve started to think of her whenever something especially Southern crops up in my life. Of course, you have to be careful about talking to New Yorkers as though they’ve never seen a blade of grass—I imagine such assumptions are as insulting to them as are assumptions that Southerners have never seen a big city.

(Once at my former job, a bigwig from the corporate office in NY came to join us for a holiday meal. His idea of a way to get acquainted with us bumpkins was to gaze glumly around the table and ask, “So. What’s the farthest from here you guys have ever been?”)

Still, I keep finding myself thinking, “I wonder what Amanda would think of this.” Or, “I bet this would seem weird to Amanda.” Congratulations, Amanda, you are my official representative of the city of New York.

So I could not help but think of her when, one day last week, a coworker of mine received a telephone call from a neighbor, alerting my coworker that her goats were on the loose. It was raining heavily that day, and the mental picture of my short, round coworker stampeding around the yard trying to rustle wayward farm animals was hilarious to me. (Though she told me later that they actually began turning circles of joy as soon as they spotted her car.) It must be hard, I suppose, for one to maintain a professional demeanor at the office, knowing that one might be called away at a moment’s notice to corral one’s goats. I bet that never happens in Manhattan.

Props to the Hubs

Yesterday my husband said the perfect thing, and I am so proud of him that I want to tell it to you.

Since I was a teenager I've struggled with depression of various kinds, but most particularly seasonal depression. Fall is doom to me--everything is dying, the world outdoors seems dangerous and unfriendly, and there's nothing to look forward to but increasing cold and the expensive hassle and stress of Christmas. (BAH, humbug!)

So yesterday, partly due to legitimate life circumstances but also probably because the weather felt chilly, I really sank into a low mood. So many things have been running around in my mind for the last couple of weeks that I felt the need for somebody to talk seriously to, but I couldn't figure out who the perfect person would be. My mother is in the nursing home...my favorite coworker is many years younger than me...my best friend has five kids and enough problems of her own. I have no siblings and I ruled out my cousins for various reasons. I imagined myself talking to a counselor, but that's only a fantasy because I actually tried it once and found it totally icky.

It occurred to me that Brian was the person I wanted to talk to, but at first this made me feel worse because I thought he wouldn't want to listen. I thought if I approached him and said I needed to talk(because we all know men dread those words), he would say (or think) "Oh God, what now? What is it this time?" I thought he'd be defensive and think I was blaming him for things that were bothering me, or that he would argue back that some circumstances can't be helped or tell me that his life wasn't a bed of roses either, so I should just deal with it. Without him saying a word, and without even giving him a chance, I had cast him in the role of my adversary.

But then he asked, simply: "Why are you acting so down?" And something about that phrasing allowed me to answer him and tell him all the things on my mind. See, there are some things that are not good to say to a depressed person. "What's wrong with you? Who pissed in your cornflakes? What's your problem? Why are you acting like such a bitch?" For me, "What's wrong?" will always be answered by, "Nothing," because the question (when I'm feeling low) is just too big. And "Why are you acting like a bitch?" or anything along those lines only makes me feel kicked-while-down. The most perfect question was exactly what Brian asked me yesterday... to paraphrase him: I notice that you seem depressed and I wonder what has you feeling that way?

So good job, Brian. You made me feel better without even having to get all squishy about it and risk losing your man card. You saved the day.

Surely Nothing...

I knew a lady one time who'd had, before I met her, a set of twin girls. When these twins were toddlers, one of them was killed in a household accident. Their mother's grief was such that she wound up with an ulcer, which ruptured one day. She called an ambulance, and the ambulance--I swear--wrecked on the way to the hospital and left her more injured than she was before she called it. Plus, by the time I met her she'd had a mastectomy, and now after battling some other kind of cancer (I believe it was), she's dead.

I always think of her when I'm tempted to say, "Surely nothing else can happen."

This past June my family spent a week in Myrtle Beach, courtesy of George Bush and the US taxpayers, and there was not one thing in the world for us to complain about. We went to a lovely place with plenty of things to do; the weather cooperated; we got along nicely and didn't have car trouble or lose our wallets or anything. It was so lovely, in fact, that I tossed aside superstitious caution and finally (in a hesitant whisper) voiced the thought that I'd been having for months: that we ought to stop and take notice of the fact that all was going well. We had jobs, a house, cars. We were all healthy and the children were not having any trouble. Our parents were alive and living independently.

By mid-July, of course, things had changed as both of our mothers were diagnosed with serious illnesses which have altered (primarily) their lives, but also (no comparison to what they're going through, but still--) ours. So break out the violins and let me tell you that due to various circumstances, last week was really hard. From white-knuckle drives back and forth to the hospital and late-night stays with my severely compromised mother, to a fight with my husband, to work pouring in on me so heavily that I couldn't even return all my calls, much less accomplish the other hundred things my scary boss expects of me--it was a just an exceptionally hard week. By Friday I was so exhausted I felt as though I were underwater, slowly going through the motions of tasks but lacking the energy or concentration to do any of them very well. All I could think of was how much I wanted to get to bed early.

So. Around 10:30 PM I had my jammies on, we'd vacated the living room and brushed our teeth and were just getting ready to crawl into bed when Brandon, my six-year-old, casually and cheerfully mentioned that he had stuck something ("a little piece of foam") into his ear and couldn't get it out. Initial annoyance soon gave way to dull shock as a flashlight revealed an object the approximate color of his Grover hand puppet, waaaaaay down deep in his ear canal. You might be interested to know that tweezers, when held up to a child's ear, suddenly look enormous and deadly. There was no way we could get the little blue thing out.

So my husband started yelling and stomping about the stupidity of it all, and Brandon got hysterical when he realized we couldn't fix him, and I, nearly bursting into tears of self-pity, got to put my clothes back on and drive him (sans husband, you'll notice) across town to the emergency room...where--remember how exhausted I had been even before this happened?--after a stay in the freezing waiting room and after the usual discussion of allergies and copayments and social security numbers, we saw a doctor who eventually used a high-powered suction thingy to pull the piece of foam out of the ear while Brandon cried and I helped hold him still and tried not to faint.

This experience has gotten me thinking. If having a very sick mother and a hellish work week does not mean that my kid won't poke foam down his earhole, then I should consider myself reminded that one crisis does not preclude another. Just because you're riding in an ambulance doesn't mean it can't wreck. I should never take false comfort in the idea that "surely nothing else can happen." Tired as I am, I still have to stop and take a moment to notice all the things that aren't disastrous--the really hard job that hands me a regular paycheck, the kids who do ridiculous (yet typically kid-like) things, the mothers we can still hold in our arms. I'm glad to have them all. I'm just not going to say it out loud anymore for a while.

She's Not There

For those who don't know, I left town on July 15th to attend the Sewanee Writers' Conference in Sewanee, TN. (www.sewaneewriters.org) The trip was a big deal to me, and I figured I'd be blogging all about it by now, but other matters have eclipsed the conference.

Within a day or two of my arrival on the Sewanee campus, my husband reported that my mother had left a completely unintelligible message on our home phone. He and my daughter had each listened to it several times and still had no idea what she was saying. I called my mom's house but although it was 10 PM or so (Eastern time--I was on Central), nobody answered. Fearing the worst, I called the hospital and learned she had been admitted.

Just before I left for TN, Mama had come down with shingles. (www.shinglesinfo.com) I understood that this wasn't a pleasant condition to be in, but it hardly seemed critical so I left for my trip as planned. But when I located her at the hospital, I learned she had fallen and broken her foot as well. Nobody realized at first that it was actually broken, but my stepfather observed that Mama got increasingly disoriented over the next few days and he decided she should go to the hospital. By then she couldn't make it to the car so he called an ambulance.

Again, the condition didn't sound life-threatening. Worrisome, maybe, but I was calling from TN every day, and nobody ever said, "You ought to come home." Doctors said my mother's confusion and disorientation was due to some swelling of the brain membrane, brought on by the shingles, but it'd soon be back to normal. I talked to her, sometimes, and sometimes to other family members who kept me updated. Sewanee is a long conference, and as I overheard one participant saying, "It's a tough conference. Not for the faint of heart." Still, I tried to hang in there. But when I got the news on Friday the 25th that Mama was being moved to a nursing home--and especially, when I spoke to her and she was childlike and sobbing and asking when I would be back--I went to my dorm and started packing.

Before Sewanee, I had called on the phone and said Bye, see ya later, to my Mama--the same mama I'd always known. I returned less than two weeks later to a sick, injured, terrified woman huddled in a nursing home bed, a woman who cried and couldn't understand how I had known where to find her, when she herself did not know where she was.

She's still in the nursing home, and we--that is, my stepfather and I, not the medical staff--are still working on the mystery of what has happened to her mind. A stroke? Head injury? Problematic medicine for the shingles? Is the nursing home now keeping her doped up so she'll be less trouble to them? That would be another story in itself, and it's not the one I'm writing tonight.

I really said all of the above just to tell you this: I miss my mother. I've lost count of the times that it has run through my mind to give her a call at home and see what she's up to. She'd tell me what she was cooking for supper and whether her Braves were winning. She'd tell me all the news of her friends and neighbors that, by and large, I've never even met. She'd ask what her "babies" were doing.

I prefer to keep in touch with most people by email, but Mama is the one person I frequently call. Nowadays, even though I may have just left the nursing home, I find I still have that same impulse to call Mama... my regular old Mama... but she's not there.

No Title for this One

Yesterday I had to mail a large envelope and also buy some stamps. I stood in line at the post office, idly observing the clothes and shoes and mannerisms of all the other people who were waiting, when I happened to notice a man whose arm was in a sling. It brought back a memory that, within thirty seconds, had me close to tears, sternly telling myself to get a grip before my turn at the window came.

What I had thought of was this: in 1990, during my first pregnancy, I had a job that required me to go to the post office daily and handle the company's mail. Every day I stood in line, and when my turn came, I exchanged pleasantries with a friendly, kind-faced man named Gary. He never knew my name, but we always chatted a bit. Towards the end of my nine months, the conversation centered around my due date and how I was looking and feeling. Whether I was tired. Whether I was ready.

There came a day when I didn't show up at the post office, and I guess, if I crossed Gary's mind at all, he would have assumed I was on maternity leave. But then after several weeks I appeared again, with a non-pregnant belly and my arm in a cast and a sling. Gary, bless him forever, was cautious in his friendliness. "What in the world happened to you?" he asked.

"Car accident," I whispered.

His face was concerned. I knew he was wondering about the baby, but I could tell he wanted to phrase it carefully. "Everybody all right?" he asked.

My eyes got wet, and I could only shake my head. No.

"I'm sorry," he said. And then he took care of my mail.

I remember, too, a lady who had owned the convenience store nearest to my home in 1990. Sometime shortly after the accident, I ran into her in the back corner of a grocery store. She was Asian and her English was poor, but she asked me excitedly, "Where your baby?"

Euphemisms don't always translate well, I didn't know whether she would understand me if I said that we lost him, or he passed away. I had to stand in the grocery store and try to explain that he had died, and then the lady and I just looked at each other, neither one having the vocabulary to continue.

There's no moral or tidy ending here. Except maybe I should say thank you to Gary for not needing the details, and thank you to the convenience store lady for caring, and thanks to all the other random people like Sherry the hairdresser who put their arms around me and said, "I'm sorry about your baby," when there was nothing else to say. Eighteen years now, and I haven't forgotten any of you.


****AMAZING UPDATE TO THIS POST: I'M WRITING THIS ON JUNE 9TH. JUST HAD TO SHARE WITH ANYBODY READING THE ABOVE POST THAT YESTERDAY, OUTSIDE OF TARGET, WHO SHOULD I RUN INTO BUT GARY FROM THE POST OFFICE!!! AFTER 18 YEARS OF NEVER SEEING HIM, THERE HE WAS. NOW I HAVE CHANGED A LOT BETWEEN THE AGES OF 25 AND 43 BUT HE INSTANTLY RECOGNIZED ME AND SPOKE. I TOLD HIM WHAT A COINCIDENCE IT WAS THAT I HAD JUST HAD HIM ON MY MIND RECENTLY, AND I REMINDED HIM OF MY STORY (THOUGH I NEARLY BAWLED DOING IT) BECAUSE ALTHOUGH I COULD SEE HE RECOGNIZED MY FACE, I DIDN'T KNOW IF HE'D REMEMBER THE REST. BUT HE DID REMEMBER, AND SO DID HIS WIFE WHO WAS WITH HIM. HE HAD GONE HOME AND TOLD HER ABOUT ME, AND PRAYED FOR ME, HE SAID. I THANKED HIM IN PERSON FOR PUTTING KINDNESS AND COMPASSION AHEAD OF HIS OWN CURIOSITY. I TOLD HIM I HAD TWO CHILDREN NOW AND ALL WAS WELL, AND HE GAVE ME A HUG. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT??!!

Global Warming--SOLVED!

I've been meaning to tell y'all this for a while... I actually solved the mysteries of global warming a month or two ago and I know it seems like this is an important discovery that I should've gone public with right away, but what can I say. I'm a busy person. Idol is on at least twice a week.

Anyway, as you all know, it's only too clear to people my age and older that global warming is a real phenomenon, in spite of what some stubborn scientists claim. We know it's real because we distinctly remember that when we were younger, it was MUCH colder than it is now! Just stop for a moment, and I'll bet several examples pop into your mind. Personally, I always remember the early November day in 1982 when I was riding around with my new boyfriendish-type-person, freezing to death in my oxford shirt until he detoured by his home and presented me with his letter jacket.

But in that very story lies a clue to the mystery I have unlocked. Are you ready?? Here it is: It seemed colder when we were younger because we were too stupid to wear a coat! If you have children, the truth of my discovery will have you smacking your forehead right now. "You need a heavier coat," I tell my kids. "I don't wanna carry it," they whine. "It won't fit in my bookbag. It makes me too fat for the carseat." And so forth. "Okay," I shrug. "Be cold, then." And lo, THEY ARE COLD.

When I was 19 years old I bought a car with a non-working heater, and all that winter I drove to work--fifteen miles or so--shivering, with a blanket across my lap. I did wear a coat, at least, but the blanket was necessary because every morning, like an idiot, I got up and put on a DRESS, PANTYHOSE, and PUMPS. I look back now and wonder what kind of a fool would not put on some nice warm pants, comfortable socks, and a pair of boots. A YOUNG fool, that's who. Look around and you will see it--grown people dress for the weather and kids don't. That's all it is. Scientists, you can pack up your gear and go home now.

Next month, stayed tuned for my enlightening explanation of why it is that "most car accidents occur within two miles of home." If I'm feeling really crazy I'll also tell you why "most shark attacks occur in less than four feet of water." That's a joke. You DO know why these are true, don't you? Please tell me you do.