L'OREAL, PAPERBOYS, AND OPEN-AIR BATHROOMS

People are always asking me, “Do blondes have more fun?”  I have to make things up!  If I told them how I really spend my evenings, L’Oreal’s carefully built reputation would go right down the toilet, let me tell you!  They’d have to change their entire advertising campaign to something like this:  “Want to spend wildly entertaining evenings grooming your guinea pig, snacking on gummy bears and watching Leno?  Why not be a blonde and find out what ‘bored to death’ really means?”  The TV ads would show a blonde in a food-stained J.C. Penney sweat suit watching a golf game.  On the table next to her would be a nearly empty bowl of taco chips and an open quart of milk with lipstick stains on it.  Basically, it would be my life flashing before millions of eyes.

Do blondes have more fun?  Give me a break.  I don’t need that kind of pressure put on me.  I get enough from people I know—who needs it from Heidi Klum and Cosmopolitan magazine? 

And this is only a small example of the stress I go through, as a blonde, on a day to day basis.

You know the poster, “STRESS KILLS”?  I wish that’s all it did, don’t you?  I do pretty well at the start of the week.  I can cope.  I can deal with things.  By Wednesday, I start to get a little shaky in the control department.  I begin answering the phone with, “What now!” rather than “Hello.”  The paperboy tosses the paper at me, and I toss it right back at him, but I aim for the head.  I’ve been through three paperboys this week alone, AND I got a call from the Yankees about a relief pitcher job.

At any rate, by Friday, I’m a total wreck.  Gone is Monday’s quiet grace under pressure.  Here’s how my Fridays generally go:

The first thing I do is climb the tree in my front yard to get my paper.  This is where the new paperboy throws it now.  It gives him time to get out of range.  Scratched and bleeding, I climb back down, ripping a Pierre Cardin robe to rags.  I then totter back into the house and read the obituaries.  If my name isn’t there, I continue my day.  If a paperboy’s name is there, I throw a party.

Next on the agenda is a trip to the grocery store, which is so crowded that I can’t see what I’m grabbing.  All I know is that I usually end up with four grocery bags stuffed with Pop Tarts and kumquats.  I’m still not entirely sure what kumquats are, but I have a lot of them!

Then I drive home and back my car into the garage, remembering, too late, that I don’t have a garage…or a car.  What I do have is a return bus token in my pocket, somebody’s smashed up Toyota in my driveway, and an open-air bathroom.

So please, people.  Lock your cars.  Take your keys.  Don’t help a good blonde go bad.