Faux Blond Moments

The other day while taking Sam to the vet, I managed to back into our garage door - which I naturally assumed was up at the time. My car was fine, Sam continued to lick my face, the garage door did not fair so well. This genius move reminded me of some of my past doozies:

College Wisdom:

In college I had bleach blond hair down to my ass and way too much confidence to go along  with it. Whatever happened to the confidence that I had when, at the age of 19, I could put on a tight midriff top (usually a sleeveless turtleneck) with Daisy Dukes and Zodiac boots and think I was the hottest girl in the bar? My  look back then could best be described as a Whitesnake video meets Less Than Zero with a little bit of the movie Heathers thrown in for good measure. 

I was also very into crystals, wore them around my neck and actually thought they had "mystical powers" (have another drag of Cajun weed, Parker). When I had to give a persuasive speech for my speech class, in typical fashion I waited till the night before and decided to talk about "The Powers of Crystals". I even passed around crystals in order for my classmates to feel their powers, and told them if they couldn't feel the power, it was because other people had touched them. When finished, I remember everyone in the room staring at me with mouths open wide and you could have heard a pin  drop. Of course I thought "Sweet! I nailed it."

Another speech that semester was about skin cancer, which I gave a week after coming back from the Caymans with my parents (with a tan that rivaled George Hamilton). Way too much confidence. I at least had the excuse of being in college as later in life when I was back to my original dark brunette color I couldn't use the "faux blond" excuse.

The Young Executive:

After college I started to look for a job right away and knew in my heart that Oprah would surely love a gal like me on her staff and I would work like crazy for her. I called her studio in Chicago to get the address and was excited to hear her recorded voice on the answering machine: I was already taking orders from her. Oprah gave the address and said "Mail your resumes to my attention." That's exactly what I did. I LITERALLY wrote the address and "MY ATTENTION" on the envelope. A month after I sent the letter, it dawned on me what I had done. A visual of my envelope hung in the Oprah break room for everyone to laugh at. I might have been a little overly anxious to follow Oprah's directions.

I finally landed a job that didn't include wearing an apron with a company in a department called "Program Implementation" (i.e. customer service). Much to my dismay, the company paid so poorly I had to leave every day at 5:30 and wait tables at Chili's at night. 

My closet was Ann Taylor and aprons. After a year they offered me a thousand dollar raise. My boss who always had dried boogers hanging from his nose, looked at me like they had just told me I'd won the lottery. I looked at him and said, "Seriously, this won't even pay for the yearly cost of my manicures." The room  I worked in had no windows and was the size of a basic walk-in closet. I shared it with 5 other people, including one with serious halitosis with the last name Pope, who I would soon call "No Scope Pope." I wore a Janet Jackson-phone headset, but "no Scope Pope" never  got  it when I looked at him and sang, "My name's Janet if you wanna get nasty". 

During one particular call, a customer was majorly BullShi**ing me and in my frustration I hit the red mute button and yelled, "CUT TO THE CHASE YOU LOSER!" to which he responded, "I AM!" Holy Shit, mute button broken, I almost fell out of my chair and nearly knocked the stank out of No Scope Pope.  A week later a good friend of mine had a cake brought in for my birthday that read, "Cut the Cake You Loser."

Mature and Wise:

Much later in life (ok, 6 months ago) I leased a very cute and actually quite practical for me, red Lexus IS 250. I had the car for a week and was really loving it. On the way to my nephew's football game I stopped for gas on the service road of a busy highway at rush hour and became really irritated when the gas nozzle wouldn't fit correctly in my gas tank. I shoved it in anyhow and cursed the Shell station for being so old that their gas hoses didn't fit inside new car gas tanks. After managing to filler up, I turned to put the nozzle back in its holster where the word "Diesel" stared me in the face. 

What followed was heart-stopping, blood-rushing-to-my-face and a hysterical call to Daddy Warbucks while 5 Indian gas station attendants yelled at me to move my car. A subsequent call to the Lexus dealer informed me that my car couldn't be moved and had to be towed from its spot. Had I started it, it would have blown the engine. $800 and 7 days later, my car was almost as good as new. Daddy Warbucks told me jokingly to see if I could get "Dipshit Coverage" from my insurance company.

For a second I thought, "Do they have that?"

Parker