There are so many things that give me the shits nowadays. I was either extremely tolerant or superbly ignorant – I can’t decide which and having to make a decision is giving me the shits. So, I was both. I feel a distinct lack of patience toward those who are not patient – this paradox may be blamed on hormones or peri-menopause or menopause – or to rephrase, I think of it as an intolerance for the over-abundance of pernicious dickheads.
Top of the ‘Knobby Knob Head’ class are the tailgaters who insist on humping your bumper bar with their grill. What is that? You’re listening to Smooth FM, singing along to The Bangles, overtaking a semi-trailer, going five k’s over the speed limit. Living on the edge. When a knobby knob head in a four wheel drive with a shiny bull bar races up behind you, coming closer and closer at speed.
Watching intermittently in the rearview mirror, you try to concentrate on driving past the double-trailered semi without veering off the steep shoulder as Cowboy Prick Features tries to push your car along whilst intimidating a poor little old lady. Well, a middle class, little old lady. Okay! A middle class, little old woman. Right!! A middle class, little woman. Happy?
It is not my road. It is not your road. The road belongs to everyone. It is to share. Not scare. Knobby Knob Head Prick Features! (Note: the terms ‘dickhead’, ‘knobby knob head’, ‘cowboy prick features’ and ‘knobby knob head prick features’, or any combination of the above, are not gender specific. I use these terms for all genders.)
Secretly, I can understand why someone would want to tailgate me – I do lunges, I do squats, I do a 6k walk most days. It is possibly quite a tidy tail: not that I’ve seen it recently, as one has lost the flexibility to turn that far to view it in a mirror. Yes, delusion is part of aging: I have a fine piece of tush, or would have, if it wasn’t now for its distinct resemblance to an elephant’s behind. So there are no excuses Cowboy knobby prick knob features!
Sharing top of the class honours are the absolute imbeciles who mistake my blank look and speechlessness as interest in whatever excrement is coming out of their mouths when actually I don’t give a flying cow-pat and don’t want to waste forming another wrinkle on such dick-wads. Sufferers of verbal diarrhoea; chug on some Hydralyte. Stat. Oh, but wait. Perhaps they don’t know they have shit vomiting out of their gob. I am just the person to help with some self-awareness. Shut. The. Fork. Up.
Not professing to be the world authority on excellent conversation, I do understand and occasionally practice the fundamentals: engage, talk, listen, respond, listen, engage, talk, listen, respond, listen, interrupt, change the subject and, if you’re not interested in the conversation, whip out your phone and pretend you are: a) responding to an urgent email; b) looking for a specific photo of whom or whatever is boring enough to end all further interaction, or; c) important and walk away to take a call.
Seriously, how can you not know that talking about the same thing over and over again without taking a breath and without taking any notice of the person or persons you are supposedly interacting with is rude, boring, tedious, prosaic, selfish, boring, boring, boring, disinteresting and forked. Worse still is when you finally do stop talking and then you whip out your phone and pretend you are: a) responding to an urgent email; b) looking for a specific photo of whom or whatever is boring enough to end all further interaction, or; c) important and walk away to take a call. What the fork? And that wraps up the ‘shits’ part of this chapter.
Pits, bits and tits are high maintenance, way too high maintenance for this little earth mother wannabe. In my thirties – when I was vain and a working professional – I had laser hair removal done on my pits and bits. Booked in for the five sessions (apparently hair grows in four stages and the fifth session is for luck though more likely profit), I was told by the beautician during my third appointment that she would be on holiday for the next couple of weeks. As things were looking nice and tidy, I was not concerned.
When she returned from holiday, she called to say that she couldn’t make the fourth appointment because she was moving. Hmmm … things are starting to look a little un-kept. Finally, she stopped returning my calls and I have a bikini line that looks like a balding porcupine. Oh yeah. It hadn’t all grown back as I had had three sessions. Therefore I have a quarter of the original hair growth in my pits and on my bits. Still. Yep, once bitten twice shy for this little balding hedgehog. I shave now.
Ah tits: the banes of my existence. I am a small person, in every sense of the word. My many nicknames have included: chipmunk, shrimp, shorty, midget and pain-in-the-arse, which is due to an auto-response disorder from being small; kind of like short man syndrome. So getting my first bra at the same time as my younger sister who, it turned out, actually needed a bigger cup size, did wonders for my boob-esteem. The boob fairy hated me or needed to be sacked for doing such a shit job.
So my little mozzie bites took refuge in the A-cup, size 8 bra where they grew like little mushrooms in the dark to graduate to a B-cup approximately four years later. Not even time-lapse photography would have captured the growth. The big girls, who were owners of substantial mammalian protuberances, were relentless during high school’s grooming and deportment elective when our measurements were taken. Little did I know, and, be careful what you wish for.
Fast forward to being pregnant and wowsers! Overnight (and time lapse photography will support this) I grew a huge pair of breasts. I could hardly stand without toppling forward they were so big. They looked like watermelons on a post; rockmelons on a stick; oranges on a toothpick: they were enormous. I had gone from a small B-cup to a D-cup: from a size 8 across the back to a size 12. It was all fun bags until the milk came in.
Just when you think your skin won’t stretch any further, it does … to a DD-cup. In fear of falling on my face every time I stood up, I had to hold my breasts to walk anywhere. They were oozing over the sides of my hands (which are small), seeking refuge under my armpits, covering my entire torso, preventing me from seeing any part of my body from the chest down. I had one very lucky baby.
When I stopped breast-feeding, my boobs turned traitor, packed up their sustenance and left the premises. What remained were two shrivelled sacks of skin with a striking resemblance to two lightly fried eggs thrown at a wall, the yolks pulling everything down as they slide to the floor. I could roll these puppies up. In fact, I did, how else would they get in the bra? They were accomplished escape artists: no bra could hold them. Houdini tits. To make life much more fun, enjoyable and interesting, the more weight I put on, the lower the twins drooped.
Drum roll please … I had a breast reduction. Ta dah! Best decision I have ever made. Remove the excess skin. Reposition the nipples. Pull every back up on to the chest. Stitch them up. Buy some beautiful, sexy bras. Et voila! I am woman, hear me roar! It may sound vain, but I don’t give a fork. I can wear shoestring straps, strapless clothes, bathers – yes, I could have worn all these things before but I wouldn’t have because my tits were disgusting, and it’s what I think of my body that matters to me – though now I am looking down the barrel of tuckshop arms/chicken wings/wind sock arms so the skimpy clothing days are numbered.
It has been eight years of bliss with my new boobs and I only wish I had done it sooner. And, to date, they remain hair free! Which brings us to the final item on today’s venting list. Da da daaaahhhhhh! Facial hair. What the fork is that about?! One stray hair that serves no purpose but delivers a new level of self awareness if one forgets to pluck that sucker!
Of little comfort is the fact that my peers are also slaves to the stray facial hair. Mine shoots like a prolific weed. Erupting forth from above my lip, slightly to the right of my philtrum. Within minutes it has sprouted. Unlike the ‘normal’ facial hair, this baby is as erect as randy teenage boy eyeing off an apple pie. It is as hard as a nail, as black as my mood and as long as my little finger! (Slight exaggeration.)
Even though it is plucked with regularity, it insists on taking up root approximately every six weeks: little exhibitionist! With any luck, the little upstart will take lessons from some of it’s eyebrow cousins and lose the will to take root once plucked. Though it may follow the example of other eyebrow hair traitors and turn grey, and long, and curly, and … GAH! I have pubes on my face! (Only when I put my glasses on though.) (Fork! I’m Fifty!)