Driving Everyone Mad

Pam: All of us at the office went out to lunch today. We took my boss, Archie’s car and I swear his driving sends me off the deep end!

Ann: Confucius say…man who drives like hell, bound to get there.

Pam: By the time we finally made it back to the office, that’s exactly where I wanted to tell him to go. He just won’t slow down no matter how anyone else in the car feels about it.

Ann: He knows he drives like a madman. I was talking to him about my low fat diet and he told me, “I drive way too fast to worry about my cholesterol killing me.”

Pam: He thinks everyone going slower than him is an idiot and the rare guy going faster than him is a maniac. He actually told us he never uses his turn signals because they only broadcast your next move in the road battle.


Ann: Maybe he figures the probability of being involved in a wreck is directly proportional to the time spent on the road. By driving really fast, he’s actually decreasing the chance of getting hurt.

Pam: Whose side are you on anyway? I should have known he was an aggressive driver when I first met him. I was updating the employee records and I asked him for his driver’s license to make a copy for his file. When I commented that he looked pretty angry in his license photo, he said that it was appropriate since that’s how he looks whenever he gets pulled over. In his picture he actually looked like he was cussing.

Ann: They say you never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.


Pam: He gets pretty mad. Once when we were on our way back from a meeting, he was driving his usual thirty miles an hour over the speed limit. Then he started complaining about the ‘woman driver’ in the next lane who was checking her makeup in the rearview mirror. But the whole time he went on and on about how she needs to pay attention to the road, he checked his phone for messages, poured coffee from cup to cup to cool it, and even moved a key from one key ring to another.

Ann: So just don’t ride with him anymore if he makes you that nervous.

Pam: Gas costs so much now I’m better off risking the medical bills. Besides, I got my revenge.

Ann: Oh no. What’d you do?

Pam: As I left the office I wrote a little warning to the other drivers in the dust on the back of his car. On one side I wrote “Caution: I drive like you do” and on the other I wrote, “Beware! I’m THAT guy”.

Ann: And you thought gas was expensive when you were employed!

Foundations By Home Depot

Pam: One of the women in my business meeting yesterday definitely had fallen victim to the ‘middle-aged make-up cumulative layering syndrome’.

Ann: Had it on a bit thick huh?

Pam: I think she used a trowel.

Ann: That happens…as women get older they seem to go one of two ways. They either accept that they have wrinkles and people will see them, or they try to spackle over them.

Pam: Well this lady definitely went the Home Depot route. But she should have consulted the paint department while she was there. Her face was at least five shades darker than her neck.

Ann: Ahhh….the dreaded line of demarcation. Women with a real sharp jaw line can sometimes get away with it. But have you ever seen it where a woman’s cheek fades right into her neck and then she tries to create a jaw line with make up?

Pam: Is that what they’re doing? I always assume they just don’t own a hand mirror and never see how they look from a side view.

Ann: Sometimes women just use the same foundation all year long and never switch colors to account for getting less sun in the winter months.

Pam: I don’t even wear foundation. When I put it on I look fine until I actually crack an expression of any kind. Then it shows every last crinkle and wrinkle to the max. I’m better off letting my blotchy skin, freckles, and age spots just shine on through.

Ann: Well no one’s going to make money convincing women as they age that they need less make up. That’s for sure.

Pam: When I was about fourteen, back when a fourteen-year-old was still a kid, I went on a weekend trip with my high school. It was Sister Robert Ann and about thirty of us from my Catholic girl’s school… or the home for wayward girls, as my dad used to call it.

Ann: Well it’s good to know you didn’t just suddenly become willful and disobedient as an adult.


Pam: Very funny! So anyway, I was assigned a hotel room with a girl named Kim who was always very popular with the boys. She was fifteen and always wore lavender eye shadow and heavy black mascara. We all thought she was so glamorous.

Well she stepped out of the bathroom after her shower and I was literally shocked. I hardly recognized her. She looked so different without her makeup on!

Ann: Hey, give her a break. She didn’t have her face on.

Pam: She didn’t have one of her faces on anyway. Throughout the trip I told her how great my boyfriend was and when we got back home she promptly stole him.

Ann: Wow. I bet that hurt.

Pam: I just knew if my ex-boyfriend could somehow see what she looked like without all that makeup that he’d dump her in a second and return to somewhat-plain-but-at-least-all-natural me.

Ann: Since when did men care about natural?

Pam: Yeah, I figured that out the hard way. I invited everyone to a pool party where I knew he’d see her without all the goop on her face. I wasn’t sure if she’d accept, but she was pretty enthusiastic.

Ann: What’d she do? Wear water-proof makeup?


Pam: Let me put it this way…make up wasn’t her only enhancement. The guys never even glanced at her face!

Ann: She had quite a body huh?

Pam: She confessed to the other girls that she was wearing silicone inserts in her bikini top to create her cleavage.

Ann: Well I can see why the guys never noticed her lack of makeup.

Pam: What can I say? I was playing way out of my league.

Ann: The kiddie pool’s over there.

Daughters As Friends?

Ann: Don’t you love when your daughter grows up and you have those glimmers of moments when she’s more like a friend than a daughter?

Pam: I know what you mean. My “daughter as friend” moments seem to hit home most when she’s using that quick wit of hers. Once when she was about thirteen, I was noticing how much she enjoyed new hair styles, shoes, purses, and
jewelry. I commented, “You’re really a girly-girl, you know that?”---“Asks the woman with the French manicure,” she quipped back. Quick…I’m telling you, quick.

Ann: Yeah, you have to keep an eye on her alright. But it’s true. She is a girly-girl. She’s always helping you stay in style with your make-up, clothes, and jewelry isn’t she?

Pam: I do seek her advice about hair products, nail length and shape, and other girly kinds of things and she’s always very helpful. But I have to be careful….

Ann: Why do you say that?

Pam: Last month we were in the drug store picking up a few things for her to take back to school. So I stopped in the skin care aisle and I mentioned to her that I am troubled by the fact that lately I’ve noticed some darkening areas on my face. "Sweetie, help me find something to fade these age spotscoming up on my face recently”, I said to her. “Sure,” she answered enthusiastically, “let’s see….”

So I’m checking out the shelves, overwhelmed by the sheer number of products geared towards middle-aged women like us. As I ponder the moisturizers, rejuvenators, revitalizes, and “luminators” my daughter, being helpful I think, is muttering, “Age spots, age spots, something for age spots…”

Then the pharmacist appears nearby to restock the shelf and my daughter says, “That’s what we need, a scientist! I bet he can help.” She approaches the man as I follow closely behind. “Sir,” she asks loudly, “where can we find time machines?”