But CAN there Be Too Many Really?

Trying to get to New Orleans for the annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists this morning, I find out at the airport that the flight's been canceled but am kept occupied by some lively talk from the woman behind me in the LONG lone line to get to the What Now counter. She is trying to get down to New Orleans too, for a family reunion she says: “I’ve been to Louisiana, Mississippi all over the South and back seeing family but I have NEVER been out of the country! Next thing I get back I’m gonna get a PASSPORT, see some of those Caribbean islands before I reach my big never-mind-which birthday….

Because I am FREE now, my boy’s grown!!”

"Ah nice," I say and ask how old he is and she says 22.

"Be sure he votes!"

"OH yeah!" she says and after a bit adds that she loves that Hillary Clinton. “I mean what a classy lady! I hope she's lyin' around in her pajamas now, sending people to bring her coffee, bring her tea. She said some things that last speech just gave me some food for thought!”

"I know, I love her too.” I said. “ The National Enquirer says he’s still cheating on her though - and they’re pretty careful what they print, having been sued so many time in the past so you know it’s maybe true.. “

“WHO'S cheating?!” she says with a sudden fierceness.

“That loser husband of hers who ruined everything.”

"HE won’t change!” she snorts. “Some men just do that.”

“I guess.”

“My man, for example, a photographer, birthday parties, weddings, reunions . Out all the time I'm thinkin' ‘Oh he works so hard!’ Come to find out he’s photographing strippers for those websites they have!”

“And he didn’t tell you huh and that’s why you’re mad?”

“It wasn’t that! This stuff? I said 'Uh UH, no WAY with that nonsense? All kinda front-to-back and such? ‘Oh no you don't and live in this house!’ I said to him. I mean too many vaginas, come on!"

And so children, there it is: Your thought for the day that might even lead back to poor Hillary and her lost cause. A thought for you, and for me, and for every other person in line at the Jet Blue ticket counter.

Girls' Night Out

Last night I went out with Robin and Janet, both some seven or eight years younger than me and two of  my dearest friends in this town. We had free tickets to see a medium contact dead people and we figured Hey a meal out, a couple of drinks, and fun in the car driving up and back – why not?

Janet is five-two with hips smaller than a seventh-grade boy. “Bitch!” a lesser woman would say to herself walking behind her. She can and does play bridge, manage the investment portfolios of stranger, bowl a higher score than 99% of the male population and speak truth to power.

Robin is like Janet in that she takes no prisoners. She’s five nine and has the longest legs in the greater Boston area, a waist as tiny as Janet’s waist and hips that flare out from that waist in such a way as to make grown men weak in the knees. Mostly though, Robin is blunt.

She had a filmy V-neck blouse on that she said kept gapping open to reveal a slight imperfection in her left breast. This imperfection grieves her.

“I can’t even see it!” exclaimed Janet, looking. “You will!” said Robin.  “I’ll be flashing six seven times tonight.”

She and Janet had cosmopolitans at dinner.  “What IS a cosmopolitan anyway?” I asked,” “Girly martini,” Robin said, lifting her glass to my lips.  Then we made fun of men for a while, finished our dinners, and set out to walk the quarter mile to the theatre where the medium would be doing her stuff.

At the biggest intersection in this fair-sized city we waited at a light that seemed designed to NEVER let a pedestrians cross. We stood and stood with a handful of other theatre-bound women just behind us until Janet showed leadership, stepping into the thoroughfare just as the light turned green for the opposing team so to speak.

I nodded apologetically and scuttled across. It was the wrong thing, the nod,  and I knew it as soon as I did it, Because suddenly a horn was blaring and a young guy in the car barreling through yelled “Way to cross a street you old biddies!” It was my entire fault for the apologetic head bob.

Janet frosted the guy by walking on in queenly fashion.  But Robin yelled “Whaaat?” wheeled around, and said “Let’s run the fool down and pound on his hood!”

We didn’t though. We went like meek lambs to our show. Afterward Robin said “Let’s have a couple of cocktails and shoot the breeze some more.” She was kidding I guess. Because less than 40 minutes later we were dropping her off at her back door behind which her husband was probably still at his desk and her kids were doing homework and her dog Blue was listening listening listening for her footsteps.