[168] in Depressing_Thoughts
The Most Depressing Day in a Single Woman's Life
jon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (jon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sun Aug 7 16:44:30 1988
It's 4:00 on a Sunday afternoon.
You've just attended your best friend's baby shower.
Which coincided with the publication of her first novel.
In the middle of the afternoon her husband announced he'd just been
made senior White House correspondent for @i(Time).
You dumped him junior year in college.
And when you congratulated them on their good fortune, they thanked
you for "making it all possible."
There was plenty of food to eat.
But you dopwned six Bloody Marys instead.
Half-drunk, blind with rage, you drive home, passing what appear to be
six thousand shiny new brand-new couples making out at every street
corner and traffic light.
You lose a heel tripping up the fron steps to your studio apartment.
There are no messages on your machine.
There is no food in your refrigerator.
And you can't find the phone number of that divorced stock broker who
called earlier in the week for a blind date.
Flopping into your queen-sized bed, you realize it's too late to go
shopping, it's too early to go to bed, @i(60 Minutes) isn't on for
three yours yet, and the Meryl Streep movie you wanted to see is no
longer playing.
Desperate for comic relief, you open the latest issue of @i(Cosmo) and
begin to read this month's variation on the article about all the
sensitive, caring, intelligent men there are in the world, and how the
writer snagged seventeen of them through oral sex.
Which is when the phone rings.
No, it's not Mel Gibson.
It's not Harrison Ford.
It's not even the stockbroker.
It's your mother.
"How was the shower?"
"Fine, Mom. I boudght the kid an Aprica stroller."
"It's funny," your mother waxes. "Do you realize that at your age I'd
already had both you and your sister -- and you were both in nursery
school?"
Hanging up (thank God for call waiting, even if it was a wrong
number), you debate about calling your therapist but realize things
haven't been the same since he made a pass at your two weeks ago. So
you call your girlfriends instead, and find out they all have dinner
dates.
Arriving at your office twenty minutes later (passing another six
thousand shinny new couples on the way and stopping to pick up some
designer chocolate-chip cookies -- Famous Mrs. David's "fields of
chocolate-chip something" at $72 a pound), you begin work on that
"really important" presentation that isn't due for another six months.
There is no heat.
There are no lights.
And just as you finally get the computer working you find the note
from your boss saying your junior assistant -- his nephew -- has
already finished the report.
Which is also just when you get your period, and your baby sister
calls to announce that she's getting engaged.
Yes, this particular Sunday is the day you learn that living well --
or living at all -- is the art of graceful compromise.
So you call your mother back and tell her it's okay to give your
number to Monty, the wedding-dress salesman your parents met on
vacation last summer in Acapulco.
But she tells you he's already engaged.
Hanging up, you realize there is no justice in this world -- only
food, a job, MTV, and somebody else's boyfriend.
Not surprisingly, this is the day when you stop reading @i(Cosmo).
And you, too, finally take out that subscription to @i(Forbes).*
--------------
*Again, just to look on the brighter side of things, consider the
single most depressing day in any married woman's life: That horrible
Thursday night -- just before midnight -- when she realizes that her
diaphragm can double as a contact lens holder -- and that's
@i(exactly) what it's beening doing the the past six months. There's
still no justice is this world -- only food, a job, MTB, and somebody
else's sex life.
