You Say Potato

[In memory of Andy Rooney]

Is it just me, or are women getting the short end of the stick when it comes to names for their private parts? I am not talking about its proper name because neither men nor women lucked out in that department. Vagina might sound like a medical condition or a socially inept high school girl with tape on her glasses, but penis? Penis sounds limp, all shriveled up and embarrassed to be seen in the light of day, kind of like a slug. But the other words for lady parts, well, those are just plain horrible. They make me not even want to have one.

 Men already act like they are the cock of the walk, and that’s because they have a cock. Even the word cock makes one want to stand at attention. When I hear cock, I picture a strong, virile man, like the Brawny paper towel man, only without his plaid flannel shirt, standing tall, hands on hips, thighs spread wide so that all attention can be directed between his legs. He could use his erect member as a paper towel holder, perhaps. Hell, even the word member has a quiet strength. If you don’t have one of those, well, you just don’t belong. Dick is not quite as flattering, since it is best used to describe a real jerk rather than a sexual organ, yet its usage does lend a hint of nasty that isn’t entirely off-putting. 

Compare that to, say, the word pussy. It sounds about as nasty as dick, but minus the strong attitude. First of all, I just got my daughters to stop saying it to the cats. There’s nothing worse than listening to little girls call to their pussies. One time, after the kitty got into the dusty fireplace, my older daughter who was seven at the time said, “Who’s a dirty little pussy?”  Secondly, it is used to describe someone who is a wimp, too afraid to take action. Really? A pussy gets jabbed at, fingered, stuffed, and poked. It takes a licking and gets pounded. It can stand up to some real abuse.  And when all the fun is over, in less than a year’s time, it can open wide and actually squeeze out a human being.  What can a penis do that makes it more worthwhile than that? Thirdly, it just sounds funny and not really sexy at all. I guess if I had to screw a body part with a label, I would prefer to stick my cock in a pussy rather than insert my penis in a vagina, but still, there has to be a better alternative.

Let’s reflect on some of those other synonyms for a moment, shall we? Va-jay-jay was a little more playful until Oprah ruined it. When I think of va-jay-jay, I think of her, and quite frankly, I don’t want to think about Oprah, nor her vagina. So va-jay-jay is out. Slit and gash are just violent, and cunt and twat are too insulting. From there, it really goes downhill. Coochie (which is one of those things you put your beer can in to keep it cold), hoo-ha, poontang, taco, bearded clam, meat curtains, pink wallet, boxed lunch. I wouldn’t want to put my cock near any of those, lest a round of antibiotics is readily available. 

As an aside, I called my mother a cunt once, when I was fourteen. She asked me if I was joking, and I said no, so I got in trouble. To this day, I wonder if anything would have happened if I had lied and said yes. Even my mother, who is a cunt, doesn’t want to be called a cunt.

What I want to know is, why all the bad names for something which men always seem to want? If you love it so much, why all the nasty name calling? What did a vagina ever do to you? Oh yeah, that’s right, it brought you into this world. It gave meaning to your otherwise miserable existence, and shaped pretty much every decision you ever made as an adult. So how about a little respect? If a hole in a bathroom stall used for anonymous sex gets a grand moniker like glory hole,can’t we come up with something a little more pleasant for what’s in my pants?

Blood Letting

What I needed in the morning was everything to go smoothly. I had fasting blood work scheduled right after I dropped off my daughter for school, and I just needed everybody to do what they were supposed to do so I could make my 8 o’clock appointment. Was it too much to ask for a little cooperation from my family?

Why, yes, it was. I am generally a morning person. I bound out of bed and get ready for the day on the first alarm. I dance around and sing a little while I make breakfast and brush my daughter’s hair. I take care of all those last minute details like ice packs for lunchboxes and water bottles and jackets and back packs and cat treats. And most days, I do it with a smile and without caffeine. Yes, that’s right; I am not even a coffee drinking morning person. I am a full-fledged up and at ‘em kind of gal. Without breakfast, though, I turn into Linda Blair in “The Exorcist” alarmingly quickly.

7:00: I got my kids up and while they got dressed, I rushed downstairs to make breakfast and do all those morning things, including packing a breakfast for me to take along with me so I could eat after I had my blood drawn. I put out an assortment of cereal, poured juice, dispensed vitamins, and even remembered spoons and napkins. My daughters, S and E, stumbled down the stairs about ten minutes later than usual and commenced pouring and eating cereal. I pointed out to them that I had an appointment and that I needed them to try to hurry or at least to cooperate. E was in her own world, having just received a cell phone as a birthday gift a few days before. Apparently texting begins prior to  eating breakfast in the tween world, and so she was deep in conversation involving letters and symbols but no substance. S decided  that she was still hungry and needed more cereal. I reminded her again that I had to be at the doctor’s office, poured her another half bowl of cereal, and rushed upstairs to make myself presentable.

7:20: I brushed my teeth and put on makeup and scrunched my hair, all while waiting for S to come upstairs and finish getting ready. She took her time selecting shoes and brushing her teeth, and then she had an emergency dump, which meant we now had two minutes to get out of the house in order for me to make my appointment. I was glad I was only going for blood work and not a blood pressure check, as I was pretty close to stroke level by that point. Finally, after she pooped and washed her hands and brushed her teeth and cleaned her face and put on lotion and washed her hands again, S met me downstairs with her back pack and lunch box.

7:37: We got in the car and I backed it out of the garage. The rain hit the top of the car, each ping of a raindrop another second ticking away. “Great,” I muttered. “Rain.” Rain wasn’t the problem; the problem was that rain made all the overprotective moms drive their kids that normally walk to school, creating a clusterfuck of epic proportions in the car drop off line. The traffic was backed up half the way to school, and as we poked along, I kept muttering under my breath like a crazy street person.

7:47: I could see the turn lane for the school from where I was stuck in traffic. All the cars had converged in front of the school and no one was moving. My appointment was in thirteen minutes, and the office was a good seven interstate miles away.

“Sorry, Mama,” my daughter S said from the back seat.

“I know it’s not a big deal, but if I am late they might not see me. Plus, I am hungry. Plus, I told you we absolutely positively had to leave on time. And we didn’t, and it’s raining, and look at this traffic.” I looked at her in the rear view mirror and saw her little brown eyes get all watery. “It’s okay, S. I’ll figure something out. Oh, look, they didn’t chain off the parking lot,” I said, swinging left and quickly finding a space.

Every morning, in an effort to discourage parents from parking and walking their children into the school building, they block off the parking lot with a big yellow chain. Except that morning. We hopped out of the car and hustled our way to the sidewalk that crosses the car drop off lane in front of the school. And right while we stood there, waiting for the safety patrol to signal us to walk, the coach ran across the street and hooked up the yellow chain. “Someone forgot to do their job,” he said in his gravelly voice.

It is not appropriate to scream “Motherfuck!” in the elementary school parking lot. I only thought it.

Sarah scurried across the driveway, turning her doe eyes to me one more time and mouthing the words “I’m sorry.” I backed out of my space, saw the line of cars waiting for the chain to be removed, and then did something I rarely do: I broke the rules. I drove my car the wrong way out of the parking lot, darted across oncoming traffic, and through the narrow lane that goes in a different direction so I could bypass the wait. I turned onto the main road quickly, and sped away towards the interstate.

8:15: I signed in at the doctor’s office. My appointment was at 8:00. I was fifteen minutes late for my blood work and a full hour after my normal breakfast time. The man working the front office, and yes, my doctor’s office does have a male front office worker, looked at me and then at the clock and then at his schedule. He didn’t say a word, and neither did I.

Later that afternoon when S got home from school, she asked if they still took my blood at the office. I told her yes because I pretended my appointment was fifteen minutes later than it actually was. She wanted to know how I got out of the parking lot at school. I told her I went the wrong way instead of waiting at the chain. And she looked at me like I had three heads.

I justified lying and breaking rules to my nine year old, two things she didn’t need to learn from me. I should have taught her to not sweat the small stuff, but I haven’t learned that myself yet.

Genghis Khan, Tyrant or Restaurateur?

For a brief moment in time, my town was home to a Doc Chey’s Asian Cuisine franchise. It was not fine dining, but it was cheap and fresh and they did amazing things to eggplant. They closed a few years ago, possibly failing in their competition with PF Chang’s across the street. They also make decent eggplant, but it’s not the same. To make matters worse, the Doc Chey’s location sat empty for months and months, mocking me every time I went to Whole Foods in the same strip mall. Until a few weeks ago, when a new franchise opened its doors, the Genghis Grill, a Mongolian Stir Fry experience.  My family braved this new dining establishment last week, mainly because the line for Chipotle was out the door, but I doubt we will be back anytime soon.

I don’t know if the Mongolians are actually known for their raw food salad bars and giant griddle cooking style, but I have had Mongolian barbecue in the past, and it wasn’t much better. Near my home in Jacksonville, where I grew up, we used to eat at a Chinese restaurant which offered a regular menu and Mongolian stir fry. One of my sisters would sit and wait for her barbecued spare ribs or pupu platter to arrive, while my mother, my other sister, and I would mosey up to the Mongolian BBQ area to prepare our plates. I remember how the sliced raw meat was lined up in thin curls, still slightly frozen, which made it easier to slice, all stuck together like ribbon candy . A tray of sliced beef, all red, next to a tray of sliced chicken, more peachy pink, then pork, a paler red, and all of it a little disturbing. After the meat were the chopped vegetables, cabbage and bean sprouts and onions and carrots and peppers. And then there were all the sauce ingredients, the oyster sauce and soy sauce and red chili paste and garlic and hoisin sauce and all those things you find on the two shelves of Asian food at the grocery store.

Behind the salad bar arrangements of all these ingredients was a sign with advice on how to combine those ingredients to make a sauce, how many spoonfuls of each for the perfect combination. We would take our time selecting our proteins, our veggies, and our condiments, then hand our bowls to the gentlemen who would stir fry our food on different parts of the round flat cook top, but not so carefully as to keep our food selections from accidentally touching. Keep in mind this was before the days of food allergies and mainstream veganism, when all of your food could touch. If you picked out chicken but ended up with a little beef, well, weren’t you lucky?

After they finished tossing the food all around to cook it, they would serve it up on fresh plates and hand it back to us. We would rejoin my sister, who by this time was gnawing on her ribs or reheating a teriyaki beef stick over the blue flame of sterno.  I recall sitting down, blowing on my first forkful, tasting it, and remembering why I hated Mongolian stir fry. It all tastes the same. It doesn’t matter what combination of sauce or meats or veggies you select, once they are all co-mingling on the griddle with everyone else’s food, it just tastes like bad stir fry.

But I forgot that part when we went to Genghis Grill. I was only thinking about how much I didn’t want to wait in line for a counter service meal, and how I have to cook every night for my family, and how nice it would be to try something different and be waited on for a change.

The restaurant space, when it used to be Doc Chey’s, had a nice feng shui about it, all cozy and sparsely decorated. Genghis Grill, on the other hand, is chopped up and arresting, much like Genghis Khan’s exploits. We wove through the restaurant to be seated in what had to be the middle of the restaurant’s main thoroughfare. Our server instructed us about how we go about ordering and then standing in line to make our food. I knew we were in trouble then. If you go to a restaurant where they feel the need to explain to you how to order, than somewhere their concept got away from them. Ordering food should not take explanation, especially if you are dining in your own country.

We each were handed a stainless steel bowl (yes, you should be thinking dog water bowl) and stood in line with a bunch of people who looked really disappointed that it was not in fact a buffet. My picky kid selected chicken. No vegetables, no sauce, no seasoning. Chicken. I coaxed her into adding a little salt and pepper to her bowl of raw chicken, the looks of which was nauseating her. The rest of us made our choices (I stuck with tofu) and then stood in line near the round flat cook top that was attended by about ten short Latino men and one tall American guy who kept shouting “Noodles!”, which would prompt all the Latinos to echo him “Noodles!” in response. I am pretty sure that is the only word they knew in English.

They tossed our food around with their little bamboo sticks, each in their own area of the griddle, stopping occasionally to squirt a empty section of it with oil in a fiery display reminiscent of a Japanese steakhouse.  We were handed fun red bowls with our cooked food and some rice, since we didn’t want noodles, and walked back to our table. My picky eater immediately found a bone fragment in her chicken, which she spit into her wadded napkin. She then proclaimed her meal bland and pecked at her rice for a while. The rest of us ate quietly, without gusto. And you know why? Because it all tasted the same.Like bad stir fry.

In our silence, we looked around the restaurant. The walls are adorned with battle flag replicas and a giant fictitious photographic mural of Genghis Khan and his troops on horseback. My husband said, “Do you think in a thousand years there will be a Hitler themed restaurant chain? Khan was a mass murderer a thousand years ago, and now we are eating stir fry in his name.”

“Probably,” I said. “It’s going to be like a giant sausage fest, with all the entrees named after concentration camps. ‘I’d like the Buchenwald please, and my wife here would like the Dachau.’”

He laughed. “And the drinks can be named for notorious Nazi leaders. ‘May I please have a Mengele with extra olives?’”

Our children stared at us like we were the horrible people we are.

“All done?” I asked them. “Let’s get out of here.”

So, anyway, I didn’t much care for the Genghis Grill, but I am not sure if it’s because the food reminded me of traumatic childhood Chinese restaurant experiences or because it just sucked. Feel free to throw down your $8.99 a bowl and form your own opinion. Did I mention how much I miss Doc Chey's?