Towels

I thought that I was probably done having embarrassing things happen in a locker room.

I know. I was delusional.

But really. Surely I've met my quota by now. Surely it's someone else's turn to humiliate himself while naked in a room for naked people.

But no.

I haven't told Skylar what happened last week. I haven't told anyone what happened last week. I almost announced it at family dinner a few hours after it all went down. We were eating with Skylar's sisters and their children in Portland. But then I remembered that I couldn't tell Skylar this because then he would yell some form of "THIS IS EXACTLY WHY I TOLD YOU NOT TO GO BACK IN THERE." And I haven't let Skylar be right about anything ever so I don't want to start now.

He had told me he didn't want me to go back into the locker room that morning because we were under some kind of deadline for meeting Skylar's family to go shopping. I had brought a change of clothes to the gym and he had not, so he suggested (but in a voice that sounded more like a command) that I not shower at the gym, but instead head back over to the house and shower there, that way he wouldn't have to sit and wait for me.

Brothers?

Skylar and I traveled to visit his family in Portland for Thanksgiving. Matt came with us because he is our child and we are proud of the boy he is becoming.

I hereby suggest that all couples everywhere get a non-biased third party to go with them to visit their partner's family for holidays. It was like bringing along my own personal audience. One who could provide commentary on everything that happens by looking up from their phone periodically and saying things like "be nicer to Skylar" and "get me some food" and "scratch my back right on this spot," because Matt doesn't entirely understand that we aren't his servants.

Skylar's family is lovely and we get along smashingly.

But the whole point of this post is to address the fact that people think that Skylar and Matt look like brothers, which freaks me out. Also, I think these people are wrong.

On our last night in Portland, we went into the city with Skylar's sisters and their husbands. We were at some place that had a photo booth and someone suggested that we check it out.

Thanksmas

Look. I know. I KNOW. Putting up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving is a sin that is only eclipsed by murder in severity.

I know that. You guys. I helped vote for that rule. I canvassed and everything. When they sent us those forms in the mail asking us to rank the top five worst sins in order, I even putting this one in front of Choosing To Be Gay.

When I see Christmas decor at stores in October, I ask to speak to the manager. I even hold a purse under my arm and wear a Bump It in my hair when I do it.

I consider myself on the front lines of the War on Christmas up until December 1 every year. I go to all of the secret meetings. Remember when Starbucks changed its holiday cup to be less overtly about Christmas and all of your uncles who have never gone to Starbucks in their lives posted about their boycott decision on Facebook?

That was MY idea.

But you guys. I was bored and we are going to Portland for Thanksgiving and so I decided I wanted to come back to a house that already had its Christmas decorations up.

O.J. Simpson

This week, I have a story from when I was 11 years old. I can't believe I waited this long to tell it to you. You can hear it on Strangerville this week, and I've included the text below.

Also, I'm supposed to remind you to go leave us a review on iTunes or your podcast app of choice, if you haven't already. The reviews help us exponentially. Really. Seriously. Even one extra review will make our day and put Meg into labor, which she wants. I'm not kidding.

Please enjoy.

*****

This time in Strangerville, Meg and Eli discuss “the levels of Mormonism.” Meg agrees to let Eli deliver her baby. And an 11-year-old boy participates in a wild mock trial.

Story:

Mock Trial, by Eli McCann

Production by Eli McCann and Preg Walter

The O.J. Simpson trial happened in 1995. Anyone who was alive and cognizant then probably recalls that for the better part of that year, no one talked about anything other than the O.J. Simpson trial.

Pitcher

Make sure to check out Jolyn's new story on Strangerville, if you haven't yet!

*****

I was riding on the Subway when I heard something that hurt my ears. It came from a woman's mouth. She was in her 50s. Pleasant-looking and probably kind. So that's why it caught me so off guard.

"Larry," she said to the man sitting next to her, a man who looked exactly like her but bald, so I assumed they were married, "did you get a good pitcher of the Empire State Building?"

No. She wasn't asking if he had purchased a pitcher in the shape of the thing. She clearly meant "picture." You know. That word that has the letter C in the middle of it and is not even remotely similar in meaning to the word this woman had said.

It caught me off guard that she would say such a thing because I firmly believe that saying "pitcher" when you mean "picture" actually makes you a bad person. And she just didn't look like a bad person.

I mean, I'm not saying that doing this makes you truly evil. On the scale of indiscretions, this habit would fall exactly between sitting through a green light with a row of cars behind you and first degree murder of a pretty child. So, no, it won't necessarily send you straight to hell, but it will necessarily make you possibly deserve it.

Mock Depositions

I got to New York City a few days ago because my law firm decided that I should go to this training class.

I decided not to be offended by the suggestion, even though the class is really meant for people who are pretty recently out of law school. It's a deposition class where we spend several days taking mock depositions of fake witnesses while a panel of teachers snorts coffee and probably cocaine to try to stay awake long enough to give feedback because, as it turns out, there is something more boring than a deposition and that is a mock deposition.

It's not all bad. And the less cynical version of myself, the one that sometimes gets enough sleep and doesn't have shingles, would probably admit that the class is really helpful. This, despite the fact that a good portion of it is geared at explaining to the students what a deposition is in the first place, which might have been helpful to hear before I took eleventy depositions over the mumble-mumble years since I finished law school.

Obviously my main objective when walking into the class on the first day was to become as popular as possible because my popularity is an exact measure of my self-worth. And so I positioned myself to make all of the right jokes in all of the right places in front of all of the right people.

But because the class is really geared toward people who pretty recently finished law school, I'm a solid decade older than nearly everyone there, which is not a big deal if you're, like 75, but which is a surprisingly big deal if you're say 34.

REST

I noticed this tender bump on the back of my head sometime last week so obviously that meant that I was dying.

Meg says she's a hypochondriac. She claims to have mastered this.

Meg Walter is an amateur.

I once saw a bug bite on my hip, convinced myself that I had bedbugs, and not just regular bedbugs, poisonous bedbugs, hyperventilated, fainted at 2:00 in the morning, and then had to spend the next two weeks hooked up to a portable heart monitor so the doctor could confirm that I didn't have heart disease.

I single-handedly crashed the American healthcare system that year.

By Sunday I was convinced that it was a tumor/leprosy/bedbug-heart-disease, and so that's when I went to urgent care.

Having been around the block a few times now, I'm much more competent when dealing with my hypochondria today than I was during the bug bite situation. That's the only way I was possibly able to wait all the way until Sunday before seeing a doctor. What with my body aches, extreme fatigue, nausea, and every other symptom listed on WebMD under "things a sick human can experience."

A Murderer in our Midsts

I think Duncan might have serial killer tendencies.

He hasn't attempted to murder me or Skylar, to our knowledge. This is good, because I place my life in his paws every day. If Duncan suddenly wanted me dead, you all would be looking for a new place on the Internet to read subliminal messages about competitive PTA races by tomorrow morning. All he would have to do is put cyanide in my soup. And I know. I could decrease the likelihood of this happening by locking the cyanide closet in my house or taking him off of the cooking rotation, but I don't need to. Because Duncan doesn't seem interested in killing me.

He does seem interested in killing many other people, though. Mostly people on wheels.

We take Duncan for a walk every day to the college campus by my house. Duncan loves this activity more than any of you love your mothers. He loves it so much that if he hears us say the word "walk," he has to be sedated.

This is such a problem that we have developed a truly subconscious practice of spelling out the word if ever we have cause to say it. So subconscious, in fact, that two weeks ago I spelled it in a work meeting and then had to explain why I was spelling the word in a hushed voice like it was a swear.