TOOLBAG TUESDAY

I’ll admit it, I’ve wanted to be a fly on the wall before just so I could hear what a guy I liked said about me to other people.

What glowing words would he say?
That I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to him?
That his life would be meaningless without me?

(Also, what does “narcissistic” mean???)

No, but really. I feel like everyone is at least a little curious. What exactly does someone you’re in a relationship with say about you when you’re not around?

My college roommate, Amy, found out quite unfortunately what her boyfriend, Peter, said about her when he accidentally butt-dialed her from his cell phone one day.

(It wasn’t so glowing.)

He called her a “thunder-thighed coke head” and then she heard Peter and all his friends laughing.

GASP. That is NOT how my fantasy “fly on the wall” dream would play out.

Amy listened for a full minute after that, fuming, and hung up the phone when Peter and his friends moved on to more boring topics.

She ran into the living room and told us roommates the story, and we all dropped our jaws when we heard it.

They dropped even more when Amy’s first reaction was, “What an asshole! He KNOWS I’m paranoid about my thighs!”

Peter and Amy dated for four years, but for the last year they were off and on, and made a game out of who could piss each other off the most.

(Peter, if you remember, beat our door down and put a dead baby shark under our house. Winning? I think not.)

Amy called Peter back right away and we all waited, nervously.

“Hello, PETER….Oh, NOTHING. Just that I got a PHONE CALL from you a second ago…yea, you accidentally called me…and I heard you call me a THUNDER-THIGHED COKEHEAD. OH YES I DID!”

We heard Peter yelling through the earpiece.

“WELL, WHY ARE YOU LISTENING IN ON MY PHONE CALLS?” he demanded.

All of our eyes got big.

“I wasn’t listening in on your phone call, I picked up my phone after YOU called ME and I heard you!” Amy screamed.

“WELL WHEN YOU REALIZED IT WAS AN ACCIDENT YOU SHOULD HAVE HUNG UP!”

We stood there frozen. We didn’t know how to respond to that. Peter was quick.

Amy was thrown off-guard, but she brought him back to the scene. This wasn’t supposed to be about her. This was supposed to be about him.

“OH, so you don’t think there’s anything wrong with telling people that I’m FAT and use drugs?” Amy asked.

Peter deflected.

“All I’m saying was that it was a private conversation that you OVERHEARD when you shouldn’t have! That’s like me reading your diary and then getting mad about stuff you write about me. I shouldn’t be reading your diary in the first place!”

We slowly crept out of the room as we heard, “A DIARY IS NOT THE SAME AS LAUGHING WITH YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT ME!”

We decided to grab a beer and left the house leaving them to fight it out, and we made a new goal: to only find boyfriends who said nice things about us, not air our dirty laundry/body image insecurities to their friends.

At the very least, someone who locks their keypad.

-Jenny