TOOLBAG TUESDAY

I was reminiscing last night about writing term papers in college, bragging about how 18 pages was no big deal, when I remembered public speaking.

Public speaking was a really influential class for me, because it was the first time, ever, I found talking to be terrifying.

(And no, I’m not including all the terrifying conversations with bouncers RE: My fake ID, breakups, talking my way out of trouble, etc. that I experienced up to that point.)

This was just talking. About a boring, mundane topic. And it was terrifying.

I remember one poor girl in the class had a rash develop during her presentation that crept up her chest onto her face.

You could see its red, splotchy path moving up her upper body and taking over, like a storm cloud. 

I remember nothing of what she said. That’s how much the rash took over the spotlight.

“Perhaps…you can wear a turtleneck for your next presentation,” the professor concluded.

I must have completely erased my memory of that semester, because I can’t for the life of me remember what any of my three presentations were about.

All I remember is practicing my speech and being baffled by the fact that my 18 pages only accounted for SIX speaking minutes and I had another nine minutes to figure something out.

…And then when I was actually talking to the class, I spoke WAY slower than practiced, and 18 pages would have been perfect, but now I had 30 pages and therefore had too much information.

THAT SNEAKY BITCH SECOND HAND.

Anyway.

In conclusion, (haha get it) it wasn’t a class that needed any additional stress built in to it.

Which is why I remember how mortifying it was for my friend Aubry when she had to give HER speech to the class, which included the hottest college soccer player…

…who she had slept with the previous weekend after a few dates.

…Who had not called her back.

AWKWARD.

The assignment was a “persuasive” speech about any topic, and Aubry had decided to do her persuasive speech about taking the stairs instead of the elevator.

She outlined all her points about health, exercise, removing the possibility of getting stuck in a metal box and how in most cases, taking the stairs is actually faster.

And she never got a rash, so I’d say the speech was a success.

I remember walking to class, Aubry told me how embarrassed she was about the hot soccer player and how she had called and left him a message on his answering machine (haha awww) but he hadn’t called her back. And it’s been three days.

“This is the first time I’m going to see him since I left his apartment,” she said.

Aubry’s speech was the last of the class, and IN CONCLUSION, she said, there’s no reason NOT to take the stairs if you’re going less than five floors unless you are handicapped or incapacitated.

When the class filed out of the room, everyone realized that we were on the third floor.

HAHAHAHAHA

There was a visible pregnant pause as the class considered the elevator right in front of the classroom or the stairs down the hall.

And in a show of solidarity, every person in the 20-person class moved towards the stairs. Aubry beamed.

Except hot soccer player.

“OMG,” Aubry nudged me as we made our way down the corridor. “LOOK.”

I turned around. There he was: the only person from class to take the elevator. Waiting, as he pressed the button to go down three floors. LOL

DICK.

It would have been a rude move for anyone in the class who wasn't uhhhh handicapped or incapacitated, but this was especially glaring.

She dated a guy who took the elevator after her “persuasive” speech on taking the stairs.

Seriously.

Dick.

LOL

“Maybe he’ll get stuck,” I said. "Maybe he'll develop a claustrophobic rash."

And have to wear a turtleneck.
Terrifying.

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

Of course I’d like to write post after post about how horrible I find it that Trump won, but I know my place in Web land: I write about douchebags my friends and I have dated, not douchebags who were elected.

But I honestly believe that if you voted for Trump, you need serious therapy (AND need to travel abroad).

Because you hate people you’ve never even met.

How is that possible?

Entire groups of people who have done nothing to you and have done nothing wrong.

(Insert peanut gallery: I DON’T HATE PEOPLE I’VE NEVER MET! I JUST DON'T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH MY WORLD LEADER HAVING THAT MINDSET!!! I’M ACTUALLY A GOOD PERSON!!!)

Sure.

You just told the world—and the next generation—that that is OK.

It’s heartbreaking.

Anyway. I’m exhausted.

Do you know who else is exhausted? People who have mono.

Remember mono? Is mono is still a thing???

All I remember about mono from college is that it was embarrassing to get because it was the “kissing disease” but also beneficial because if you got it, you would lose ten pounds. 

Because you’re too tired to eat and your throat is swollen.

According to WebMD, i.e. the hypochondriac’s bible, mono is mostly found in teens and young (college age) adults. 

Or very old people who have compromised immune systems.

But, it surfaced last week in a healthy 36-year-old man!!!

…From Tinder.

Lol kissing disease.

It was a very weird encounter between Greg, the guy from Tinder with Mono, and my friend Melissa.

Greg and Melissa met online and then in real life and had a fantastic (and healthy) night together. And then Greg dropped the news that he actually lives three hours away and was only in town on business.

LOL

He agreed that they had a great night and a great connection and that he’d come back to town the following weekend so they can recreate the magic. Melissa was excited.

But after texting for two days about how he was going to book a room at a posh new boutique hotel downtown, Melissa called Greg on Wednesday to talk about the weekend details and he told her some bad news.

“I can’t make it,” he said. “I think I have mono.”

(Uhhh random self-diagnosis.)

“Oh no!” Melissa said, wondering if now SHE had mono.

Then she added, playfully, “Who have you been kissing?”

That’s when Greg went off.

“NOBODY! I HAVEN’T BEEN KISSING ANYBODY, UNLESS YOU COUNT MY DOG!” he said.

“Or…except for me,” Melissa said.

Greg didn’t respond.

“Hey, woah, I was just joking…” Melissa said. “Because it’s called the ‘kissing disease…’”

(UHHH, also he’s on Tinder; let’s not pretend he’s not kissing people, possibly college girls.)

“Well I don’t think it’s very funny!” Greg said. 

Then...OMG...Melissa said he started YELLING. 

“I DON'T APPRECIATE YOU NOT BELIEVING ME!" he said. "So I’m NOT going to come in town this weekend. I’m CANCELLING THE HOTEL ROOM!”

LOLOLOLOL

"I don't appreciate you not believing me."

Umm. Believing what? That he got mono from his dog or that he wasn't kissing other people?

Now Melissa felt sick.

Who was this angry person who went off on a joke??? 

Was this how he acted when he was sick?

Wait...was there even a hotel room booked?

Melissa froze. “Ok, well, feel better…” she said, truly disappointed. 

She texted him a few times over the weekend with the soup emoji and everything but got no response.

Now, a month later, she hasn’t heard from Greg since.

LOL

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Maybe he died from mono-related spleen-bursting complications!!! (thanks WebMD)

No. Of course, his Tinder profile has been active since then.

Melissa’s feelings were pretty hurt when she noticed. 

WTF did she do??

Why couldn’t he have been honest??

Why couldn’t Greg have said, “Look, I’m basically a sleaze, I have no idea what I'm talking about, I yell at people for doing nothing wrong and make them feel really bad about themselves.”

I don’t know, in today’s world, that type of honesty would get him elected.

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

I normally hate making blanket statements, but do you know what 30-something females DON’T miss??

The Michael Jackson crotch grab.

You know, the one where a guy puts his hand over his pants crotch, cupping what is most likely a micro-penis??

…It’s not a good look.

I’m sorry that I’m making you remember MJ’s douche dance move, but that’s what a 50-something year-old guy did to me last week, when I was hosting bar trivia.

And there was no music playing.

Paul, a complete stranger, had been bothering me while I hosted bar trivia for about a month.

He was always at the bar by himself—a creepy sign—and he kept trying to start conversation with me while I was speaking into a microphone or trying to sort through and log teams’ answers on my laptop.

Week after week, he thought it was OK to come up to me and personally tell me the answers to the questions I asked, engaging me in conversation.

And week after week, I threw a pad of paper and pencil at him and said, “If you want to play, you’re going to have to write down your answer on a piece of paper. You can’t just tell me what you think the answer is.”

It took him a few weeks to finally tell me that he “liked me” excusing the fact that he was 20 years older than I was, at least, and excusing the fact that I told him I have a boyfriend, ThankYouVeryMuch.

But Paul continued to bother me and run up to my table every time I asked a question to whisper the answer in my ear.

But last week, he graduated to Michael Jackson CREEP.

The question I asked was, “what body part do you examine if you use an 'otoscope?'”

Answer: The ear.

Paul, who was outside on the patio at the time, came running back into the bar, a man on a mission.

“I know I know!!!!” he said to me, as usual. Then he suddenly grabbed his crotch, four feet from where I was sitting.

“YOU EXAMINE THIS!” he said, laughing.

I believe my face contorted into the look of someone who was hungover and about to puke, and who had just smelled rotten eggs.

I hated that he made me look at his crotch. 

What kind of man are you to have to trick a woman into paying attention to that part of your body????

Oh and P.S. I could have had him arrested, I'm sure.

I stopped speaking to him instead, complete cold shoulder that I learned from a police officer in fifth grade as a tactic to ignore someone who would offer you drugs, as he stood there next to my table and chair.

“The correct answer is…EAR,” I said slowly and loudly on the microphone to the 50 or so people playing bar trivia.

Then, I added, “NOT YOUR DICK, PAUL.”

And then I stared at him with my rotten egg smell face as the room got silent and he turned red and got embarrassed.

…And that’s how I got rid of Paul.

(Drops mic.)

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

There are a few teeny tiny things wrong with taking up 90 percent of your first online date with someone talking about your “bitch ex-wife.”

The obvious being, you’re not over it.

The second being, you clearly aren’t a very good judge of character.

The third being, it makes you look bad that your wife had to go out and cheat with lots of people because she wasn’t getting what she needed from you.

(Hey-ooo)

The fourth being, I DON’T CARE.

Now that I think about it, there really is nothing I care about LESS than hearing about the bitch ex-wife of a total stranger I met online. On a first date.

But somehow, there I was, in early 2015, eating at an Italian restaurant with Henry, who spent 40 minutes explaining to me in great detail about the time he found out that his “bitch ex wife” sold her wedding dress and engagement ring on eBay.

Who uses eBay anymore? I wondered to myself.

Henry added that “bitch” was “crazy” (aren’t ex-wives always crazy??) and even though SHE cheated on HIM, which he knew for a fact because he had her phone traced (ohhh…boyfriend material!!! JK, LOL), she's been making his life a legal hell and he needs all kinds of lawyers.

Plus she shattered his car window with a beer bottle.

I don’t really know what Henry was expecting from divulging all this information, or if he knew that I was uncomfortably darting my eyes to the door to see if there was a similarly short, blonde female pointing a gun at us.

(You know, between checking her eBay bids.)

Ha

I suppose he thought that I’d feel bad for him or something.

I hate to say it, but it wasn’t the first time a guy had unloaded to me about a messy, baggage, unattractive EX on a first date.

At least this time the ex wasn’t a legit crack whore.

(I wish I was kidding.)

But no.

At least with Henry, I didn’t need to confirm that his ex who he had been reminiscing about for the past 20 minutes, who he had lived with and SLEPT with, was actually a crack addict, and also a prostitute.

“Only a prostitute to pay for more crack!!”

Oh, well, that’s way better.

WHY LEAD OFF WITH THIS INFORMATION???!?!?

HOW IS THIS A GOOD IDEA?

WHO'S GOING TO GET EXCITED ABOUT EITHER ONE OF THESE GUYS???

Ugh.

No bidding.

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

It started off as a typical conversation you’d overhear on any honeymoon.

“Babe, you need to delete photos off your phone so we can take pictures of Hawaii!”

Peter was driving at the time, in their rented car, in Hawaii, so he asked his wife of two days, Greta, to delete his phone pictures.

After a minute of looking through his camera roll in silence, Greta spoke.

“Do you want to keep pictures you have of text message screenshots?” Greta asked.

“No,” Peter said. “Those are probably from work, when I had to reference an order number.”

Greta paused.

“Ok, well what about the screen shot of texts between you and someone named ‘Jessica’ about wanting to know what color panties she’s wearing?” Greta asked.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“DO YOU WANT TO KEEP THAT ONE??” she asked.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG. Nightmare.

It was amazing that Peter didn’t crash the car into a volcano after that.

“What?” he played dumb. “Who?”

And then all he could manage was, “What, you don’t trust me?

Um.

No.

Then, “You really don’t trust me? I’m your HUSBAND.”

LOL

LOL

(Like he takes that role seriously.)

Greta then looked in horror as she pulled up “Jessica” in his phone and saw MANY, MANY texts to her, the most recent one about her panties that was sent TWO DAYS BEFORE THEIR WEDDING.

OMG.

Nightmare.

“Pull the car over!” Greta shouted. “PULL THE CAR OVER NOW!”

He did, at the closest restaurant, repeating himself, while she jumped out and instructed him to leave.

“You don’t understand, it was nothing…” he said.

LOL

But Greta had seen the rest of the texts and they weren’t as PG as asking about her panties. (If you don’t think asking someone about her panties is "PG," then you definitely don’t want to see the rest of this douche movie.)

It was a complete shock. They had dated for EIGHT years and Peter had given no indication that he was a cheater, or dumb.

DUMB in that he couldn’t even cover his tracks correctly…who saves a screen shot of their affair?!?!?

Greta would never have married someone that unintelligent, had she known.

VOMIT.

VOMIT ALL OVER EVERYTHING!!!!

PINEAPPLE HULA VOMIT!!!

Peter eventually admitted that “Jessica” was a co-worker, but insisted that it was “nothing,” despite what MONTHS of sexting revealed. 

And then Peter decided to go ahead and remind her again that he was her husband, as if that wasn’t adding insult to injury.

"I know I'm an asshole cheater and liar, but I'm your HUSBAND!"

LOL

I hope her divorce lawyer works the line, “take a picture, it’ll last longer...than your marriage,” into the proceedings.

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

There’s a time and a place to ask a new girl for her number.

…And that time and place is not after your EX-girlfriend confronts you at a bar in front of everyone about the dog you share custody of.

(That doesn’t really make you a good candidate for a new relationship, Mr. Baggage.)

But that’s exactly what happened to my friend Rachel last week, who had been talking to a nice, cute guy all afternoon.

Rachel met three guys at a neighborhood restaurant where they have long community tables and they bonded over burgers and all decided to move to a new brewery down the street.

At the brewery, one guy named Robert zoned in on Rachel, sitting by her, asking her a lot of questions, buying her a beer.

After about an hour exchanging life stories, a blonde girl came into the brewery and tapped Robert on the shoulder. All of the guys looked at her, stunned.

“WE NEED TO TALK NOW,” she said. Robert tried to casually play it off, smiling at Rachel like there wasn’t a demanding blonde girl next to him.

His friends tried their best to look away.

“NOW!” she yelled and yanked him outside where they were clearly having an argument using their hands. After five minutes, Robert walked back in and told the bartender to close him out.

“Sorry, that was my ex-girlfriend,” Robert said to Rachel. “We share a dog and if I don’t leave right now, she’s going to take him away from me forever,” he said.

???????

(Ed note: That dog isn’t the only thing that got its balls removed LOL)

“What?”

“It’s a long story,” Robert said.

“Wait…how did she even know you were here?” Rachel asked. They had all spontaneously decided to go to the brewery.

“I don’t know,” he said and he signed his credit card receipt in a hurry.

Then he looked over at her.

“Hey, do you think I could get your number?” Robert asked.

Hahahahahahahahaha

(Hmmm…I guess he does have balls.)

Haha

Who asks a girl for her number while being dragged out of a bar by their ex?

That’s not a good look.

“No I don’t think so…it looks like you’ve got a lot going on already,” Rachel said.

Ha

Then she watched Robert hang his head and walk out of the bar, presumably, on his way to the dog house.

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

We’ve long been in an era where guys expect to sleep with someone after a first date.

…EVEN AFTER THEY ASK THE SERVER TO SPLIT THE CHECK.

You can’t blame a guy for trying I guess, since first date sleepovers happen all the time.

But it’s what happens after they get rejected for a sleepover that is a true test of their character.

LOL

(Yes, this is how low the bar is set.)

(Also….PAY FOR THE ENTIRE DINNER BILL.)

I can pretty much guarantee that how a guy handles a sleepover rejection is how he’ll handle any other obstacle in his life, so this really is a good test.

Did he get pouty? Persuasive? Weepy?

Jerry, on the other hand, got mean and rude.

Not a good look, Jerry.

Jerry and my friend Kylie went out on exactly one date, after meeting through co-workers at a restaurant where she worked.

Jerry was cute, from ENGLAND with the accompanying accent, and had a non-restaurant job.

He lived in a nice neighborhood in a cool part of downtown and they made plans for Kylie to park near his house and they would walk to a café nearby for dinner.

She rang the doorbell (how chivalrous!) when she got there and Jerry’s roommate answered.

He was also cute, although not from England. Ha. 

They made small talk about the restaurant where she worked and mutual friends who worked there, when Jerry came to the door and they left for the restaurant.

Kylie said it was a perfectly fine dinner date—and he paid!! Bonus!!

She said they didn’t have a whole lot of things in common but she would definitely have agreed to go out again. 

...Until they got back to his apartment and it was clear that he wanted her to sleep over.

There are a million, ok, fine, 20 reasons why she didn’t want to spend the night with Jerry, none of which were any of his business. 

But they did make out a little and then Kylie politely said that she was just going to go home for the night. 

And that’s when Jerry got rude.

“Oh, OK, so it’s going to be like THAT?” he asked, as if there was a THIS that they agreed on, and she was backing out of it.

Kylie suddenly found his accent less cute.

“Ummm if by ‘that’ you mean going home then yes,” she said, still trying to be casual.

Jerry pulled away from her, angry.

And then he took it really personally.

“Well, my flatmate upstairs thinks you’re pretty,” he said. “You can go upstairs and F*CK HIM if you want.”

!!!!!!!!!!!

???????

WHAT?!?!?

She didn’t want to F*ck anybody!

 “What?” she asked.

Was this some sort of bizarre back handed compliment?

“Well, you know, if I don’t do it for you, then you can always go upstairs.”

WHAT?!?!?

Well, if he was doing it for her, he certainly isn’t NOW.

How insulting.

Kylie said she was waiting for Jerry to laugh, or say it was a joke, but that didn’t happen. 

He immediately walked into the other room, leaving her alone in the living room.

Feeling horribly cheap, Kylie immediately left the apartment without saying goodbye.

...And thought seriously about giving him four flat tires.

-Jenny