For a variety of reasons I have met more women this month than any other month of my life. I mean hundreds of women. And somehow they’re all like me.

1. They/We are compulsive about compliments. I had this conversation with strange women eight times just last week. Them: “Your hair is so pretty!” Me: “My wig is so pretty! But thank you!” I get it, I chased a woman down to tell her I liked her pants.
2. They/We go from “Hello” to “Vulnerable” at warp speed. I walked next to a woman and fifty feet later we had already bonded over our shared parental abandonment and our efforts to write books. Her name was Heather. I will probably never see Heather again.
3. They/We can spot a fellow depressive and share our version of What It’s Like immediately. It’s like veteran’s who survived a war. We few, we unhappy few, we band of sisters.

It is also exhausting. I felt like I was in a hall of mirrors with infinite copies of my flattering, overshaing self stretching into the distance. And now I feel like I want to go into a no-girls-allowed clubhouse and have men just grunt at me.

Behold ye the floating buffalo!

He was originally:

I didn’t want to bother doing the detail in the front or on his fur. It was too boring back in the day. Now it’s the best part.

I was watching a friend teach a class recently. Poor thing had a cough, so much so that I walked up during a prolonged hacking fit and gave her a cough drop I’ve had in my purse since last winter. Then I returned to my seat in the back of the room among random women who had already announced they were giggly with exhaustion.

A few minutes later the giggling was directed at me. I turned my head and the woman to my left snickered, “Your face!”

I already knew what my face was saying, it was saying, “Oh God, my friend is teaching this class drunk off her tits on cough medicine.” There was just a reeling kind of cadence to her voice. “Not too noticeable,” I told myself.

“You looked so worried!” my classmate said. “And then you thought no one could tell. And then there was just the touch of a slur and you looked horrified.”

I primly folded my hands on top of my purse and admitted that perhaps our instructor had overindulged on the cough syrup a bit.

I managed to avoid watching the 1962 film version of Cape Fear by hiding in my Mom’s womb. Once I was out I continued avoiding it until a few years ago, when I saw it as a part of our Film Noir binge.

Then there was the 1991 remake by Martin Scorsese. I read it was more brutal, more violent, and I don’t know if there were any raw eggs in it, but the ads creeped me out so much that I couldn’t imagine seeing it.

So now I have learned that there’s another remake coming out in June on Apple TV. Child rape and bullying for the 21st century.

I know I’m giving off grandma vibes about You Kids Today, but every thirty years we have to put up with this? Really?

My room is small and is easily cluttered, so everything on the desk has to earn its place, and the underwear box had lost its novelty.

I was tossing it in the trash when I saw this on the back.

Underwear box has earned his keep and lives on another day.