Many years ago, I went to Club-Med in Martinique.   While there I met a guy from Paris named, Laurent.  He was probably the most beautiful guy I’d ever seen in my life and therefore, by the Martiniquian law and because he acknowledged me,  I had to sleep with him.

When I returned to New York City, I had every intention of continuing the relationship. After all, I was a temporary employee/stand up comic, so it wasn’t like I didn’t have the means to travel back and forth to Paris and he, being a student, well, it was pretty clear, he too could well afford to hop on a plane to New York City whenever he felt like it.  So, naturally, the next step was for me to start taking French lessons so that when we married in somewhere in say, Monaco, I would understand what was being said.

Back in those days, I would’ve done anything to please a guy, (see paragraph one), and when it came to Laurent, I was no different. Not long after we returned from Martinique, Laurent called me.

JESSICA: Hey Laurent, how are you?

LAURENT: (in the sexiest voice ever) Well, I am good but who is Laurent?

JESSICA: (nervously laughing) You….right?

LAURENT: Ah, no, my name is Noel.

to which I thought:

JESSICA’s THOUGHT: okay, here’s a new low. Sleeping with a guy and I didn’t know what his real name was?

but to which I responded:

JESSICA: Of course. I’m sorry, I’m just tired.

Within the next 5 minutes, I had convinced Noel/Laurant, that H&H made the best bagels on the planet earth, when they were fresh of course and convinced him to let me send him a couple of dozen to Paris.

Now, of course, the only way to that was going to happen, if at all, was to ship the bagels using Federal Express which brought the total per bagel to somewhere just under the million dollar mark. Genius.

Anyway, the end of the story is that Noel/Laurent did receive the bagels and called to tell me so and to inform me that he had also “received”  a girlfriend, just not in the same package.

NOEL/LAURENT: I am very sorry. But you know we live so far away from each other and I’m sure you will find a nice guy for you.

to which I wanted to respond:

JESSICA’S THOUGHT: First of all, no, I won’t. Second,  I know you have no money and I have no money, but you are totally hot and I’m not and you are probably the best looking guy I’ll ever sleep with and I realize I might sound mentally ill when I say we could have lived like supermodels, you know, New York, Paris, the catwalks, even though I’m only 5 ‘3″ and 25 years old and for some reason when a camera gets to close to me my nose grows to 5 times it’s regular size, I know that, but still, dammit, this could’ve worked!

but instead just said:

JESSICA: Great. Okay, Well, enjoy your bagels.

I then hung up the phone, cried my eyes out and the next day resigned from my French class.

Hey, C’est La Vie? Right or as they say in MY America, “F**k ‘em”.

Happy Nueve De Mayo everyone. I missed Cinco de Mayo because I was busy getting hacked and hoping Go Daddy would cease to exist because I made them refund my $132.00 hosting fee. So far no, but I’m still holding out hope.

Anyway, in honor of Cinco De Mayo, I want to share a post with you from a time when the only people that read my blog were those who owed me money or were hoping to one day inherit my sweater coats. So here it is.

Yo espero tu esta teniendo un buen fin de semana mis amigas.  <that means I hope you are having a great weekend my friends and can I borrow ten thousand dollars.

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The other day I was at the grocery store. Out of pure laziness, I didn’t bother to grab a cart since I only planned to purchase a few items. As I was walking towards the check out counter, one of my tuna fish cans dropped onto the floor, right at foot of this kid who looked to be around 15 years old
As the kid/man-boy, whatever, grabbed the can and put it back on my pile of stuff I laughed and said:

JESSICA: Sorry, first day with my new arms.

to which he responded:

MAN/BOY: OOhhhhh, that’s so great. You look great.

Okay, now I know that there are many people out there who could easily be described as “not the sharpest knife in the drawer” but as I watched this kid look to where my real arms ended and the prosthetic ones began, I realized “not the sharpest knife” just didn’t go far enough to explain the kid’s state of mind.

However, later that day, I got to thinking about all the dumb statements I had made in life and suddenly felt not only a new understanding of this boy but a kinship as well.

“What day is Cinco de Mayo?” I once asked a friend of mine
“What kind of animal is Toucan Sam?” I asked another.
“Don’t try and pull the bag over my head”, I once announced to my then husband.

(and my all time favorite)

“She was so scared, the hair on her back stood up” I said as I described a friend’s reaction to a guy she thought was following her.
No, these are not made up statements. I have at one point in time actually uttered these very words to another individual and trust me, I was way older than fifteen.

In fact, if I’m to be totally truthful with you, I must confess that the line about the bag over the head is not even close to the only time that I have butchered an idiom to the point where the person I am saying it to has been pushed to ask me, “What the f@#k are you talking about?”

And I’m not the only one in my family with this problem. Like heart disease or Cancer or even Excema, the inability to remember an idiom is an inherited trait that has affected every member of my entire family for generations. It is now at the point where we are all loathe to even take a stab at sharing a story, a thought or God forbid, give any advice using any type of idiom whatsoever.

Not that it stops us from trying. When my family and I talk amongst ourselves we will refer to an idiom just not in its exact form. For instance – not long ago I was talking to my sister about buying a new car. She thought it was stupid because I had just told her that for a yearly savings of a hundred bucks, I’d cancelled the call waiting feature on my phone and yet here I was, willing to add a car payment to my monthly budget simply because at that time, I was driving my old c**kblocker and I couldn’t handle the way men refused to look at me as though I were Phoebe’s grandmother.

Now the appropriate idiom for her to have said to me would have been, “you’re being penny wise, pound foolish”. Of course, I’m able to tell you this because I just got off the phone with a friend who was able to recite what the idiom was that I was looking for. Sadly, however, when I was having this discussion with my sister, the conversation went more like this:

MY SISTER: Well, you know, what is that saying about money?

ME: Don’t be stupid or foolish or something…

MY SISTER: Yeah, right, uh… you’re being foolish and something, something….

ME: Yeah, yeah, Wait, God, what is that saying?

MY SISTER: I don’t know, just don’t do it

ME: Oh God, it’s killing me. What is the line..

MY SISTER: I have no idea. Just save your money. I have to go, Emma just told me
her butt is itchy.

Sad. So sad….