Leggo My Ego!

With the end of the semester fast approaching, my scheduled office hours have overflowed with students from the classes I teach who have no hope of receiving a passing grade, begging for mercy.  Regardless of all the times I scrawled Purple Sharpie Words of Doom on their papers, my exhortations of “Please come see me” or “We need to discuss your grades,” drifted through the echo chamber between their ears like tumbleweeds.  Helpful observations like “You are such a dumbass, be glad that breathing is an involuntary physiological function” went without notice.  But now? With a week of class left, now everyone wants to be a model student.  My ass has been kissed so much this past week, it’s burnished to a beautiful copper glow.  And it’s a nice ass, too! 

Since I can no longer run I’ve been doing a bunch of workout DVDs.  Oh, no, not your mother’s workout DVDs.  No Denise Austin or Kathy Smith for this ol’ Dingo.  I’ve been doing Crunch’s cardio dance DVDs.  I have no grace.  I have no coordination.  As we say down home, I look like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.  But it’s fun and I think it’s working. I also love the cardio sculpt DVDs.  The only DVD I’ve had issues with is the Jillian Michaels 30-day Shred.  The title makes me think of shredded cheese!  String cheese!  Blocks of cheese!  And then I wander away from the exercises on the TV screen and into the kitchen for a little snack.  So, yes, I have a nice ass if your idea of a nice ass is one shaped like a Bonbel cheese ball.

All this working out had me feeling pretty good.  But that was before I had my ass and my ego handed to me on a platter.  It started innocently enough.  The other day a friend sent me an email about an audition.  A cosmetics company was looking for “real women” to use in their next ad campaign.  The only instructions contained in the email were directions to the audition location and orders not to wear make-up because they wanted our natural beauty to shine through.  Natural beauty!  Ha!  You know they just wanted to us to show up looking like cadavers so they could ambush us for an edition of Extreme Makeover: The Ugly Truth.  Because we all know that women who don’t wear make-up are ugly, right?

Anyway, a week of PMS, getting my va-jay-jay waxed, and re-playing Izzie and Alex’s wedding on Grey’s Anatomy over and over again assured me that I was a real woman, so I went to the audition. Sans make-up.  No one died from fright as I walked down the street, although a few people gasped in horror and averted their eyes.  When I got to the audition location, the sign-in sheet had additional information.  Important information.  Information I should have been made aware of before traipsing my cheese ball across Manhattan during rush hour.  Right at the top of the sign in sheet in a BIG, BOLD font was:

We’re looking for Real Women between the ages of 20-30 to be the new faces of Cosmetics Company blah, blah, blah….

Wait, wha?!  Ages 20-30?  I signed in anyway.  I was already there and what could it hurt?  As I sat in the waiting area with a herd of sixteen-year-olds trying to look twenty, I was relieved to see another woman my age.  Actually, she looked older.  Much older.  As in, those aren’t freckles, honey, those are age spots.  I accidentally on purpose glanced at her sign-in information.  Under “Age,” she had written 23.  Twenty-three!  I wanted to let her know that we were supposed to write our age, not the year of our birth, but she was already deeply engrossed in reading Cosmo Girl.

Another thing I noticed about The Lying Old Lady was that she was wearing make-up.  I looked around the waiting area.  Everyone was wearing make-up!  Bitches!  And not just a light dusting of powder and mascara.  No, these girls looked like living, breathing Bratz dolls.  Geez, am I the only one who follows directions?!  Well, except for that 20-30 years old thing.  I quickly rummaged through my bag for some powder, eyeliner, anything!  But all I came up with was a tube of lip gloss that had lost its top and was therefore caked with fuzz, furr, and other detritus from the bottom of my bag.  It would have to do.  I put my bag on the floor and pretended to rummage through it while surreptitiously using the lip gloss to give me kissable lips and rubbing a little on my cheeks for that youthful glow.  I was proud of my resourcefulness until I looked in the mirror next to the sign-in table.  If they were casting for Bette Davis’s character from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane: the Trailer Park Production, I was a shoo-in. 

When they finally called my name I walked into the room where the Cosmetics Company make-up artist and photographer were taking pictures and scribbling notes on a legal pad.  Most of the girls who had gone into the room before me were back there for at least ten minutes.  I kicked myself for not using the restroom while I had the chance.  But I needn’t have worried.  I was in and out in ten seconds.  They didn’t even ask me to sit in the make-up chair under the bright department store dressing-room-type lights.  The photographer and make-up artists huddled around my information form, cast dubious glances my way and then muttered “Thank you” in my general direction.  “That’s it?  You don’t need to take my picture?” I asked.  “No m’am, that won’t be necessary.” M’am?!  Did they just “m’am” me?  I would’ve beaten them with my cane and flung my dentures at them had my hip not chosen just that moment to go out. 

But I didn’t leave empty handed.  On my way out Make-up Artist handed me a consolation prize. “Thanks for coming in!” she bleated.  “Here’s a 20% off coupon for Cosmetics Company make-up.  It’s also good for our line of wrinkle reducers and fade creams!” Oh, no she d’int!  Oh, yes, Innernetz. Oh, yes she did.

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