If you’re reading this, you’re probably a woman. Or perhaps you’re a gay man getting a present for your even gayer friend. Maybe you accidentally bought this thinking it was the Malala book.
I’m the kind of person who becomes silent when I get scared, because I hope Death will not notice me if I am very still and very quiet. It has worked well so far.
I’ve found that a well-fitting padded bra can transform me from a pear-shaped woman to an hourglass-shaped woman. Okay, maybe not hourglass-shaped, but definitely, say, an egg-timer-shaped woman.
If I sound bitter, that’s because I’m still a little bitter.
I’ve enjoyed an endless supply of free paper, paperclips, envelopes, and office supplies since joining The Office, because I steal props on a regular basis.
The first thing you need to know is that the hair on your head is worthless. The color, the length, the thickness, everything. You will never see anyone on TV sporting their own God-given hair, unless it’s on, like, a sad miniseries about factory workers in East Germany. The same goes for hair color. Yes, your natural color may be appropriate for your skin tone, but this isn’t the land of appropriate – this is Hollywood, baby.
It wasn’t until later that I realized Paul’s quietness was a result of his confidence. He didn’t need to shout to be heard.
My theory is that this is because there’s a huge overlap between people who are good at Frisbee and people who do Teach for America. The same instinct to make at-risk kids learn, which I admire so much, becomes deadly when turned on friends trying to relax on a Sunday afternoon in the park.
I love romantic comedies. I feel almost sheepish writing that, because the genre has been so degraded in the past twenty years or so that admitting you like these movies is essentially an admission of mild stupidity. But that has not stopped me from watching them.
They gave you that trophy so you wouldn’t feel bad, not because you deserved it. You should know the difference.
I lost my mind. I lunged at him and inhaled all of his fries standing up a foot away from the trash can. No food is as delicious as food you eat standing a foot away from a trash can. Ask any possum.
Once, while living in New York City in the early 2000s, I was asked to leave a sports bar because the Yankees were playing my hometown Red Sox on TV and I lost my cool at a guy who was loudly dissing them. I yelled, “Derek Jeter is baseball’s Hitler!
One very gratifying compliment I sometimes hear is that women want to be my best friend. This endlessly amuses my actual best friend, Jocelyn, because in her estimation I’m ’a good friend, but not that great.
I am slightly offended by the way busy working women my age are presented in film. I’m not, like, always barking orders into my hands-free phone device and telling people constantly, “I have no time for this!” I didn’t completely forget how to be nice and feminine because I have a career.
It was finally clear. The reason I’m Kind of Hindu and will raise my daughter to be Kind of Hindu is to have this connection deep inside my own heart to other people who look like us and have shared key experiences, thousands of miles away. I don’t have to be full-on religious, and I doubt I’ll ever be knowledgeable enough to satisfy her or my curiosity about our faith, but I’m really going to try.
Why is it that chatting with friends is energizing, but making small talk with acquaintances takes such monumental effort?
So my second realization was that I would rather be lonely than be friends with non-friends. Losing friends is hard, but losing fake friends, as it turns out, is pretty damn easy.
I enter the party with my heart racing, scrambling to find the nearest bar, and ultimately wind up talking for hours to the teenage daughters of the host, who love The Office. After answering all the girls’ questions about John Krasinski, I say I need to use the restroom, secretly exit through the back, and sprint to my car, never to be heard from again.
The problem was I didn’t want just anyone’s company. I wanted the company of funny, smart, like-minded people. That’s when I realized something about myself: I would rather be lonely than bored.
Women always take bad behavior by men and twist it to make it so it’s somehow our fault, not theirs. It makes more sense to us that we’re somehow wrong than the possibility that a man is being rude.
People who know I have social anxiety like to say things like: “You may not want to go out, but you should just force yourself. You’ll be glad you did!” That is a lie.