Tag Archives: Characters

Debbie Diapers and the Amazing Technology Craptacular

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When I opened this post and titled it, I thought I wanted to write the whole sordid double-feature story of the Little Router That Couldn’t and The Pokey Little Cell Phone.  But I seriously don’t even want to get into what has been my own personal electronics hell for the last few days, so I’m just going to jump right into the highlight of my hell — Debbie Diapers, some miscreant mom in the parking lot of the Sprint store.

I dragged mikey to the Sprint store yesterday with me in a fit of “I’m Getting a New Phone Before I Throw This Against the Wall” and parked next to us was a fairly nice black town car of some sort.  Mike got out of the driver’s side and as I was about to exit the passenger side, I noticed a woman slowly making her way from the passenger seat of the town car.  She saw me waiting for her, but she took her sweet time.  I realized she had a very wee baby with her, so I took a deep breath and tried to be patient. Finally, she rolls out of the car with her baby and starts to walk away.

Using his Spidey Sense, Mike immediately ran over to the town car, bent over and looked underneath.  The look on his face said it all.  Oh yeah.  Diaper..  Used, stinky, poo-laden, stranger-person’s diaper left in the parking lot.  That has long been a “thing” with me… I hate littering of any sort, I hate it. But leaving a napkin on a table is a far cry from leaving feces under your Lincoln. We have laws against leaving your dog crap on the ground, you’d think that it would be understood that people crap is pretty much a no-go.

It was confirmed that yes, there is, indeed, a diaper under the car and I noticed that as the woman was walking away, she glanced back at us a few times. I was certain she knew we were talking about her.  Perhaps it was my, “She did WHAT!?” that tipped her off.

So, anyway, maybe it was my already foul mood, but I’d had enough.  I figured, “Who cares? I’m never going to see this woman again. What’s she going to do?  Shank me?” While she was still a good few hundred feet ahead of us, she entered the Sprint store. How convenient!  With purpose I marched right through the doors, right past the front desk helper girl (mike stopped to give her the dish) and straight up to Debbie Diapers, who was standing with her assumed husband at the counter.  In a voice loud enough for people nearby to hear, but not loud enough that I looked like a crazy person, it went a little like this:

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Fiddy Wouldn’t Front

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I’ve not been feeling well lately.  Nothing catastrophic, just a bit of a summer bug, I think.  So, I dragged my sorry self out to the grocery store. I figured it would do me some good to get out in the fresh air and off the couch, plus, I really needed some diet 7-up and saltine crackers.

I’m standing in the last aisle of the store (seriously, why do they put the soda and the crackers way at the end by the tampons and dog food?), deciding between fat-free and regular multi-grain saltines for a good couple minutes and noticed a woman out of the corner of my eye, perusing the soda.  To paint a picture for you, she was a heavyset black woman, wearing skin-tight orange stretch pants, a poncho, a knit beanie, flip flops and sunglasses.  She had her own unique style I guess. She reminded me a lot of Big Shirl from What’s Happening only with Paris Hilton-style paparazzi glasses — for all that press we get in the snack aisle. Anyway, she turns to me out of nowhere and exclaims, “Giiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrl!  Why they trippin’ like dat?”

Startled, I looked around and smiled at her in that, “I’m not entirely sure what you’re on about and I am friendly, but please do not encroach on my personal space” sort of way.  She started going off on this rant about how soda costs nothing to make and how could those “soda folks be all frontin’ like dat!”?  I was polite and laughed where appropriate. I was cordial while she went on about how she got the “2 litter” apple green tea for only “fiddy cent” at the dollar store and “these co-prit mothafuckas are robbin’ us!  Just robbin’ and frontin’!”

Apparently, the “frontin’” didn’t sit too well with my new friend because she started shuffling all the 2 “litters” all over the shelf, putting things back in different places, determined to undermine the “soda-frontin’ mofos”, as she put it.  After a few seconds of this, I wished her a good day and tried to scoot before she roped me into some crazy Thelma & Louise crime rampage that might leave me flashing a Coca-Cola truck driver or taking the store manager hostage over an overpriced bottle of Yoo-Hoo.  I’m not going off a cliff for Big Shirl.

As I finally turned the corner, she was moving on to the other end of the aisle and she stopped and called out, “You know, you cool, sugar.  Wanna help me mess up some of that toilet paper?”

Tempting… but no, thank you.

Trigger Happy Jack

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I’ll call him Jack. Not because his name was really Johnathan, but because I can’t remember his name.  I’d just moved to Dallas and didn’t know anyone, so I used this fine phenomenon, the internet, to meet people.

Jack was a writer, a literary genius.  Jack was dark and self-deprecating.  He’d lived in Prague.  I was sick of the bullshit of online dating and decided to cut to the chase.  After one day of conversation, I said, “Let’s meet and get it over with.”

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Love Me Tender

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Lou was a regular at the lounge I used to sing in. He was about 40 and I was around 21 or 22. He was sort of…rough. Fluffy REO Speedwagon-bordering-on-Richard-Marx-type mullet, leather Members-Only-looking jacket…you get the point. He came in all the time, for months, and one night invited me over to his place to watch movies with some other people after I finished my set. I said sure.

When I walked into his apartment, it was the Dirk Diggler Dojo, I swear. Shag carpeting, wood paneling, mirrored walls with that gold fleck in it, karate crap lying around, framed posters of naked women with an assortment of jungle animals. It was…skeezy, to say the least. It rapidly became obvious that no one else was coming over and when I realized this, I decided to hit the ladies to figure out a graceful exit.

In the bathroom, I pulled out my keys, kind of gave myself a pep talk and opened the door. Now, the bathroom was IN his bedroom, but it was dark when I walked through their the first time.

I was greeted with Elvis playing (bloody Elvis!) with candles everywhere illuminating the fine, fine Barbie Twins artwork that adorned the walls.  Lou was stretched out in style on a big round waterbed with a white tiger-print fur bedspread. Lou was naked. Lou was…cold. Lou was wielding a gigantic double-ended silver dildo over his head, purring, “Come here. You are such a dreamy puppy.”

Indeed, you read correctly, dreamy puppy. I was so shocked, I dropped my keys. However, I rapidly gained my composure, grabbed my crap and ran out of the room, out of the apartment and down the hall. Last I ever saw of Lou, he was running after me, apologizing, yelling “Dreamy Puppy, wait!” and pulling on his pants as the elevator doors shut.

And that was Lou.

Whispering Punanni & Slick Dick

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I hate Whisperers.  You know those people I’m talking about—those that find it necessary to get right in your personal space and whisper at you, for usually one of two reasons: they’re gossiping about something you don’t give a rat’s ass about or they’re just smarmy like that.

I have two such people in my office.  One is a girl I’ve dubbed Whispering Punanni because my friend GeeDub says that he can smell her business when she’s over whispering at his desk.  She’s always gossiping about something, usually something as thrilling as last night’s hoochie extravaganza involving apple martinis.  I can hear her whispering way over at my desk.  You can almost hear the spittle.  Whispering Punanni is part of a clan I call the Halter-Top Broads™.  You know, the type of girls who care what kind of car you drive, have rhinestones on their toenails and compare themselves to the characters on Sex in the City.

The other guy is someone I call Slick Dick.  You know the one.  The one who calls people “Guy” as in, “Hey guy, do you have that file for me?” He has an intimate relationship with his mousse.  He wears slip on Kenneth Cole mules with stripped socks, grinds his Starbucks at his desk and smacks of smarm.  He often sidles up to me, completely oblivious to my intentional lack of eye-contact, lest I inadvertently invite him to converse with me, and whispers something like, “Hey Jo…how you doin’?” then he’ll swallow and wink.  Piss off.

Jo.  He calls me Jo.  The few and privileged call me Jo.  My name is Joelle, dude. Not “guy”, not “babe”, and certainly, not Jo.  So why don’t you take your new age tuchus out of my personal space and take Punanni with you.