Yesterday, we took Oliver to the vet to get him, as Helena put it, “de-manized.”

He was scheduled to be de-manized last month but the procedure was delayed thirty days because he still had too many baby teeth and apparently, when you have too many baby teeth, you can’t get your balls whacked off.

But only if you’re  a dog.

I bet if you’re a man, you’re crossing your legs and thanking God right now that you’re a homosapien, am I right?

Do dogs know about this? Because I’m thinking if they did, they’d be brushing their teeth with Gorilla Glue and gargling with cement. Wouldn’t you?

At first, I was surprised that there was any correlation at all between teeth and testicles other than the typical FOR GOD’S SAKE, BE CAREFUL! THAT ISN’T A CORN ON THE COB, YOU KNOW correlation which isn’t so much a correlation as it is a deep seeded phobia for men everywhere. But then I remembered I wasn’t supposed to be thinking like a human male, I was supposed to be thinking like a canine male and as a canine male, I realized that I could not have cared less about deep seeded phobias with corn-on-the-cob scenarios because I eat my own poop and lick my business 24/7 to the shrieking soundtrack of FOR GOD’S SAKE, WHY DOES HE KEEP DOING THAT? AND WHY IS A LIPSTICK GROWING OUT OF HIS GROIN? COULD THIS BE ANY MORE GROSS? in surround sound.

The vet technician explained to me that some dogs, especially smaller ones because of their smaller mouths, have baby teeth that need to be extracted to allow sufficient room for emerging adult teeth, thus avoiding potential dental problems in the future. In these instances, vets prefer to do the extraction during the castration so as to minimize the number of times a dog is put under anesthesia to have various body parts cut off and sent up to that great big ball factory in the sky.

Having never before de-manized anything in my life, despite what you may have heard from my ex-husband or the Frigidaire repairman, this made sense to me. Then again, so did getting a perm seven years ago so what the hell do I know?

I wound up taking Oliver and all the body parts God gave him home that day and told the kids to watch for tiny teeth falling out of his mouth and perhaps they had better strap a Dixie cup to his muzzle to catch any such deciduousness lest one fall out onto the floor because if I stepped on it and was forced to rip off my feet at the ankles and drag my bloody leg stumps to the laundry room to soak my infected piggies in bleach, I was not going to be a happy camper.

Thirty days passed in which we discovered that Oliver’s mouth was very much like his bowels in that they refused to drop their precious cargo on anybody’s schedule but their own, which schedule comes with a handy dandy ETA of NOT IN THIS LIFETIME SO STOP STARING AT ME o’clock.

So yesterday I brought Oliver, with all of his original teeth and testicles into the vet’s office for de-manning and was told that he needed six of them pulled. And before the rumors of Oliver being some blessedly deformed, five pound manly stud muffin go flying all over cyberspace, I meant six teeth, not six testicles. He only has two of those.

Had. May they rest in peace.

Six extractions. To the tune of $areyououtofyourfreakingmind. Keep in mind, this was in addition to the basic de-manning fee which had already exceeded $holyshitballsbatman since I had opted for the better anesthesia and better pain medicine because while I might have your cajones hacked off, I’ll insist that you get the best happy buzz possible out of the deal because I’m nice like that.

Long story short … oh, who am I kidding? We passed that seven paragraphs ago. I’ll just say that I think the vet must have had a change of heart and took pity on us or maybe she took a few puffs off the old anesthesia pump because when we went to collect Oliver, we paid only a fraction of the extraction quoted and I was so happy that I wrote a song called “Extraction Fraction, What’s the Attraction?” and emailed it to Schoolhouse Rock with a proposal that they use it as the “B” side of  “Conjunction Junction, What’s Your Function?” and they emailed me back with Dear Andrea, You’re sweet and odd. No one knows what a “B” side is anymore. Please take your medicine and enjoy the seventies. Love, Schoolhouse Rock which is probably for the best anyway because the last thing we want is our kids on the playground chanting a song about yanking teeth and testicles off a dog. Am I right?

So bottom line, I’m out $holyshitballsbatman plus change and Oliver is out tooth fairy money. Oh, and his manhood.

I totally got the better part of that deal.

.

.

A dear high school friend of mine came into town last week, one whom I hadn’t seen in over 15 years and one night we got together with two other dear high school friends, one of whom I hadn’t seen in 13 years, and reminisced about the days when we were cool, toned, stretch-mark free and clueless as to how many times we’d eventually utter the phrase BECAUSE I SAID SO in our lifetimes, despite vowing to each other more than once that we’d never become our parents.

Seated at this table is:

Someone who doesn’t have any stretch marks.

Two others who wish I were talking about them.

A combined total of 81 years of wedded semi-bliss representing 5 marriages and 1½ divorces.

Four people who never romantically dated one another.

Two maids of honor and one bridesmaid.

The parents of nine future productive tax payers of America.

Four parents who just now crossed every appendage they own and said a little prayer.

Two people who have sent kids off to college.

Two others who wonder how that will feel.

A redhead who inspired this.

Someone who went sky diving and wears hooker boots. But not at the same time.

Someone who accidentally killed a mommy duck and cried hysterically before stopping traffic to collect all the baby ducklings so she could raise them at her house.

Someone who, seconds before this picture was taken, shoved all of his and another’s beer bottles in front of someone else who had only drunk water that night.

Someone who exited the ladies room and them immediately entered the men’s room, despite only drinking water that night.

Someone who claimed in her defense that the restroom alcove was dark and confusing.

Three others who didn’t believe her.

Someone who once skipped school to go four wheeling with her loser boyfriend.

Someone who once skipped school to go with her.

Someone who runs marathons.

Someone who runs 2 miles and then vomits.

Four people who went to Cine 8 to watch a movie twenty-eight years ago and then risked getting killed crossing Ridge Road at midnight because the only thing better than a movie with friends is a movie and an ice cream sundae at Friendly’s with friends.

Two people who, late one night twenty-eight years ago, waited on the side of a road for their loser boyfriends to pick them up and who were, instead, driven home by a gym teacher who not only had great timing but also a handy dandy lecture on the dangers of waiting on roadsides late at night for loser boyfriends.

Two people who were smart enough to go to their senior ball together as friends so they weren’t stuck like someone else whose date who was going through the motions because he thought he was going to get some later.

Someone whose senior ball date got NOTHING.

One who, twenty-three years ago, lived with another and her husband for awhile, and then went on to live with the mom of yet another, all because she felt she couldn’t go home until she had completely screwed up her life.

One person who walked another out to her car late one night thirteen years ago and told her that she was stronger than she thought she was and that divorce was not going to get the best of her, who then gave her a hug and let her cry on his shoulder.

More than thirty years of memories.

Three of the best choices I ever made.

.

.

Yesterday, I had lunch with one of my best friends from high school. We hadn’t seen each other in fifteen years, ever since our tenth year reunion. She looks exactly the same as she did in high school and I swear, the minute we sat down, it was like we were seventeen again and Mr. Shumanski caught us passing notes in social studies and confiscated them and then demanded that I explain characteristics of the Middle Ages to the entire class and Gemma tried mouthing CRUSADES to me behind his back but I was so nervous about the content of the notes gripped in his hand that I shouted the first thing that came to mind which was UMMM, GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH? And Mr. Shumanski opted for neither and instead, gave me a three page essay assignment for homework.

And that was how Mr. Shumanski came to read 1,000 neatly written words, double spaced, on the rise and fall of feudalism during the Middle Ages, as well as 25 scribbled words on the back of a trigonometry review sheet on how totally excellent we thought S.G. and S.L. were and did we think they’d ask either of us out because OH MY GOD, WE WILL HAVE A COW. I think my feudalism piece made for more interesting reading, to be honest.

I leave you with a piece I wrote a couple of years ago on being seventeen. As Archie and Edith Bunker once crooned way out of tune, “those were the days.”

Happy Sunday, everyone!

.

*****************************

She was just seventeen, if you know what I mean …

.

My fourteen year old daughter asked me the other day if she could get her working papers for a job this summer. After I picked my jaw up from where it had fallen on the floor, I said sure. Actually, it might have come out more like HOLY CRAP, YOU BETTER BELIEVE YOU CAN, GET IN THE CAR. And then I got all excited because I was actually seeing light at the end of that long, dark, scary, endless I-AM-NOT-AN-ATM-MACHINE-FOR-CRYING-OUT-LOUD tunnel.

It got me to thinking about my early days as a wage earner. I went the traditional route at first and built up a great reputation as a babysitter – little human beings loved me. I rotated between a couple of good, reliable families, sacrificed my weekend nights and made quite a bit of money for a couple of years. All right, perhaps “sacrifice” is a bit of overkill. I was a painfully shy fifteen year old with braces, glasses, bad hair, acne and I lived in a town 50 miles past the middle of nowhere. What else was I going to do with myself?

My babysitting career was brought to a screeching halt after I turned sixteen. I agreed to babysit for a new family with a toddler whom I like to refer to as Satan and that was the beginning of the end that came four hours later. This child’s parents had called me at the last minute, having been referred by someone who knew someone who knew someone. They practically begged me to help them out and at $2 per hour, I just couldn’t pass it up. I should have gotten a clue by the maniacal sprint they did to their car once the door closed behind me but I was naive.

Four hours later, I wasn’t naive anymore. Cleaning up thrown spaghettios, dirty toilet water and piles of poo scattered here, there and everywhere tend to knock the blissful ignorance right out of you. If the book had even existed back then, I would have said the Devil does not, in fact, wear Prada, he wears pull-ups and is three feet tall and I’d rather chew off my own tongue than babysit him again. This was painfully obvious to his parents as they pulled up to their house and found a blubbering heap of me on their front step. I resisted their pleas to give SISPU a/k/a Satan In Scooby Pull Ups another chance, mumbled something about being busy for the next two years and got the hell out of Dodge. I headed straight for the mall where I thereafter found my dream job.

I started work at a local record store in our mall and can I just say, THAT JOB ROCKED. I was seventeen with perfect teeth and good skin, thanks to Dr. Strauss and Neutrogena respectively. Puberty had finally gotten its act together and I was not all together hideous anymore. In fact, I looked pretty damn good. It was smack dab in the middle of the eighties which meant I had BIG hair and lots of it, tons of makeup, thick shoulder pads, shorty short mini skirts and high heels. Shiny black patent leather four inch heels, to be exact – the first to be seen at my high school, thank you very much. Sometimes I wore them with cute little frilly socks, sometimes I didn’t. Either way, I had a killer set of legs and a fantastic figure and I worked in a place that played the latest and greatest in albums and cassettes and attracted everyone who was anyone. In other words, I was cool for the first time in my life and I made up for lost time in a way only an attention starved seventeen year old wallflower-turned-hot-chick knew how: at warp speed.

It was vinyl heaven and we’d rip the cellophane off any album we wanted and whip that baby onto our state-of-the-art turntable, turn the sound up to sonic boom level and let it rip. We were next door to GNC Vitamin Center and our daily mission was to shake their bottles off their walls. It was usually mission accomplished by dinnertime, thanks to a particularly loud piece by Mötley Crüe. You’d think their manager would have pitched a fit, but more often than not, he’d be AWOL, only to be found sifting through our head banger section.

I loved my job. I heard all the new releases first, got huge discounts on all the music I loved, met some great people and got to dress up in funky clothes that I got at incredible discounts because I was a mall employee and friend to a lot of other mall employees. I learned to flirt and was surprised at how easy it was to get some extra sauce on my fettucini alfredo simply by inching my skirt up a bit. After work, I’d hang out with these friends, all of whom were older than me and into the bar scene. They took pity on poor underaged me, doctored up my license and next thing I knew, I was a faux 22 year old burning up the dance floors at Flashbacks and Club 2001. Good times.

Would someone mind checking on my mom? I think she just fainted.

It’s hard to believe that I got near straight A’s in high school considering the above, isn’t it? But I did. I managed to keep my priorities in order for the long haul even though they veered a bit off course in the short run. I’ll always be grateful to my friend Pete who had my back at all times, making sure I was safe every time I went out. He was convinced I would tire of the scene in short order and he was right because he was always right, something that used to piss me off at first but then became what I trusted most. Of course, the suspicious bouncer weighing in at 400 pounds at Club 2001 who confiscated my fake i.d., helped curb my underage wild ways as well. HE WAS SCARY.

Eventually, I found my way to college, maintained an almost perfect 4.0 grade point average, graduated Summa Cum Laude, became a productive taxpayer, got married and started a family, in that order. All of it to the immense relief of my parents as I think it’s entirely possible I may have shaved a couple of years off their lives.

(As a side note: I am now well-versed in the theory of karma, having a teenage daughter of my own right now. I TOTALLY GET IT.)

Anyway … that record store and the mall it lived in don’t exist anymore and I don’t know of anyone who even owns any actual vinyl today. Any remnants of that seventeen year old with the drop dead figure are long gone now. But sometimes when this 41 year old wife and mother of two plays the oldies station in her car and hears Smokin’ In The Boys Room, she’ll sing off key at the top of her lungs, ignore the gawkers in the passing cars, and tap her flip flopped feet on the gas and brake pedals. And for a brief moment, that woman will yearn for some shiny black patent leather four inch heels.

And some killer legs to go with them.

.

.