please don't do this to me

 

I am in the shower trying to open a cellophane sample of shampoo.  I am old and fast losing strength in my fingers and soon I won't be able to open anything.  I can see the headline, "Elderly Woman Starves to Death in Apartment.  She Was Not Able to Open Jars or Rice Packages."  The sample says for coarse, unruly damaged hair and I'm feeling slightly insulted by that clerk back in San Diego who said you will absolutely Luh-OVE this as she stuffed the thing in a designer bag.

I am getting ready for another family party on Husband's side. They're loud and coarse, tit-grabbing, sailor swearing, salt of the earth people living on the flats in this river town, jobs at the meat packing plant, German work-ethic driven people. I attended my first Husband family affair eighteen years ago. I sat at a table with the women relations trying to be invisible and Husband's mother is coming in the front door, my first time meeting her. I am wanting to be the best, the best person to sit next to, the best person to be introduced to, the best person ever. Right before mama sits down Vickie, Husband's niece turns to me and says,"so who the fuck are you?"
"Please don't do this to me," I whimpered.

I kind of like Vickie. She has a clever aloof smile that makes her look like she has some terribly important secret she's not going to tell you. I gotta admire her pluck although misplaced but I like the unusual and unfettered in people, especially women, we don't get to be that way too often. She and her husband run a funeral home and the first ever crematorium in this city. Her daughters are fond of wearing Daisy Duke short shorts, kinda slutty and I have threatened Husband that if he drags my corpse to their funeral home I will haunt his last moment. The place is the size of a gymnasium and my introverted circle would prefer something more intimate, amazing grace and all that.