I got a Peapod delivery a couple of months ago, and she jumped into one of the cooler boxes they put all my Lean Cuisines in while I was awkwardly negotiating how best to tip the driver. Dude made it all the way downstairs in the elevator before either of us realized what she’d done. I was surprised when I heard another knock and opened the door to see your uncle Jim back in his green polo. “Oh, hi! Did you find those triple-absorbent extra-long overnight maxi pads I ordered that you thought were out of stock?” (Listen, I’m not going to rent a car to get groceries, so this is gonna have to be the way, but can we just talk about how awful it is when they go down the checklist of what you wanted that they ran out of at the warehouse and you have to pretend not to care that there aren’t six cans of SpaghettiOs with franks in any of those bags?! They never run out of the spinach you ordered, just to look healthy; it’s always the Popsicles or the Pizza Rolls that you have to be like “that’s okay” about even though NO, SIR, THAT IS REALLY NOT OKAY. I once had to stand in the hallway and sign the form as a grown man was forced to inform my actual face that the three bags of “sweet-and-sour watermelon gummy snacks” I had paid for would be refunded because they weren’t available, and I have never prayed harder to be struck dead in my entire life, can you even imagine?) Anyway, your dad’s best friend rolled his eyes at me and pointed into one of the boxes where I saw eighteen pounds of misery sulking up at me. I shrugged at him, heaved her into my arms, then dumped her out into my place. “Nice try, fucker.” I smirked as she immediately tried to lick my touch from her precious fur. “Too bad they didn’t have those nine bags of tropical-flavored Jelly Bellies you ordered,” she shot back. “If you need me I’ll be molting black hair onto all the white shirts in your closet.”
I’m tired of this thankless bullshit. I’ve spent seven real years letting this fool sneeze all over my stuff while bringing basically no cheer to my life and I’m done with it. I know I should feel happy that she survived her harsh early life, but I had a bad childhood, too, and no one’s letting me sleep all day in the sun while they serve me delicious, portion-controlled meals and take all my garbage out. Could you imagine if Helen was your boyfriend? You get up at five thirty in the morning for work, tiptoe around so you don’t wake up His Highness, stub your toe in the dark multiple times while hastily dressing in clothes that you won’t realize don’t go together until you’re out in daylight waiting for the bus, and spend twelve hours slaving under a brutish dictator, only to come home and find that your companion is lying in the exact spot in which you left him. Except now that the sun is up, you see that his stinky body is curled around that sweater so new you haven’t even had a chance to take the tags off it yet. And then what does he do? Get up to greet you with a kiss and a shoulder rub? No, that animal yawns in your face before taking a shit with the door open and asking how soon you can get dinner ready. This is what my life with Helen is like, except worse, because she’s not even tall enough to change the battery in the smoke detector when it starts beeping. You wouldn’t put up with this from a human with actual earning potential for more than a week, yet I’ve been suffering with this ingrate “cat” roughly the size of a human child for the bulk of my good years. Enough is enough. I’ve wasted all my black hair and uncreased forehead on this monster when I could’ve had a fish or a lizard or, better than that, NO PET AT ALL.
So I have one cat for sale. Scratch that, I’m giving her away. Free to even a marginally good home, but a terrible one is preferred. Black-and-white domestic shorthair, definitely part goblin, spayed (for the good of the species), fully vaccinated. Bites, hisses, growls when provoked, pretty malignant overall; won’t destroy your furniture or living space but definitely is in regular communication with dark spirits. Neither cute nor friendly, will rebuke all attempts at cuddling. Loves eating but nothing else, except maybe mayhem, as she is clearly a disciple of the serpent of old. Pros: FAT. Cons: TRASH. Inquire within.
Do You Guys Pay Your Fucking Bills or What?
I have no idea how people who actually have money talk to their children about it. But I sure as shit can tell you how poor people do.
? “No you cannot have that.”
? “The lights will come back on Tuesday when I get my check. Until then stop letting the cold air out of the freezer. I don’t want that ground beef to thaw out.”
? “Wash those underwear out in the sink and hang them up so you can wear them tomorrow.”
? “Put back that box of [insert name of overpriced boxed breakfast cereal] and get a bag of those [fruit circles/oaty o’s/wheaty flakes] from the bottom shelf. Don’t you look at me like that, it’s the same fucking thing.”
? “Do you really need every Sweet Valley High book? Go back and read the ones you already goddamn have.”
? Removes package of Capri Sun pouches that the juice box fairy anonymously slipped into the grocery cart and replaces them with dusty bottom-shelf boxes of orange drink while glaring in my general direction “Don’t try me, Samantha Irby.”
? “Quit playing on my phone, you’re gonna run up my bill.”
? “Who told you that you could order all these Columbia House tapes?!”
? “Steer the car while I push it down the street to the gas station.”
? “DID YOU HEAR ME? PUT THAT SHIT BACK, I SAID YOU CAN’T HAVE IT.”
The only time I ever saw my mother in an actual bank was the day my parents sat down at the kitchen table and decided, much to the relief of every family within earshot of our snarling-German-shepherd-chained-to-the-garage, Chevy-Caprice-on-blocks-in-the-yellowed-front-yard suburban home, to finally go get a goddamned divorce. After they shook hands amicably, Mom excused herself, collected me from the bathroom where I was trying to drown my Barbie dolls in the tub, then drove us straight to the bank to withdraw all but one dollar from my parents’ joint account.
After moving out of my dad’s house, we moved from one cramped apartment to another, as the important business of my early life was negotiated in currency exchanges, Social Security offices, and food pantries run out of church basements, and transacted in WIC vouchers, money orders, and rolls of quarters for the Laundromat. I had no idea what a credit card was; I thought rich people just dove headfirst into the piles of gold coins they kept in their money rooms like Scrooge McDuck and then came up with enough stuffed in their pockets to buy things from the comfort of their gold-plated limousines. My only experience with credit was the dude at the corner store who would write down how many cartons of expired milk I was taking home so my mom could pay for them the third Wednesday of the month when the SSI check came.