I don’t think my mom really fell for the whole sick act, but she didn’t say anything about it. She just went, “Suit yourself,” and left with Mr. G. Which, considering the mood she’s been in lately, is actually letting me off pretty lightly.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I am such a failure. I mean, I have all these problems. I want to go to the prom with my boyfriend, only he hasn’t asked me, and I’m too afraid he’ll think I’m being pushy to discuss it with him. I don’t want to spend my summer in Genovia, but I signed a stinking contract saying I would, and now I don’t think I can get out of it. My best friend is trying to do all this good for mankind and everything, and I can’t be bothered to lift so much as a piece of posterboard to help her out, even though the person she’s trying to help is someone whose misfortunes are all my fault in the first place. And my grade is starting to slide in Algebra again, and I don’t even care.
Really, with all that weighing on my shoulders, what choice do I have but to turn on the Lifetime Movie Channel for Women? Maybe if I watch some movies about real-life women who’ve surmounted nearly impossible obstacles, I might find the courage to face my own.
Hey, it could happen.
Saturday, May 3, 7:30 p.m., half hour before my party is to begin
I don’t think turning on the Lifetime Movie Channel for Women was such a hot idea. All it did was make me feel inadequate. Really, I don’t know who could watch movies like that and not feel bad about themselves. I mean, here is just a sampling of what some of these women endured:
The Taking of Flight 847: The Uli Derickson Story: The Bionic Woman’s Lindsay Wagner saves all but one of the passengers in this true story of a plane hijacking in the mid-eighties. In the movie, Uli convinces the hijackers to spare the lives of the passengers by singing a touching folk song, causing the hijackers’ eyes to tear up.
Unfortunately I don’t know any folk songs, and the songs I do know—such as Bif Naked’s “I Love Myself Today (Uh-Huh)”—probably wouldn’t soothe anyone, especially a hijacker.
The Abduction of Kari Swenson: Michael J. Fox’s wife, Tracy Pollan, stars in the true story of an Olympic biathlete who gets kidnapped by hillbillies who want to make her their bride. Ew! As if camping isn’t bad enough. Imagine having to camp with people who’ve never bathed. But Kari gets away and goes on to win the gold, and the bad guys go to jail where they make them shave every day and brush their teeth.
However, I am no biathlete. I am not even an athlete. If I were kidnapped by hillbillies, I would probably just start crying until they let me go in disgust.
A Cry for Help: The Tracey Thurman Story: The Facts of Life’s Jo gets brutally assaulted by her husband while the cops are watching, then successfully sues the police for failing to protect her, striking a blow for victims of stalkers everywhere.
But I have a bodyguard. If anybody tried to assault me, Lars would hit them with his stun gun.
Sudden Terror: The Hijacking of School Bus #17: Maria Conchita Alonso, fresh from her role as Amber in The Running Man, plays Marta Caldwell, the brave driver of a Special Ed bus that gets hijacked by a guy who is mad at the IRS. Her calm and gentle demeanor keeps the hijacker still long enough for a SWAT officer to shoot him in the head through the bus window, much to the horror of her Special Ed charges, who are hit with the guy’s blood spatter and brain tissue.
But I take a limo to school, so the chances of this happening to me are moot.
She Woke Up Pregnant: This is the true story of a woman whose dentist has sex with her while she is under anesthesia for a root canal. Then the dentist has the nerve to say he and the patient had an affair and that she’s making up the rape thing so her husband won’t get mad about the new baby… until, that is, a female cop goes undercover as a patient, and the cops use a lipstick camera to catch the dentist in the act of taking the cop’s shirt off!
But this would never happen to me, as I have nothing in the chestal area that would be of interest even to a psychopathic dentist.
Miracle Landing: Connie Sellecca plays First Officer Mimi Tompkins who manages successfully to land Flight 243 after its roof is ripped off mid-flight due to metal fatigue. She is not the only brave one on that flight, since there was also a flight attendant who kept checking on the people in the front of the plane where there was no roof, and telling them they were going to be fine even though they had giant pieces of airplane carpet stuck to their heads.
I would so never be able either to land a plane or tell people with massive head wounds that they were going to be fine, due to the fact that I would be barfing too hard.
Seriously, I don’t know how anyone can be expected to just hop out of bed after viewing movies like that and feel all good about themselves.
Even worse, I happened to catch a few minutes of Miracle Pets, and I was orced to admit that as a pet, Fat Louie is pretty much the bottom of the barrel, intelligence-wise. I mean, on Miracle Pets they had a donkey that saved its owner from wild dogs, a parrot that saved its owners from a house fire, a dog that saved its owner from dying of insulin shock by gently shaking her until she ate some gumdrops, and a cat that noticed its owner was unconscious and sat on the auto-dial 911 button on the phone and meowed until help arrived.
I am sorry, but Fat Louie would be no match for wild dogs, would probably hide in a fire, wouldn’t know a gumdrop from a hole in the wall, and wouldn’t know to sit on the 911 button if I were unconscious. In fact, if I were unconscious, Fat Louie would probably just sit by his food bowl and cry until Ronnie from next door finally went insane and got the super to let her in to shut the cat up.
Even my cat is a failure.
Worse, Mom and Mr. G had a fabulous time without me at BJ’s. Well, except for the part where Mom totally had to pee but they were stuck in the middle of the Holland Tunnel, so she had to hold it until they came to the first Shell station on the other side, and when she ran to the ladies’ room it turned out to be locked so she nearly ripped the arm off the gas-station attendant when she grabbed the key from him.
But they found tons of Queen Amidala stuff, including panties (for me, not the party guests, of course). My mom poked her head into my room when they got home to show me the Amidala panty six-pack she picked up, but I just couldn’t work up any kind of enthusiasm about it, though I tried.
Maybe I have PMS.
Or maybe the weight of my newfound womanhood, seeing as how I’m fifteen now, is simply too much to bear.
And I really should be happy, because Mr. G hung all these Queen Amidala streamers up all over the loft, and strung flashing white Christmas lights all through the pipework on the ceiling, and put a Queen Amidala mask on Mom’s lifesize bust of Elvis. He even promised not to jam on his drums along with th
e music (a carefully selected mix put together by Michael, which includes all of my favorite Destiny’s Child and Bree Sharp releases).
WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME???? Is this all just because my boyfriend hasn’t asked me to the prom yet? Why do I even care? Why can’t I be happy with what I have?
WHY CAN’T I JUST BE GLAD I EVEN HAVE A BOYFRIEND AND LEAVE IT AT THAT?