What’s life without humor? One huge reason why I love reading Nora Ephron’s work: we have the same idea on life and writing. Here’s what she said about negative experiences and using them for writing material: “When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh.”
Her screenwriter mother always said, “Everything is copy.” As she was dying she told Nora, “Take notes.”
So if your skirt flies up in the air, a boss tells you you’re not cut out for that crappy job, you smash into a pyramid of Champagne bottles at the grocery store (all of which have happened to me)… turn that horror and humiliation into humor. Other people and/or bad experiences can make you feel lousy only if you allow them to. Laugh. Take notes. Write!
In the summer of 2010, during the worst part of the recession, I sold luxury cars at a San Fernando Valley luxury car dealership showroom – Jaguars, Aston Martins, Lotuses…
Every Monday – I mean EVERY Monday (no matter if you had a day off or were dying) – we were expected to show up for the morning meetings. We had to get pumped up to sell, sell, sell – you know.
So one Monday morning meeting, I sat in the room full of mostly men (about 100 to 3), between a beautiful, feisty and stylish Filipina who didn’t take any crap, and another saleswoman, a gorgeous, Southern blonde former Miss USA, who’d had her crown taken away by Donald Trump after her raunchy (Eh, she had some fun, so what?) behavior hit the media; she sold Astons upstairs, near the James Bond-esque Aston Martin member only room (leather walls, bond theme door bell, top shelf liquor behind the bar, pass code, vault).
A male sales manager stood at the front of the meeting room, and asked for everyone’s attention. He then began his “pump us up to sell” speech, and turned on a scene from the movie “300.” On the wall before us, buffed, bare chested men were pumping themselves up for battle (get the analogy? Selling cars, it’s a battle!). I elbowed my fellow female co-workers, and began to wolf-call and howl at the screen. My feisty friend joined me: “Yeowww whoo hooo!” The manager giving the speech scowled, “Who’s doing that? Have some respect.”
I rolled my eyes and whispered to the feisty Filipina to my right. “Yeah, right. If those were women in bikinis on that screen would this room full of men be quiet? I think not.” Working with these guys everyday, I knew what hornballs they were.
So I howled some more. The battle leading General (errr, sales manager) stomped over to us three women and pointed his finger. “Stop that now!”
1) “This is the WORST turbulence I’ve EVER felt!” said a female flight attendant who fell to her knees near my seat, as we flew through a storm above the East Coast. Yeah, that’s reassuring.
2) “Do you REALLY think you should be drinking that wine?” I was asked by a fifth grade boy I chaperoned, along with 60 other kids, including my own, for a week long American history field trip to Valley Forge in Pennsylvania, which involved screaming kids, bitchy/cliquey mothers, lost children, a kid with a nut allergy I nearly killed by offering him a peanut butter filled pretzel, humid school buses and “the worst turbulence” one flight attendant ever experienced. I answered the child this way: “Oh yeah, I really think I should.”
3) “We’re gonna give that another shot,” said our pilot trying to fly into JFK, after swooping the plane down and then swooping back up, as if we were on some horrific roller-coaster. While a middle-aged male passenger screamed like a baby, a female New Yorker behind me barked out, “One more shot?! Are you friggin’ kiddin’ me?!”
4) “You can stay at my place,” offered a flirtatious male flight attendant during a flight so horrific I wrote a story about it. My response to his lecherous offer? I cried. Actually a better term would be “bawled.” I looked at him and sobbed in his face… not just mere tears, but gasping, heaving, blubbering wails. (I wrote about this horrific plane trip in my up-coming book, Craving Normal.)
Me: You know that Crowded House song, “Mean to Me”?
Ian, my husband: (Staring at his computer) Not sure.
Me: Yeah, you know it. (I begin to sing) “I’m down on my knees… So please don’t be mean to me.”
I think it sounds just like it. I’m sure he’ll nod his head in acknowledgement.
Ian: (Eyes haven’t moved from his computer.) It’s a good thing you can write.
***
Wow, so mean! Ouch. Ah, that’s okay. Ian’s not wrong. And as a musician/songwriter, he’s gotta be honest. Plus, I’ve admitted my lack of singing talent in this previous blog post.
Wow, so mean! Ouch. Ah that’s okay. I’ve admitted in this previous post my lack of singing talent.
My naughty ways come naturally. Yep, I burst into this world strong-willed, adventurous, rowdy, curious, and ready for fun – rules be damned. Life experiences may have smoothed or sharpened some of my edges, but that kid is still kicking.
Brat. Brat. Brat. But I’m an angel, damn it.
Witness one example of my “strong-willed” (bratty) behavior in the trailer I made for my up-coming book, “Craving Normal“: At Disneyland, I pushed a little girl out of the way from posing with the chipmunk named Chip (Or maybe it was Dale). Then I squeezed myself between the giant chipmunk and the little blonde girl who tried to pose for a picture with the Disney character. When the chipmunk began walking along with the little girl, I got fed up and, and with my face scrunched into a frown, pushed her away. She ran off. Then I smiled and posed with him all by myself.
While I may have mellowed a bit, I’m still THAT kid. I was born this way -> See, scientists agree.
Okay, enough about me. What traits of yours were apparent right from the beginning?
Reading the chapters of my soon-to-be published book, “Craving Normal,” back to back, it’s interesting to me that I used the word apron in three different stories:
Apron is what my saintly and shocked Grandma wore when she ran out of the kitchen upon hearing eight-year-old me say “Ah hell!” after I landed in Monopoly jail, during a game with my cousins.
Apron is what I had to sew in order to escape (errr… graduate) high school, after learning I was three credits short, but told I could take a nighttime sewing class. Never finished that apron. But I finished school! Squeaked by with an unfinished apron. Sums up my school years well.
Apron is what I was handed when the Director asked me to play a cocktail waitress in a movie called “When the Bough Breaks,” right before I spilled the entire tray of drinks on the movie’s star, Ted Danson. It’s also what I took off right after the incident.
Ted Danson, looking very dry, unlike after I spilled drinks on him. Here he is with actor Richard Masur, who kindly corrected the Director who mangled my name.While Googling the Director, Waris Hussein, of “When the Bough Breaks,” (the one who yelled at me, constantly calling me Melissa rather than Michele) I found this photo of him fixing actor Richard Burton’s tie. I guess if you’re Richard Burton the director won’t yell at you and call you by the wrong name. Photo from this link.
*Top photo: Here I am thinking I look really hot in an apron, zipper skirt and white pumps. Oh 1980’s, you made me such a fool!
When people travel to Paris, France, they often come back with romantic stories about the Seine, the light, champagne and brie, oooh la la! Not me. Here are Some things I experienced and learned on a recent trip to Paris: 1) Don’t use French phrases you learned from Patti Labelle’s “Lady Marmalade,” they’ll get you into trouble with a horny French cowboy. 2) When going to strip clubs, you get what you pay for. 3) The Metro stops running sooner than you think. 4) Fighting in front of dildos is funny, even if you’re too mad to realize it.
One night, Ian, my husband, and I take the Metro to the Pigalle district with the idea we’ll check out the dancers at Moulin Rouge. After seeing the show’s price and thinking it might be too touristy anyway, we duck into a strip club a few doors down. Hey, we’ll save money and get to see a sexy Parisian strip show, we think. Well, we’re wrong. Nothing sexy about it! What we get is a discount show from the world’s worst stripper. She has to be the worst. Nobody could put this little effort into her job. Slouching, with a cigarette limply hanging from her lips, the pot-bellied stripper lethargically slides down a pole as though she has just been injected with a sleeping dart and is about to pass out. Then she crawls back up and stands there weaving back and forth. The audience, just as lethargic, doesn’t even have enough energy to boo or leave.
We get up and head out to wash our disgust away at an Irish Pub a few doors down. (I tell the other tales of the cowboy and dildos in a story in my book, “Craving Normal.”)
“Michele, you don’t have a future in…” an idea for another book chapter title. It’s something I’ve been told, after being pulled aside, more than a few times during the plethora of crappy jobs I’ve taken. But it’s hard to be too crushed, unless I had dreams of my future in grocery store sample hander-outer, perfume sprayer, Orange Julius maker, retail worker (aka men’s underwear folder – well, okay, I did a lot more than that), aerobics instructor, car dealership prisoner… errr, car salesperson (I’d work nine consecutive 12 hour days going on test drives with speeding lunatics. All that, and made no money!) – all of which I detested. But now I have plenty of stories to write about. See, there are no crappy experiences – only material for stories… or lessons. P.S. And yet I’ve NEVER been fired.
