A Very Special WAD: Ask Mom, the Mile High Edition

I've been asked to do an "Ask Mom", just as Miss Kitty does on E&P, and after spending the day losing our minds at the fabric store in Boulder, we figured we'd sit down while Mom's fixing a few of my pants and skirts at the sewing machine and go through a few questions. Today's "Ask Mom" has been brought to you by the house tequila at Lime XS.

Dear Mom,

Should I lose weight to get a guy?

Mom: NO. Don't even have to think about it--just plain no. Know why? Because you're doomed to failure. The first time he doesn't bring you roses/doesn't remember your birthday/doesn't celebrate your new promotion at work, you'll go on a binge to get back at him. You'll get all pissed off, and go on an eating binge, and make yourself sick (and feel fat)...and he won't even notice. And, he won't understand why you did what you did. And you won't either. So you just start a downward spiral. And if he's not satisfied with your weight and then you lose weight, then there'll just be something else. Also, if you decide to lose weight to keep a guy...well, you're still hanging your outcomes on a guy, and you're doomed to failure. Do it because you want to be healthy. Do it because you're tired of going to Abdullah the Tent Maker for your tailoring [Pixie: go to Mom instead!]. Do it for yourself. But not for a guy.

Now, if you decide to lose weight and you meet a guy at the gym, then fine. Because if you haven't noticed, men don't have any flaws, physical or otherwise [tongue planted firmly in cheek]. Witness the Speedos on the 60-year-old guys with furry backs on the beach. Also, if your guy says, "Honey, I'm concerned about your/our health and weight. Is there anything I can to help you?" then that's cool. But let's face it girls: if you can't run, you can't run after guys. But you really shouldn't run after them anyways. They should be running after you.

Dear Mom,

If you could invite any three people to dinner (living or dead), who would it be and why?

I used to say the Pope and Gorbachev, but me and Karol Wojtyla done fell out over birth control, abortion, and gays. I'd still like to talk to Gorbachev. Him and Andy Warhol. He's bizarre. And Dale Earnhardt, Jr., just to see the look on his face. I'd serve curry chicken, rice, and biscuits, with fresh green beans. And peach cobbler--vanilla ice cream optional.

Dear Mom,

You sound pretty wild. Have you ever been in jail or arrested?

Both. In early 1983, at about 6am, there was somebody beating on the door of the house my boyfriend and I lived on at the time. It was a nice house in a historic district, very schmancy. The dickhead I was living with at the time went to answer the door, and he said, "Get up and put your clothes on." I looked at the open door behind him. There were probably four men I'd never seen before from the sheriff's department--they had come to arrest my boyfriend and me for (supposedly) running a murder-for-hire ring in the same town in which Miss Kitty now teaches college. We were handcufffed and dragged to the government center, put in holding cells where the temperature was approximately 30 degrees F (and I had no jacket), and I was left there for five hours. Nothing to eat, freezing my ass off...I was left there. Then I was booked and transported to the stockade [cue any country song regarding jail]. I spent a summer weekend--in the South, mind you--with no airconditioning in an open dormitory full of white-collar female criminals. You know, forgery, writing bad checks, nothing violent, though. There was one woman there who was a political dissenter--not an anarchist, though--and a very spiritual person. She really believed in what she was doing, and she was the only saving grace of the whole weekend.

The worst part was that we had vanished. No one knew where my boyfriend and I were--not neighbors, kids, no one. I was finally allowed to call a lawyer. The only one I knew was an estate planner, not a trial attorney by any stretch of the imagination, but he was the only one I knew. He came and told me not to worry, they didn't have a leg to stand on. The whole thing was due to some dickhead who was trrying to weasel out of a charge of interstate transportation of stolen property. He tried to sell some stolen computer parts in Florida, and he was trying to get out of it by giving the cops some really good info on some other crime going on. I went to jail because I happened to be in the house at the time.

When we went to court Monday morning, the judge talked to my boyfriend and his business partner and ignored me completely. He released them on their own reconaissance, and then my lawyer asked, "Your Honor, what about my client? She was in the wrong place at the wrong time." The judge looked at me like he'd never seen me before and said, "Oh yeah, charges are dropped against her." I walked out the front door of the courthouse and was promptly met by the paparazzi, or what passed for paparazzi in central Georgia in 1983. Then a good friend and I drove to where the girls were living at the time to let them know that I was all right. I know their grandmother made a lot of hay out of that, but there was no doubt in their grandfather's mind that I was innocent. [Mom picks up a pair of pants off the sewing machine and pronounces them pret a porter.] So, that was my lost weekend, and it caused all kinds of problems in the family, but that's another story.