Sincerely, Brainless in North Bay

Yesterday a dear friend, who is poet-menopausal and coming to terms with the havoc it is wreaking on her body, sent me and some other friends an email. In this email she outlined certain physical side effects and her on-going battle to disguise them with make - up and other material ruses. After reading it I had two thoughts: 1) Getting old is really going to suck, in many ways and 2) Being 26 is not all that fantastic either. In an effort to make her feel better I thought I should outline what it means to be young in the modern sense, at least for me. Here is my response. I hope you get a laugh, but please don't tell my mom. She will be horrified, and will no doubt start a Novena so that I will stop embarrassing myself in such ways because no man in his right mind would want a lush like me to have his babies, and my mom is all about me having babies and raising them next door to her so she can shower them with love and tell them they don't have to listen to me.

Also, if you a principal and considering hiring me to teach in your school, I am wholeheartedly against alcohol and its consumption and I respectfully request you to stop reading now. Thanks so much.

Dear Pretty in Port Hood -

Thanks so much for sharing your aging woes with me. So much to look forward to, I can hardly stand the excitement. Tomorrow, I am going to go to the Clinique counter at Sears and I am going to read this to the "pretty little thing" behind the counter, and when I am finished I am going to tell her to give every god damned product she has so that this does not happen to me.

Now I have a story for YOU, but it's not about the woes of aging. It's about the woes of youth and how catastrophically stupid we youngins are, myself especially. While you are wishing you were young and pre-menopause, I am wondering when I am going to stop making piss poor decisions. Enjoy, because this little ditty will make you want to kiss those cracks and wrinkles and hug your eyeliner pencil and thank God you are not young and half-retarded.

So I decided to go out last night with some of the girls in my class. It was a last minute decision, Alicia messaged me on FB and I was in my PJs, and should have stayed like that but I could hear my mother's voice whispering across the provinces, saying "If you don't go out and mingle I'm never going to get grandchildren, and I want yours to come soon because I know they will be close to me, and since your life is all about me, you need to get dressed and leave the convent. Now, ", or something like that. Not wanting to disobey the voice in my head, I tell Alicia OK, I am coming and proceeded to exchange my PJ pants and Red Sox t-shirt for my bitch boots and 'lady' paint.

After a 30 minute primping routine that will apparently one day take 6 hours, when I am old and things start to loosen and fall and crack and make me wish I was 26 again, I hopped in Arlene's van and off we went (Arlene is a 40 something year old gal that is going to school and living at the Mother House, or the "Mo Ho" as we have now begun to call it, with love). I have a drink before I go, and take one to have when I get to Alicia's. From there, the plan is to go to the campus club, called The Wall. I have no intentions of drinking any more than that, well, maybe one or two at the bar but that is IT! (I think we know where THIS is going...)

I get to Alicia's, the rest of the girls arrive and we are sharing stories and experiences about teaching, growing up, why guys suck, blah blah, ya da ya da. There is a bottle of vodka and rum on the table, a BIG bottle of rum and of course being from Cape Breton I opt for the rum, thinking "I'll just have a little jillick..."

The night progresses. I have one more, and ok it was maybe a big one but still, not unusually so, and we are off to the Wall for a night of dancing and man-attracting, supposedly. Only I am so much more drunk than I should be, like WAY more, and I'm kind of confused because I can't understand why, I haven't drunk that much, not really, this is really weird, etc. etc. By this time I am at the bar, and the only thing that made sense was to just keep drinking. So I do, and from here on in things are a bit 'hazy', but here is what I remember:

The flowers on Christina's shirt while we were dancing, they were little and white and all glowy and looked so amazingly cool until something else caught my attention, like the fact that somethig was happening at the stage. Was there a band playing? (Quite obviously there was no band playing, but a music machine, but somehow in my drunken stupor I got the message that there was in fact a band playing, and I needed to get close to the stage! So I take off, push my way through the sweaty crowd and before I know it I am dancing with random people I don't know, but it's ok because there's this competition happening on stage so no one is really paying attention to the uncoordinated fool dancing like she's got an electrical shock mechanism attached to her body, and the individual controlling said mechanism is suffering from uncontrolable tics. (You get the idea)

Ok, moving on. It's freaking HOT inside, and crowded, and loud, and I hop from different groups of classmates and squeeze by muscle-y guys in tight t-shirts that are obviously intended to showcase their muscles, but before I have a chance to ask if anyone wants to maybe make a baby tonight I am in a cab back to the "Mo Ho".

After some confusion surrounding paying the cabbie, I stumble into the convent, past the security guard who has probably already informed Sister Bernadette that one of her student residents is a falling down drunk and should be evicted, past the chapel where I should have stopped and thanked the good Lord that I made it home safe and sound, and into the elevator and up the three floors to my room.

Time elapses and the next thing I remember is this:

I am on the toilet, where I am pretty sure I passed out for an undetermined period of time.

From there, I am waking up in the shower, and have no idea how or when I got there. I am lying down and the Shower is ON, only it's kind of cold at this point so I try and sit up to adjust the temperature only my body is not responding with its usual speed and accuracy, so I very slowly lift my leg and turn the tap with my foot, but the wrong freaking way. Ice water is now shooting out over my body in what feels like sharp bullets of COLD and suddenly, my body realizes what is happening and starts to react, boobs flopping, legs flailing, arms reaching, arse sqeaking over the bottom of the tub until finally, the water is off. Thank goodness.

Eventually, i manage to get out of the tub and reach for my bathrobe (that I don't remember taking from my room to the bathroom. at all). I have to pee so I stop at the bathroom and am immediately hit with the smell of vomit, i mean it is intense! Only said vomit is nowhere to be found, nothing in the toilet or on the floor. and then I see the garbage can. And look inside. And yep, there it is. My vomit. Lots, and lots of vomit that came out while I was sitting on the frigging toilet, before or after I passed out, there is really no way of knowing at this point, but at least now I know why I opted to get in the shower. (I'm all about seeing the positive side, folks).

Luckily, there was only a few paper towels in there but I can't leave it, people will know exactly how big a drunken fool I was so I have to get rid of the evidence, immediately. So what do I do? I SCOOOP IT OUT BIT BY BIT and flush it down the toilet. And it is very scoopable, if you know what I mean. Ever clean up dog puke? Ya. That's all I am going to say about THAT.

Ok, so I finish that and make it back to my room, and head straight for my bed. As I am lying there, though, I realize that I can still smell frigging puke! Is it me? No, it is definitely not me. I just got out of the shower and I was Oh, so careful during the scooping bit. What is it then? WHERE is it, I realize, is the question I should be asking. And then I find it. It is all over the top I wore. In exactly the same spot that my right boob would be, if I was wearing it.

Shit.

I just bought the thing, this is the first night I actually wore it. And now it looks like something Catrina used to clean the toilet in the men's washroom at the Admiral.

Fucking fantastic.

And then I get a sinking, sinking feeling...oh no...WHEN DID I PUKE ON MY BOOB??? Was it at the Wall? Did I stumble out of the washroom with vomit on my tit? Did I do it in the cab? Oh my god, was I on the dance floor when it happened?

All of these horrible, horrible scenarios are running through my foggy mind, and I literally can not remember when and how the vomit landed on my chest.

I have since found out, though, that no one else knows anything about it which means it probably happened while I was sitting on the toilet, as there was nothing on my pants. Also, there was nothing on my jacket or the scarf I was wearing, and no phone calls from an angry cab dispatcher today, demanding I pay for the damage done to his poor unsuspecting cab. These are the types of questions that this 26 year old, who does not worry about filling in cracks or droopy skin, has been asking herself today.

So ya, how do you like your wrinkles and weird skin pockets now MJ?

Sincerely,

Brainless in North Bay.