You Can’t Drink All Day if You Don’t Start in the Morning by Celia Rivenbark Page A

mean before takeoff, while the middle-aged bald guy with eczema was still trying to stuff his crappy
Sports Illustrated
duffel into the overhead bin.
    “These coach-class bitches cussed everybody out and said the only reason they got picked on was because they were better looking than everybody else on the plane.
    “They behaved so bad that when
Daddy Day Care
came on, people actually watched it just to drown ’em out.
    “So, as you can see, while we know that the airline industry has made some missteps, it’s no picnic working with y’all, either, with your nonstop complaints: ‘I can’t breathe!’ ‘This cabin isn’t pressurized!’ ‘There’s spooge on my pillow!’ ”
    Pilot: “Whoa, Trixie, that’s enough. Passengers, I’m sorry about that little outburst. Sometimes Trix gets a little confused when she takes too many Xanax. I’ve done the same thing dozens of times. In fact, I just took a handful of those bastards a few minutes ago ’cause there was a guy who looked a
lot
like Samuel L. Jackson getting on board with a box with holes punched in it and I started to freak out a little. But now, I’m mellow. And I’m just gonna take a little nap now. . . . This bird can practically fly itself anyway. Thank God, ’cause I really need some shut-eye. Crap, Trixie, get me another pillow.”

9

Gladys Kravitz Would’ve Loved Her Some Facebook
    I guess I should’ve paid more attention when the Princess and her little friend asked if they could create a Facebook page for me.
    “Sure,” I said, completely distracted by watching the new next-door neighbors move in that day. They were young. I’m talking practically embryonic. I couldn’t imagine how they could even lift all those heavy boxes with those little armbuds of theirs.
    “So it’s OK?” Soph asked. “We can put you on Facebook?” She was upstairs and, rather than walk the eight steps to the landing, she was screaming. I screamed back: “Yeah, sure, whatever!” and went back to my perch at the front window.
    Oh, gawd. They were standing on the sidewalk in front of the house
kissing.
I couldn’t tell them to get a room because, in point of fact, they’d just gotten about twelve of ’em.
    “Mommie, what’s your star sign?” Again with the shouting.
    “OK, honey, Mommie is doing some very important research right now, so why don’t you just fill out the Face-a-ma-call-it and let me know when it’s done, OK?”
    “OK,” she and her pal said in unison. Then they both giggled for a long time, but I wasn’t sure why.
    From my living room couch, I chewed on a Slim Jim and watched the embryonic new neighbor couple continue to work, toting box after box into their new home—the home beside the crazy lady who watches their every move while eating salted beef ears.
    Every so often, the he-neighbor would step aside so she could take her box inside. So cute. What’s this? They just dropped boxes and hugged. This move is going to take for-frikkin-ever. I would need more jerky, that much was certain.
    After an hour of this I was beginning to get bored, but rather than actually check on my daughter and her friend as they launched my lumpy ass into cyberspace, I decided to take a break and read the magazine beside me on the couch. Great. Oprah’s started a new diet where she lives off nothing but flaxseed tea and cardboard toilet paper rolls. I threw the magazine onto the floor and went back to spying.
    I felt a little like Gladys Kravitz, the chinless, nasally, nosy neighbor in the old
Bewitched
episodes.
    These new neighbors, with their youth and their stillslightly webbed hands, didn’t know from Gladys Kravitz. If I even laughingly compared myself to her when I finally showed up at their door with my famous “welcome to the neighborhood, now I dare you to ever take a normal dump again” eight-cheese casserole, they’d think it was perhaps Lenny’s mother, but even that was a stretch.
    “Mommie, what would you say are your special