In Which Miss Jill Engages in a Battle of Wits with a 19-Year-Old Model and Is Vanquished

As a disclaimer, if you are into bathroom humor and vulgar language, my family is the antithesis of anything that you would think is cool. A few weeks ago I was talking to my mother on the phone and she said, “I was sorry to see that you wrote a swear word on your sister’s Facebook wall.” There are a few problems with this scenario, but the major one is that I only engage in Mormon-style profanity (I.e. “What the h?”). Perplexed, I loaded my sister’s Facebook page and saw that I had opined, “Your pics suck.” As you will see, this upbringing has left me incapable of successfully interpreting common social cues.

I was at Starbucks waiting to go to American Idol and on leaving decided to use the facilities. I was thrilled to meet a local homeless man who had the same agenda. As I approached, he adroitly flashed me a peace sign. I am a fan of peace signs,* so I eagerly returned the gesture. Then he sportingly decided to engage me in small talk. “Gotta take a dump,” he confessed. Startled that he would say such a thing to an obviously classy stranger, I thought that I had misheard him. “Pardon?” He looked at me with wild desperation and reflected on how to rephrase his statement. “Gotta take an s#%t. A huge one.” He shuffled around to show me the urgency of the situation. “That’s interesting,” I replied. “Can I use the bathroom first then?” He eyed me warily, “If use fast, but as I said, I really gotta take a s#$t.” This proclamation was followed by an interpretive dance. I decided that I could hold it and bid him adieu.

As I was recounting the events of the evening to the 19-year-old model, she started to laugh and said, “He wasn’t flashing you a peace sign. He was telling you that he had to go number two. Now if you don‘t understand something perverted or gross, you know who to come to.” I was stunned. The poor man had attempted three different means of expressing his dilemma before the dumb, but attractive, blond woman was able to understand.

* After I quit my job by e-mail, my friend Stef lamented that I hadn’t had the professionalism to attach a .jpg file of my hand doing a peace sign to tell my despotic boss, “Peace out.” I admit that that was a grave oversight, but as my current job is cool, I don’t think that I will have a chance to try this out anytime soon. Now instead of saying goodbye, Stef and I flash peace signs and say “J-Peg.”