include "RYtops.php"; ?>
Excerpts from
The Single Woman's Handbook
Mary W. Matthews
- The 4,000 most attractive men in the world are gay.
- You left your driver's license in your other purse.
- For each occasion on which you say to a man "Of course I understand" when
he's lying or talking nonsense, you will spend one month in hell.
- Four minutes before the conclusion of any really good TV program, you will
get a phone call from someone you don't care to hear from. He will not let
you call him back later.
- The "bad sprain" will inevitably turn out to be a "clean break." It will
take $700 worth of X-rays to determine this.
- Your parents can't understand why you aren't married.
- You will only get a flat tire or a dead battery when you are alone late
at night in a scary neighborhood.
- The boyfriend who promises to fix that leaky hot-water tap for you "someday"
will never do it at all.
- Twelve seconds after the warranty expires on your car, something under the
hood will begin making a sound just like a Gene Krupa drum solo.
- There is an inverse proportion to the amount of time you sit waiting for
him to phone and how important he is to you. If he says "I'll call you," he
won't. But the man you gave the wrong number to at that bar will find you
anyway. He will call at least 312 times before he gets discouraged.
- People will say "Watch it!" to you only after you have taken a vicious
fall.
- A rerun of "M*A*S*H" must be playing on some channel, somewhere, at all
times.
- "Some assembly required" means "Engineering degree necessary."
- The question you will be asked most often in your life is, "Do you want
fries with that?"
- The statement you will hear most often in your life as a single person is,
"I hope we can still be friends."
- The number you are calling has been disconnected.
- No matter how much you try to avoid it, you will spend at least five minutes
of your life watching Mr. T on television.
- All women named Jennifer have perfect teeth.
- Never let a man who has had a moustache for more than three years sleep
on your sofa.
- The woman who sits next to you on the bus dunks her entire head in perfume
every morning.
- A contact lens out of your possession for more than 30 seconds disintegrates.
- If you don't care whether you ever see him again, he'll want to marry you.
If you do want to see him again, he'll answer invitations with wonderful lines
like, "Maybe, but I might decide to work on my car that night" or "Tomorrow
is just too far ahead of time for me to make plans."
- If you want to go to the top floor, the elevator you get into will go first
to the basement. All other elevators will immediately zoom to the top floor
without stopping. Your elevator will stop at every floor, and someone will
hold the door open for at least three minutes a floor.
- The Seven Early Warning Signals of potential "relationship meltdown" are:
- when you say you're out of shape or you need to lose weight, and he
doesn't disagree immediately (or at all).
- when he says, "I think your messiness is charming."
- when he stops brushing his teeth before he comes over.
- when he tells you how perfect his last girlfriend was.
- when he has a date with his "cousin" on Saturday night.
- when he calls you Monica, and your name is Jennifer.
- when you ask what's wrong, and he says, "Nothing."
- Your rich Aunt Sophie, whose heir you are, will live to 104.
- Your brother, on the other hand, always needs to borrow money and never
pays any of it back.
- You should not even consider marrying into a family in which all the men
wear rings on their little fingers or any of the women wear pink foam rollers
in public.
- Only after you are hopelessly lost will you realize that you left the directions
on the kitchen counter.
- The item you want is out of stock, but on back order.
- Self-righteous vegetarians will die before they reach the age of 50.
- Somewhere in your house is everything you have ever lost. You will
never find any of it.
- If there is more than one way to pronounce a name, you'll pick the wrong
one. Ditto with spelling.
- If you preface a joke by saying, "This is really funny," no one will laugh.
- All ballpoint pens are lost before they run out of ink.
- If you're totally in love, he'll be barely aware you're alive.
- Whatever line you choose to stand in at the bank or grocery store will automatically
slow to a crawl.
- You'll never get the hiccups when you're alone only when you're at
a funeral or you're visiting your future in-laws for the first time.
- At least once in your life, you'll step into something so disgusting you'll
have to throw away your shoes.
- Your car is invisible to other drivers. (But not to the police.)
- Your parents have never thrown out your old Barbie doll. They'll give it
back to you the night you bring your fiancé to meet them, after they
show him your baby pictures.
- If it smells like something is burning, it is already ruined.
- If you decide to spend the afternoon giving your hair a hot oil treatment,
he will drop by unexpectedly.
- No matter what seat you take in a movie theater, the seat directly in front
of you will soon be occupied by someone at least six inches taller than you
are, and massive to match.
- When you move away from this person, you will find yourself sitting in front
of two or more people who will chat with each other nonstop during the entire
film.
- The police officer who just stopped you for going 56 mph has never let anyone
off with just a warning.
- The less you like him, the more of an octopus he will be.
- Whatever it is, your insurance won't cover it.
- The more you care about a friend or relative, the more horrible the blind
date will be that that person fixed you up with.
- You will never remember the word or idea that was on the tip of your tongue.
- The phrase "I never read other people's mail" warns you to hide your diary
where even you will have trouble finding it.
- Wherever and whenever you go on vacation, the weather will be perfect the
week before and the week after, but lousy the whole time you're there.
- If you don't know how to boil water, his mother is a gourmet cook. If you're
just a decent plain cook, he's a natural foods freak who won't even eat albacore,
insists on free-range poultry, and recoils in horror from words like "supermarket"
and "day-old." If you're a gourmet cook, he keeps kosher.
- The more you hate a song, the more it will play itself over and over in
your head.
- When you fly, you will be seated next to:
- a boor on the make, whose belt matches his shoes; someone who
is elderly or in bad health, or both;
- a noisy, bad-mannered child; or
- a greasy loudmouth who hasn't bathed since 1986.
- Your ideal man will be on the flight you almost took.
- The Postal Service is required to deliver a minimum (there's no maximum)
of two bills and six pieces of junk mail a day.
- The person who promised to return that book to you, won't.
- Whoever annoys you the most in your office will be promoted to king or queen.
- The Ten Early Warning Signals that he's a bastard are:
- when his ex-wife is after him with a gun and none of his old
girlfriends want to talk about him and when they do, your first
reaction is, "but he wouldn't do that to me!"
- when he wants you to store a package for him in your attic, but not
to mention it if someone named Guido asks.
- when he doesn't believe in artificial sweeteners, synthetic fibers (or
blends), charge accounts, makeup, high heels, hair dye, smoking, drinking,
microwaving, or anything else that keeps you sane and he lets you
know you'd better change your evil ways if you want to keep seeing him.
- when he knows exactly how you should live your life, what you should
say to your mother, and what the Only Right Way is to stack the dishes
in the dishwasher.
- when he's never willing to make plans with you (after all, something
better might come along at the last minute).
- when you invite him to a party and he not only doesn't show up, he tells
other people you never invited him then tells you the invitation
wasn't special enough to suit him.
- when he's living voluntarily in a singles' complex.
- when he needs you to rush him to the emergency room on Valentines Day,
and that's his fifth illness this year.
- when he doesn't see anything wrong with having more than one lover at
a time, and you find out he's never felt a serious commitment to anything
but his stereo.
- when you invite him for dinner and he arrives with all his worldly possessions
and can he borrow a stamp, and your car, and that old sweater that's
too big for you?
- If it's raining cats and dogs and you think you left your windows open,
you did.
- The place where you store important papers and receipts has been treated
with a vaporizing agent that dissolves anything of real importance.
- Gas station attendants are hired based on their inability to give intelligible
directions.
- The check is not in the mail.
- If you rip the tag off your mattress, you'll be the first person actually
arrested, tried, and convicted of doing so.
- All men look like geeks for 72 hours after a haircut.
- No one has skin that is "flesh-colored."
- If you think your pants have split, they have.
- If you think there's a run in your stockings, there is.
- All dentists must hum Barry Manilow tunes.
- One month after you move into your dream house, the Kallikaks will move
next door. They'll keep dismantled Studebakers in the front yard and play
loud polka rock all night.
- TV anchorpersons do not have hair like that of real people. Professional
models have skin made of a grainless kind of plastic and are not entirely
sure who Thomas Jefferson was.
- Whatever you spend a month's salary to buy today will go on sale tomorrow
for at least 75 percent off.
- If you kill yourself dashing for the phone, it will never be him.
It will be someone selling something you have no interest in buying, like
flight insurance or Florida bottom land.
- Rush hour starts when you leave home. It ends as you reach the office. Traffic
is always worst wherever you are.
- The repair people who make you stay home from work all day because they
doesn't know when they'll drop by will arrive an hour and a half after quitting
time.
- Trash bags only break open when they contain substances that will make a
godawful stink or mess.
- The more important it is to look just perfect, the worse you will look when
the time comes. The corollaries to this are:
- You will develop a run in your stockings at the worst possible time,
under the worst possible circumstances.
- The sweater you went to 11 stores to find doesn't match your skirt after
all and it's not returnable.
- The stain on your silk dress is invisible in your bedroom, but at the
restaurant tonight it will be so noticeable that complete strangers will
point it out to you.
- You do not look better in glasses.
- At least 75 times in your life, someone will tell you that something is
"for your own good." It will never turn out that way.
RULES FOR BEING HUMAN
- You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours
for the entire period this time around.
- You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school
called LIFE. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn
lessons. You may like these lessons or think them irrelevant or stupid. It
makes no difference; you will learn lessons.
- There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error,
experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process
as the experiment that ultimately "works."
- A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in
various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can
then go on to the next lesson.
- Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain
its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
- "There" is no better than "Here." When your "There" has become a "Here,"
you will simply obtain another "There" that will again look better than "Here."
- Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about
another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about
yourself.
- What you make of life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources
that you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is YOURS.
- The answers to life's questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look,
listen, and trust.
- You will get what you ask for. It may not be what you wanted, but it will
be what you asked for.
UPON ENTERING THIS LEVEL OF EXISTENCE, YOU WILL FORGET ALL OF THE ABOVE.
include "RYbots.php"; ?>
|