Last week Alan almost kicked a ten year old’s ass.

We were checking out a beer garden with live Irish music in Arlington. Sitting on bench with our backs to the building, we toasted each other and began scanning the crowd. A woman sat eating dinner with her two sons at a nearby table. She had her nose in her iPhone, and one of the boys stared at us.

I don’t mean our eyes occasionally met and we both awkwardly looked away. He STARED at us. Constantly. And they didn’t appear to be sweet little boys… we’d seen them before they were seated, raising holy hell with their soccer ball and climbing all over every available bench. They ran the joint like spoiled rich kids – which – given where we were – they probably were.

I noticed  him staring and continued scanning the rest of the crowd. When my eyes got back to Alan, I saw that he was fully engaged with the kid, having a stare-down.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“That kid won’t stop staring,” he said.

“I know,” I responded. “But do you have to stare back at him?”

“Actually,” he explained, “I do. It’s not just a staring contest, it’s a male dominance thing.”

“Really? Because it LOOKS like a staring contest,” I challenged.

“No,” he informed me, “That little shit knows exactly what he’s doing.”

I looked back at the kid and – sure enough – he was brazenly staring at Alan, not blinking, not  flinching, with a bored/cocky look of entitlement on his face, shoving french fries into his mouth without even glancing at his plate. I could kind of see Alan’s point.

Alan continued to stare at him and I could tell he was actually getting irritated.

“This is ridiculous,” I said. “I’m not buying the dominance thing. Besides – he’s a kid. You’re an adult. Why are you even engaging him?”

“Because it is RUDE. Someone needs to set him straight – he’s way too cocky. I’m tempted to walk over there and ask the mom if they know me, then – when she says no – then ask why her kid has been staring at me non-stop. At least she’ll understand he’s being rude.”

We then spent a few minutes laughing as we imagined how that conversation would go:

“Your kid has been staring at me.”

She ignores us.

“Lady, get your nose out of that phone and look at your rude kid!” 

When we finished laughing, we looked back over and the kid was STILL boring holes into us. Alan, frustrated, ran his hand through his hair. And in turning his head ever so slightly, he happened to notice the flatscreen television screwed to the wall behind him, broadcasting a hockey game.

As it turned out, I saw it at the same time. We both looked at each other with sudden awareness, eyebrows lifted.

Mystery solved.

“So,” I asked him. “When I write this for my blog, should I title it, ‘Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of Mistaken Dominance?’ Or should it be ‘The Case of the Rude Child?’

Apparently he thought BOTH were fantastic ideas, because he didn’t respond. Or maybe we’re having a Silence Contest. I’m really not clear on these things. Must be a guy thing.

My yoga instructor this morning was a guy who takes it all a bit too seriously. In addition to wearing nut-huggers, sporting a thick ’70s porno ‘stache and playing a flute during class, he walks around projecting “deep thoughts” in a stage voice during the class.

(If this is ringing a bell: yes, I’ve written about him before.)

Today’s theme was “asking for help.” It was a great message: part of living in – or belonging to – a community is allowing people to help you. It’s good for you, and people enjoy being allowed to help. Nice lesson and I should probably try to follow it more often.

But where it went a bit sideways was in the examples he chose to share with us. During our 90 minute class, I learned:

• He has a voice coach for opera
• He has a language coach for foreign languages
• He has a life/career coach
• He once had $52,000 in credit card debt
• He was able to pay it off using a debt relief service

Each revelation made me lose focus on my yoga pose and instead head down a mental HabiTrail of marginally related thoughts.

Of COURSE he has a voice coach! No wonder he always projects his voice like Tobias Funkë. I wonder if he’s capable of a regular conversation without a stage voice? 

I wonder what foreign languages he studies? Italian seems like a no-brainer because of the opera, but I’m also going to vote for Spanish. Because he looks like someone who would like to use authentic pronunciation when ordering at Taco Bell.

A career/life coach? Whoa – that one had her work cut out for her, because I’m not actually seeing opera singer + yoga instructor + floutist as an obvious career path. Also: I didn’t realize one could AFFORD a life coach in pursuing that career path.

Ah ha! Let me guess how you racked up $52k in credit card debt. I’m going out on a limb here, but – was it all the coaches? 

Or maybe it was the flute.

Or the shorts. 

Actually – there’s really just no telling.

So I took the afternoon off work and headed to the day spa, hellbent on relaxing. In the changing room, I realized I wasn’t sure which service I was getting first, so I just shrugged, ditched all my clothes and donned the robe they provided me.

Minutes later, a middle-aged woman with an Eastern European accent who introduced herself as “Micki” and reminded me of Edna Mode from “The Incredibles” ushered me into a well lit room.

“Vee vill start vith your facial,” she told me. Then, gesturing at the padded massage table, she continued, “Remove zee robe and lie down face-up.”

I nodded and waited for her to leave the room, in standard spa fashion. In response, she simply crossed her arms and stared at me.

“Um,” I began, realizing she was expecting me to drop my robe. “I don’t have anything on under this. It doesn’t bother me, but I don’t want to offend you.”

She laughed. “Please! I’ve seen it all. I ‘ave two daughters and five grand-daughters.”

All rightee then. I dropped my robe and lay down on the table, covering myself with the sheet.

[Note: Apparently that sheet is a pretty important detail, because when I told Alan about my experience, he was incredulous. "So you just lay there NAKED through your entire facial???"]

The facial got underway and I received a lecture for being lazy with my skincare and only using a two step process – wash it, put on lotion. I somewhat redeemed myself by pointing out that I’ve worn sunblock on my face every day since college.

At some point during my facial, I became aware of a muffled bell ringing in the distance. For a moment, I wondered if it was a fire alarm, but I was so relaxed I chose to ignore it. Later, as we were wrapping up the facial, shaking her head Micki said, “Deed you hear zat bell earlier?”

Without waiting for my response, she continued, “Eet was a fire drill. Zey do zem all zee time in zis building. Zee other people took zer patients outside. Not me! If it really decide to burn, someone will come knock.”

Excellent. I could’ve burned to a crisp. Kind of an anti-facial.

She then went on to tell me about the customer she was giving a Brazilian Wax when the earthquake struck last August. “We ran outside – she in a robe. The wax, eet harden. Wven we come back in, it take me an hour to clean her out!”

I think I’m glad I stuck with the facial.

It was late. My sister was in the kitchen relaying a story to her husband about something embarrassing that had happened to her friend. It was for adult-consumption only. And then, out of the blue: a voice. “Hey – isn’t that Herbert’s mom you’re talking about?”

And standing there is her child, who – if he had a tribal name – would respond to, “Little-Pitcher-Big-Ears.” Record scratch.

So now a nine year old is equipped with a story that is attached to a real person and isn’t exactly appropriate for an elementary school audience.

This has happened to you too, right? I mean, I don’t even HAVE kids and I’ve had my words come back to haunt me, though it’s usually like when Ralphie swears as he flips all the nuts into the snow in “The Christmas Story” and everyone wants to know where he learned such an awful word. (Spoiler alert: his dad.)

In my defense, if a child correctly deploys a word that can function as EVERY one of the nine parts of speech, then I say: we should let him, regardless of age.

I digress. The point is that when my sister retold this story to me – in all its sordid details – it completely cracked me up. “Can I blog about it?” I asked.

She paused. “Can you make it anonymous? So the person doesn’t know my child knows her business?”

And that’s when the fun began.

Me: “Sure. Like, I’ll say it was about a teacher from his school?”

Her: “Except make it an art teacher because he doesn’t even HAVE art.”

Me: “And I’ll make your son a DAUGHTER.”

Her: “And make the story I was telling about her something gossipy instead of something funny.”

Me: “And I’ll make you my FRIEND instead of my sister.”

Her: “And make me the daughter’s ‘mother’ instead of her ‘mom.’”

Mom, indeed. I think we’ll go with “mum” just to really throw them off the track.

Disclaimer: All names, places, and events contained herein are fictional. Any resemblance to actual people, events or conversation is sheer coincidence. Also, I’m pretty sure there are no children named Herbert. 

I don’t own a television. I’m not saying that in a superior way, the way vegetarians inform you that they won’t eat flesh. I don’t have a television because a) I prefer to read, b) I think they detract from a room’s design, and c) I’m too cheap to pay for cable.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t watch television. Admittedly, it’s probably amounts to only two hyper-calculated hours per week, but still – I’m not living in a total cultural void. Alan serves as my enabler. HE believes in television, so he records Mad Men shows we both enjoy, and I venture his way once a week to watch them.

And when the shows we watch are off-season, we check out a new series (most recently Breaking Bad) using his Netflix account. Kindly, he has lent me his password so that I can occasionally access something without him. I rarely do it (did I mention: I like to READ), but periodically I do hop in there and make his queue a bit more, um, interesting. I think he appreciates it.

Here is what I added last night:

• Reach for Me: When his new hospice roommate — 25-year-old Kevin — moves in, the quiet life of senior citizen Alvin turns upside down. (Don’t you think Alan will LOVE that?)
• Politics of Love: Politics makes strange bedfellows, but never stranger than when a sexy, savvy, African-American Republican reluctantly falls for his counterpart: a beautiful Indian-American Democratic campaign volunteer. (Timely. It IS election season, after all. And before you try to claim this must be sci-fi because there are no African American Republicans, let me remind you: Michael Steele.)
• Don’t Go Breaking My Heart: Recently widowed mother of two Suzanne catches the eye of her dentist, who secretly hypnotizes her during an appointment to make her fall for him. (Because nothing says SEXY like a medical professional taking advantage of you while you’re in the chair for a procedure. THAT is the stuff dreams – and lawsuits – are made of.)
• The Human Centipede 2:A disturbed loner is so obsessed with the shocking horror film The Human Centipede that he decides to replicate the movie’s grisly experiment. In this metasequel, the stakes are raised as 12 unlucky souls endure surgical hell. (Actually, I think Alan might have added this one himself. Nevermind.)
• The Minis: Worried he can’t afford his son’s tuition, Roger — a little person — tries to get his friends to enter a basketball tournament with a big prize. (I would like to meet the screenwriter who thought, “Ah ha! Little person, big prize!” And then punch him in the face.)

The best part of meddling with Alan’s queue isn’t even watching him sift through the items that populate it. It’s seeing the “intelligent” recommendations at populate as a result. The formula I just created with these movies looks something this:

Hospice + racial/political switcheroo + widowed date-rape + human centipedes + Dennis Rodman =

Netflix's "Recommended for Alan" pick.

Actually, that sounds about right. I guess technology IS smarter than we are.