Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat?: True Stories and Confessions Read online

  “The speed limit is sixty-five.”

  “I’m not gonna drive like a maniac and get us killed, okay? It doesn’t matter if we go a little slower.”

  “Actually, with almost two hundred miles to go, a five-or ten-mile-per-hour difference really adds up. Forty miles an hour is going to take five hours, whereas sixty will take—”

  “I’M DRIVING HERE.”

  Every daughter knows when she’s pushing it, so I shut up. An hour passed, and my mom was so tense, we drove in uncharacteristic silence. It was only 10:00 P.M. but she started talking about stopping at a motel for the night.

  I sighed.

  “So you’re going to guilt me?” she said.

  “Ohmigod, I breathed.”

  Sure, I was thinking that we could have spent the evening on Nantucket, eating lobster rolls by the sea before going to bed in the clean, crisp linens of our charming B&B. Instead, we were making our second seven-hour drive in twenty-four hours, posing a traffic hazard in the middle of I-95, and looking for a Ramada Inn.

  But my sigh was totally innocent.

  Then I had a better idea than passive-aggressive respiration: “Do you want me to drive?”

  My mom took her eyes off the road to look at me, aghast.

  To be fair, this wasn’t an overreaction. I’ve been living in New York for five years, and I haven’t driven regularly since I was a teenager. The last time I had to parallel-park was my driver’s test.

  But driving is like riding a bike, right?

  A three thousand-pound, four hundred-horsepower, steel bike.

  We discussed it at a rest stop. Seeing the stress on my mother’s face in the fluorescent lights, I understood it didn’t matter why she felt uncomfortable driving at night, only that she did. I could be more sympathetic, or, better, I could help.

  She was still skeptical. “You’re sure you can do this?”

  “Please,” I said with more confidence than I felt, “I’m almost thirty.”

  So we swapped seats and set out. At first, she wouldn’t stop telling me to slow down, even though I was going the limit.

  “Mom,” I said. “I’m the captain now.”

  From there, we bombed home. I pushed through my fear and ignored my mother bracing against the window and the dash. I didn’t know it, but she had her eyes closed for the tricky exit-jumping required to enter Manhattan.

  No wonder she was no help reading the GPS.

  Toward the end, a Bentley driver flagged me down, asking for directions into the city.

  For the money, you’d think a Bentley would know.

  I told them and offered that they could follow me.

  My mom took a break from being terrified to be impressed.

  Somehow, we made it safely home. I felt a greater sense of accomplishment after I parallel-parked than I did after speaking in front of one hundred people.

  Out on the sidewalk, as soon as my mom got her land legs, she delivered one of her body-shaking high fives and a giant hug.

  Yeah, we make a good team.

  Hissy Fit Bit

  By Lisa

  I’m in love.

  With my Fitbit.

  I’m smitten, which makes me Smitbit.

  Or maybe Fitbitten.

  Either way, I’m into it.

  If you don’t know what a Fitbit is, let me explain.

  It’s a harmless-looking rubber band that comes in cute colors, fits around your wrist, and tracks your activity during the day. In other words, it can tell in real time whether you have been sitting on your butt like me or whether you have been engaging in something called exercise.

  It doesn’t know if you’ve been naughty or nice.

  But it does see you when you’re sleeping.

  You can wear it to bed, and it can even track your sleep and tell you when you’re restless.

  Restless is code for got-up-andwent-to-the-bathroom.

  The Fitbit comes preset with goals, like for example ten thousand steps, and when you’ve walked ten thousand steps a day, it vibrates.

  Think of it as a vibrator with a PG rating.

  In other words, a lousy vibrator.

  My Fitbit is hot pink, and I got it as a gift from my best friend Franca, who reaches ten thousand steps by seven o’clock in the morning because she’s a runner.

  You could reach ten thousand steps by making 627 trips to the refrigerator, but that would not be in the spirit of Fitbithood.

  Okay, I admit I did that on the first day, but not the second. Because what started to happen is that I did more activities so I could get credit from my Fitbit.

  I wanted my Fitbit to approve of me.

  I’m not only a people pleaser, I’m an inanimate-object pleaser.

  Yes, to gain my Fitbit’s love, I actually engaged in exercise. I rode my bicycle for six miles and walked the dogs for two miles.

  By the way, my dogs do not have Fitbits.

  They don’t Fitbite.

  And after my exercise, I raced home, hurried to my desk, and synced up my Fitbit with the computer, which is one of Fitbit’s features. All of a sudden, pretty colored banners started flying across my monitor screen, reading HOORAY, LISA!

  I got all excited!

  Who doesn’t need positive reinforcement in life?

  After eight hours of sitting on my butt and writing, my computer never tells me, HOORAY, LISA!

  But somebody pays me to write, so I’m not complaining.

  HOORAY, MONEY!

  By the way, the Fitbit computer display can also tell you how many calories you burn a day, but I don’t look.

  I want to keep the romance alive.

  HOORAY IN GENERAL!

  Also I don’t need a bracelet to tell me I should lose weight.

  I have a mirror for that.

  And there’s a reason nobody’s making a mirror that straps to your wrist.

  Another Fitbit feature I ignore is that you can connect online with other people who have Fitbit, called your Fitbit Friends, and this will enable them to see your activity levels.

  I don’t want Fitbit Friends.

  Anybody who wants to know how many steps I walk a day isn’t anybody I want to know.

  If you follow.

  You can even buy a Fitbit scale, which will connect wirelessly to your Fitbit bracelet and a fitness app on your phone, so that all of the inanimate objects you own can talk about how fat you are behind your back.

  Needless to say, I declined.

  But in no time at all, I was wearing my Fitbit every day, doing as much activity as I could, and checking my progress every night on the computer. Banners flew, badges were awarded, and my spirits soared.

  GO, LISA, GO!

  I actually lost a pound without meaning to, which has never happened in my life and might in fact be a typographical error.

  But then one morning, I tapped my Fitbit to wake it up and it wouldn’t wake up. I tried recharging it, resetting it, and doing everything I could, but it was dead. I went to the troubleshooting section of the Fitbit website, and if you’ve ever been to the troubleshooting section of any website, you know what happens.

  You want to troubleshoot yourself.

  That was a week ago, and without Fitbit to clap for me, I’m riding my bike less and barely walking the dogs at all.

  I gained my pound back.

  My world went from hot pink to blue.

  The solution?

  I might be crazy, but I’m going to buy a new one.

  I know I can love again.

  Can You Keep a Secret?

  By Francesca

  I’m keeping a secret from my best friend.

  This won’t be published until after the secret is out, but as I write this, I’m in the midst.

  It’s terrible.

  No, sorry, keeping the secret is terrible. The news is wonderful:

  Her boyfriend is going to propose.

  “Please keep the following completely secret,” began his email to me last week. I opened t
he attachments on my iPhone and was temporarily blinded by the photos of drop-dead-gorgeous diamond rings.

  My first reaction was pure joy. I love her current boyfriend as a person and I love how he treats my friend; she’s never been happier since they got together, so I was positive the “yes” was a lock.

  But my elation curdled to anxiety when I realized he wasn’t just letting me in on a fun secret, he was asking for advice on her favorite style, setting, cut, size, etc.

  And I drew a blank. In our decade of friendship, I thought we’d discussed every topic on earth, twice. We love hypotheticals. I know which type of professional athlete she thinks would make the best husband (tennis pro), her top three cities to raise children (Providence, New York, Boston), and the breed of dog she would get (Bichon Frisé) if she liked dogs, which she doesn’t.

  Yet somehow, we hadn’t discussed hypothetical engagement rings.

  And now I’d discovered this glaring error in my best-friend duties too late. How had I not anticipated this scenario? As her in-case-of-romantic-emergency contact, I should have this information!

  What if I pick something she hates and she has to wear it for the rest of her life? Could we even be friends anymore?

  I’d definitely get cut from the bridesmaids roster.

  If she even gets married, that is. What if I pick an ugly ring and she blames him for it, thus mistakenly believing that the love of her life doesn’t “get” her? And it’s all my fault!

  It suddenly felt like I was the one proposing. Our entire relationship and future happiness were riding on this question!

  Clammy hands on my keyboard, I did my best to answer each of her hopeful fiancé’s questions. There was only one area I felt confident about—carat size. He suggested several options to me, but expressed concern my friend would find them “too flashy.”

  Oh yeah, women hate flashy diamonds.

  After I’d written an appropriately tasteful preamble about how they were all gorgeous and how my friend is so in love with him she’d say yes to a shoestring, I was unequivocal: “Bigger is better. It’s a no-brainer.”

  Just in case my friend ever saw this email exchange, I wanted her to know I had her back.

  The only conversation I did remember having with my friend was about how the real charm of an engagement ring lies in imagining the man you love most in the world taking the time and care to choose a ring that shows that love returned.

  So I told him not to worry about it.

  However, I was worried about it.

  The email was just the beginning. I pride myself on being an absolute vault when it comes to secrets, and my friends can vouch for that. But that’s just it: I keep secrets for my friends, not from them, especially not my best girl.

  Our friendship is defined by the telling of secrets, not the keeping of them. It’s a closed circuit, so no one else is included or exposed, but between the two of us, stories, chatter, news, and gossip constantly flow.

  Telling me this secret was like asking me to blow-dry my hair in the bathtub without getting shocked.

  And she isn’t making it easy on me.

  A few days after I’d responded to her boyfriend, my friend happened to email me about celebrity engagement rings, specifically Mary-Kate Olsen’s unusual vintage Cartier ring. We talk about dumb celebrity news all the time, but now this was loaded.

  I needed insight into her preferences, but I was terrified of being too obvious and revealing too much. “It’s cool, but also a little out there. It looks like it would get caught on sweaters. Do you like it?”

  She replied within minutes, as usual.

  Our BFF emails are High Priority.

  She wrote, “At first I was like, what is this weird ring? But then I realized it is so Elizabeth Taylor and awesome!”

  Okay, got it: weird is good, assuming it’s “Elizabeth Taylor” weird.

  Wait, I don’t get it.

  Then she forwarded a slide-show of celebrity engagement rings, again asking my opinion while offering none of her own.

  I sensed this was my last chance. I drafted my reply three times to calculate a casual tone:

  “Angelina’s is amazing with the emerald cuts smushed together, but do you think emerald looks as good in solitaire? I tend to like the simpler ones, like Keira Knightley’s classic solitaire. But it’s like, how much do you personally care about having a ring that no one else has?”

  She replied, “I don’t care about having a super unique ring, but I like the THOUGHT that comes with it.”

  The thought I was supposed to be thinking!

  Then she moved on to speculating on what happened between Beyoncé, Solange, and Jay-Z in that elevator, and I was safe.

  Beyoncé makes everything better.

  I considered forwarding the whole thread to her boyfriend, but since she didn’t answer any of my specific questions, I feared it would only confuse him like it had confused me. I had failed at the recon mission.

  Maybe I’m not cut out for the CIA.

  That said, I’m no dummy. My girlfriend-Spidey-sense guessed that the “coincidental” timing of her interest in celebrity rings might have been her testing me. So far, I’d passed. But I had no idea how I’d hold up in person.

  So I avoided her.

  For two weeks—a lifetime in our friendship. I didn’t want to spill the beans, but I also decided that I would not lie to her. When we finally did get together for lunch, I could tell something was up.

  She told me that her boyfriend recently asked her about her ring preference, completely hypothetically.

  “Ohmigod! Do you think he’s going to propose?” My feigned surprise was less Lee Strasberg and more Lucille Ball.

  “He said sometime ‘in the next five years.’”

  I gulped my iced tea. I definitely couldn’t keep this secret that long.

  “But I think he’s trying to throw me off the scent. I know he went to Tiffany’s because he showed me some pictures of rings, and I have to ask…”

  My heart thundered in my chest.

  “… is it your hand in the pictures?”

  “What? No!” I squeaked. I thought fast. “Tiffany’s isn’t ready for these Nicki Minaj nails.” I flashed my trashy bubble-gum manicure as evidence.

  My friend’s eyes narrowed. “Really? I’m shocked. I was sure he’d asked you for help.”

  A bead of sweat formed at my temple, but I still managed to avoid perjuring myself: “It’s not my hand in the picture.”

  I’m not the daughter of two lawyers for nothing.

  Then I saw my opening: “But now that you mention it, he might ask me for help. So you should tell me exactly what you want.”

  She did so, and I was relieved that her preferences were perfectly in line with my recommendations to her boyfriend, soon-to-be fiancé.

  I was riding high. All the possible crises had been averted. She wanted to marry the boy, she was sure to get her dream ring, and I would go on record as being a great friend.

  But I got cocky.

  As I said goodbye to her, I asked, “If he had asked me for help but had sworn me to secrecy, would you have wanted me to tell you?”

  She paused for a minute, then laughed. “Yeah, definitely. I’d want to know.”

  Grateful for my polarized sunglasses, I said goodbye and ran away.

  Thankfully, her boyfriend didn’t wait five years. I only had to sweat it out another month before he popped the question in Hawaii. My friend came home blessed-out and in love with her ring—and her new fiancé, of course. I was fully prepared to take the secret of my input to the grave, but her fiancé had a different idea.

  “And he told me how you helped him so much!” my friend said. “He said he couldn’t have done it without you.”

  He absolutely could have. But I’m glad I earned his trust by keeping his secret, and I’m touched that he gave me any credit at all.

  He’s going to be a wonderful best-friend-in-law.

  My TV Is Smarter Than
Your Honor Student

  By Lisa

  I recently converted to a smartphone, only to find out that I needed a smart TV.

  D’oh!

  If you recall, I wrote a few years ago about my love affair with my big TV, which at forty-two inches, took up my entire living room.

  Not that I was complaining.

  I loved its gargantuan screen, which made footballs look as big as watermelons and bachelorettes’ heads the size of hot-air balloons.

  Maybe because their heads were full of hot air.

  But now my big TV looks tiny, since now there are forty-seven inches, fifty-four inches, and even larger TVs, at a fraction of the price that mine cost.

  Yet I remained loyal to my big TV.

  I want one marriage that lasts.

  I hadn’t even heard of such a thing as a smart TV until somebody mentioned it to me, and I thought they were kidding, then when my other TV died, I replaced it with a smart TV.

  I admit, I don’t even know what that meant when I bought it. All I knew was that the price was right, and that they weren’t charging extra for its brainpower.

  So I got it home and right off the bat, I knew my new TV was smarter than I am because I couldn’t even understand its remote control. It’s black, and in the center is a little cube called the Smart Cube.

  I’m not making this up.

  All I’m doing is telling you what my TV tells me to.

  If I press the Smart Cube, onto the screen pops something called the Smart Hub.

  We get it.

  My TV is smart, not humble.

  I looked at the array of buttons on the Smart Hub, astounded. They were buttons I’d never seen before on a television, like Shop TV.

  Wow.

  It’s not a television, it’s a store.

  I didn’t push the Shop TV button, for obvious reasons. If I start buying things from my TV, my new address will be the poorhouse.

  Which would not be Smart.

  Then there’s a button called Social TV, which I gather is for any parties my TV wants to attend or clubs it wants to join.

  Like Mensa.

  There is even a button for Fitness, which I fully intend to avoid, again for obvious reasons. I pressed it just to let you know what it says, and it contains something called Cardio Blast and Sexy Beach Abs.

  Luckily I don’t need either of these things.