Here are things I’ve been busted for lately:
Checking myself out in a window. By someone inside the window. It was a dark little administrative office at the pier for free kayaking or fishing or something that adventurous people do in the Hudson, and I didn’t think anyone was in there – till I noticed motion behind the glass and there was a guy grinning and waving at me and giving me the “ok” hand signal.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d been looking straight on, and then I could’ve thrust my head forward and shielded my eyes with my hand, “just trying to see if anyone’s in there”-style. (Like I have a kayaking complaint or something.) But I was checking out my side view. The how’s my butt profile doing inspection. There’s no defense.
Whatever you call this. When I entered my apartment building the other day, I took my ear buds out so I could ask the doorman, Shef, a question. Before I said anything, he said, “Yes, Laura. You want to ask me something?” And then he explained, “When you take out one ear bud, I know it’s a courtesy thing and you’ll walk through and just say hi. When you take out both, it’s to ask me something.”
I’m not sure if that’s “busted” or understood.
Stealing a chicken from a blind lady. That’s giving away the punchline, but it stays.
Couple of nights ago, I go to Garden of Eden at around 7pm to get a rotisserie chicken for dinner.
Nothing left on the chicken shelves but some dried-out looking, cut-up quarter chickens.
I leave and trot to Whole Foods. No chickens left. Is it some chicken-eating holiday I didn’t know about? Or is this just what happens in the chicken community after 7pm?
I’ve already seen the chickens at Agata and Valentina. Not looking good. Garden of Eden’s are best. Maybe good enough to settle for the 2 quarter chickens, if they’re still there.
They are, but down on the bottom shelf, tucked out of view, is a beautiful one, all fresh and niced up with sauce and herbs. There’s a piece of paper on top of the plastic lid, which I know means something, but I toss it aside and grab the chicken. After you’ve gone to three different places looking for chicken and doubled back, your brain and body tell you that you must have chicken at any cost. Social codes don’t apply. You’re like a Walking Dead zombie but feeding on rotisserie meat instead of living humans.
I pretend not to hear the counter guy yelling “Miss, Miss!” until the third time, when snap my head toward him like, who me?
“You can’t have that chicken. It’s reserved.”
“Huh?”
“It’s mine. I called for that chicken.” – This from a woman 10 feet away from me, standing at the counter.
No, wait, a woman with dark glasses and a seeing eye dog.
She’s looking at me as accusingly as a blind woman possibly can.
“She called for it,” counter guy confirms. “That’s why there was a sign on it.”
“Oh, no kidding! Huh! I didn’t know you could call ahead for a chicken.” Trying to pretend I wasn’t just caught taking a blind woman’s dinner (which, of course, she deserved because she had dibs on it, not because she was more in need). “What time do you have to call by?”
Deli guy looks at me like, “What is wrong with you?”
Blind woman shakes her head.
Seeing eye dog lies down and puts both paws over his eyes like it’s all too much.
Cue Curb Your Enthusiasm end-of-show theme music.
(Except for the last two lines, every bit of this really happened. I’m not proud.)
What’ve you been busted for? Or busted someone else for? How far would you go for a nice roasted chicken?
TELL ME IN THE COMMENTS.
Or, leave a question for future posts. I love questions.
You might want to reconsider highlighting the woman’s blindness as a relevant part of the story. She doesn’t need the chicken more than you because she’s blind, she just deserves the chicken because she beat you to it. There is an implication of pity, or that she has a greater need for this meal, solely because she’s blind. Could use a 2021 update, if you ask me.
Thank you for the astute, 2021 feedback. Noted and done.
I’m coming late to this one – you are really going at the speed of light, aren’t you?!
I got busted thusly:
I will take – nay, request – any medical test invented provided it doesn’t require radiation or extreme pain or too many needles. So I decided I needed a colonoscopy. When I got to the doctor’s, the admitting nurse, a ringer for Rosie Perez (this made me nervous, but I persevered), asked what brought me there. I tell her. History in my family, grandmother died from colon cancer, found blood in stool (sorry, folks). I laid it on thick. She goes “Funny, it don look like you had any problems…the lab came back negative for blood…an I’m lookin here at yaw history an you nevah mentioned it before”.
I know, umm, uh, I forgot
“oh. Really.”
Um, yeah.
She so busted me. We both knew it.
The doctor politely let me continue with my scenario and gave me my test.
WAIT. Are you saying, you made up “blood in stool”? If so, that’s the best fake brag ever.
I wish I had your go-getter style about medical testing. Extreme bunny ears when I go to an “annual” physical.
As for my light speed, I’m trying to write every day. Who knows how long I can keep it up, but I figure if I only write a sentence, that counts, too.
I have a cool question for your next blog.
What happens when you walk into a new age store and ask for something.
I’d love to read that kind of blog.
You keep asking us to comment, but I feel weird because I’m new around these parts and it’s like intruding in a reunion of old friends. I love your posts, though, I always learn something (either copy-related or not).
I haven’t been busted for anything lately, but that’s probably because I don’t get out much now that I work from home. I’m really digging the daily posts!
Don’t feel weird! I get new commenters every day, or at least most days. And they become long-time commenters, and then we have in-jokes, and then they make me godmother to their children. (Kidding, no one does that, I’m bad at picking out kids’ presents.) But that’s all to say, thank you for commenting and welcome to the old-friends reunion!
Well, when I was ten, I wanted to have my bangs cut. While my parents were away, I took out a pair of scissors and cut my bangs myself not only he way a 10-year-old kid. Pretty sloppy work. When my mom saw my work, she asked who has cut my hair. With my best blank stare, I said I had no idea. I really didn’t I held out as long as I could until she broke me. I was busted.
I’m so there with you. In fact, I think you just gave me another idea for a post. What was with the childhood self-haircut shame? I didn’t realize that was universal. Or maybe it’s just you and me.
Ahahaha! Bowing. Always with the bowing. I’ve relocated to LA and am still trying to figure out the local customs…
Whoa! Oh, I guess I could’ve picked up on that from the title of your linked post. Welcome back stateside!
Hmm, what really jumped out at me here is that you take out one earbud when you’re walking through, just to say hi. That is like extreme courtesy, I think. I don’t know, is that just how civilized people behave nowadays?
I’m old-fashioned. In the winter, I take out an earbud AND remove a glove. What’s customary courtesy signal for greeting people in Japan? Putting down your full-body-pillow companion?
I’m sure that Zabars would never have run out of chicken. Why oh why did you ever move so far away?
Well, you’re right. They also have Chirping Chicken up there. PLUS Citarella. Why did I leave the bosom of the Chicken Belt?
What’s so bad about admiring your body? I imagine you work hard to keep it fit and healthy, so let yourself enjoy the results. Your eye is the only one you need to please! <3
In theory you’re right, but nothing looks more vain than the window-reflection check.
I’m Self-Busting About My Fear of Being Busted
I just scrolled down the comments to make sure my wife hadn’t revealed something embarrassing about me. Self… Busted. By the way, “busting makes me feel good!”
Oh please bust her for something here, so she can revenge-bust you back!
My husband called. “I have to go to Austin tomorrow and stay over night. Mom’s getting surgery for her kidney stone.”
“Man, we are destined to never have the same day off.”
Husband sighs. “I’ll call you in a little bit.”
I call back immediately. “Umm, so is your mom okay?”
Too late.
HA! I love you. That would’ve been my exact response, with my exact (bad) order and timing.
Oh Laura…tsk tsk tsk. Is this what I can expect from you? You’re gonna need some rehab from this chicken saga. I know a good shopping empowerment person. You will of course end up in Hawaii with seven other women in a “Poultry Prayer” circle. <3
A poultry prayer circle sounds to me like where a bunch of live turkeys, ducks, chickens, and turduckens gather around and pull a beating heart out of a human’s chest. And then cook it on a skewer and serve it on purslane, because offal is very “in.”
That chicken story had me laughing out loud, while sitting alone on the Bart train. That’s the great thing about riding the Bart train, no one very looks at you. You could sit down with thorns around your head, bleeding and dragging a 12 foot cross and no one would look. Or offer you their seat. Along the lines of “produce a lot, failure means less.” Hang out on Bart and you feel super grounded and well adjusted. Even when you’re laughing alone……or trying not to stare at the man across from you flossing his teeth with a thread he pulled out of his jacket. I’m always the only one staring.
We can’t be on the Bart train together, because then people will notice the staring. (Plus our good looks, which is a whole other ball of wax.)
I don’t just stare, I move closer to stare. I wish I’d been there to see the guy flossing.
I have a friend whose mom uses dental floss she found on the floor.
How can there be so much hilarity in one post?
Thank you. I ask, how can there be so little chicken on the shelves?
…”or some expression of nerd joy”
hahaha
I get nerd joy when you comment.
Like this post, but LOVE the line in your newsletter that got me to visit here: “When you produce a lot, the failures mean a lot less.” Was thinking I’d be reading more about that here, but it turns out not. And that’s probably OK. Maybe all I needed was those exact words, which are worth repeating: “When you produce a lot, the failures mean a lot less.”
So I’ll just go away now and put those words on mind-loop – while I’m producing a lot, and probably failing a lot, too, which I now find to be OK. Thanks, Laura. (And you may want to consider becoming vegetarian to save that sort of embarrassing situation again. Just a suggestion. It’s one option, anyway. May turn out to be less hassle than having to be nice to blind ladies.)
Thanks so much, Jo!
And maybe I’ll make that topic a future blog post. I hope it inspires you. Go make a lot of stuff. Making a lot changes everything.
And of course, the 4-year-old in me thinks that’s about doody.