Bright Lights, Big Ass: A Self-Indulgent, Surly, Ex-Sorority Girl's Guide to Why It Often Sucks in the City, or Who Are These Idiots and Why Do They All Live Next Door to Me? Read Online Free PDF Page B

behind us. “That had been in someone else’s mouth.” I point at my own mouth and Fletch’s, making chewing motions. “He’s going to get worms!” I hold my hands up to my face and make little squiggly motions with my fingers.
    “¿Qué?” She turns to the cashier and asks, “¿Qué dijo la ramera loca?” and the cashier then rattles something back at her in rapid-fire Spanish and they both shrug. The woman yells some gibberish to the Little Rooster Boy, who toddles back over to be picked up and placed in the front of her cart.
    Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere! “Yes, yes, exactly! No more stinky danger gum! You’re welcome!” We walk out of the store and I’m delighted to have been a Good Samaritan. “See, Fletch? You always tell me not to get involved, but I did and it paid off. They were glad that I stepped in. People really appreciate it when you try to help.”
    “Um, Jen? I’m pretty sure she just called you a crazy bitch,” he tells me.
    “Oh.” I really need to learn Spanish.
    But no matter what language you say it in, Target is a little slice of heaven.

    The second prong in my revised Trinity is IKEA, the Swedish home store monolith. If you’re unfamiliar, they carry every single thing you could possibly ever need to fill your home and garden at low, low prices, but in obscure Swedish sizes so those items won’t coordinate with anything else you own, like, say, if you want to put a regular Target lamp shade on your IKEA lamp. Fletch thinks it’s Sweden’s master plan to make Americans so busy trying to construct furniture with Allen wrenches that we don’t notice they’ve invaded us. (Personally, I think it’s payback; the Swedes are pissed that we aren’t buying ABBA albums anymore.)
    The IKEA I frequent is in the suburbs and is so big you can actually see it from space. 9 Seriously, it’s three stories tall and has special escalators for your cart to ride down next to you. There are also giant multilanguage signs in front of it saying:
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DO NOT PUT YOUR BABY STROLLER ON HERE YOU DUMBASS BECAUSE IT’S A CONVEYOR BELT AND YOU DON’T PUT YOUR BABY ON A CONVEYOR AND EXACTLY HOW STUPID ARE YOU THAT WE HAVE TO REPEAT THIS TEN TIMES AND WITH A PICTURE OF A BABY STROLLER WITH A SLASH THROUGH IT AND HOW DID YOU NOT NOTICE THIS SAME SIGN POINTING TO THE NICE SAFE ELEVATOR TEN FEET AWAY?
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    Which would lead you to believe we wouldn’t see people trying to put their strollers on it every time we visit. (And you wouldn’t think Fletch and I laugh ourselves stupid every time we see this happen either, yet here we are.)
    Except possibly Las Vegas, there’s no better place to people-watch than our IKEA. Were the FBI to pay attention to my helpful suggestions (or return my calls), they’d know to set up a camera at the front door, because at some point every single person on the face of the earth eventually passes through it. I don’t care how rich or poor you are, the draw of purchasing twelve hundred tea lights for thirty-seven cents is too great for anyone to resist.
    Fletch and I are fortifying ourselves with big plates full of delicious Swedish meatballs and lingonberry sauce with lingonberry soda and lingonberry tarts for dessert 10 at a table overlooking the scratch-and-dent section two floors below us before we commit commerce.
    Fletch chews a meatball thoughtfully and then says, “You know, coming to IKEA is a lot like doing tequila shots.”
    “Why’s that?” I ask.
    “Because when someone suggests it, it seems like a fantastic idea—big fun and all—but in the morning you wake up nauseous in the middle of a pile of table legs, with no idea how you got there, and swearing to never do it again.”
    I agree. “And then once your hangover’s gone, you forget all about it, so the next time someone says, ‘Hey, let’s do shots!’ you’re like, ‘Capital idea!’ and the cycle continues.”
    “But not us. Because today we’re just going to look at that one lamp