Every week, if I have no weekend plans by the time Thursday rolls around, I begin to worry. “Oh no!” I think to myself. “I canNOT sit alone in my apartment all weekend!” This fear generally leads to a (semi-desperate) round of e-mails and texts and phone calls. Usually, though, I’ve left it so late that by Thursday or Friday that everybody already has plans with their boy/girlfriends/fiancé/es/husbands/wives, what have you. Okay, fine, I don’t begrudge them (much) their plans with their various partners, but it does suck to be staring at a whole weekend with nothing to do!
This was the case on Friday night (Feb. 22, but the rest of the weekend filled up pretty quickly. Yay! But back to Friday night…). I had been unable to convince anyone to go out, so I told myself (as I sat alone, drinking wine and flipping channels) “Okay, this is fine. I have my books and I have wine. I don’t have to go out on a Friday night. I can have fun on my own, dammit. It’s not pathetic to be the last single person on EARTH without even the OPTION to go out and do something this weekend, unless I want to go by myself and look like a loser. Not sad at ALL.” Somehow, this tactic didn’t work and I ended up feeling pretty sorry for myself. Shocker, isn’t it?
Just as I’d just decided to hang the whole thing and go to bed (at 10.30pm on a Friday. On a FRIDAY! God, my life is pathetic), giving up on trying to be positive and embrace my Spinsterdom… Cue my friend calling from the front lobby of my building, hysterical. It seems that she and her boyfriend had had a fight and she’d walked out and come to my apartment. Bonus points for her for asking if I was at home (the only phone I have is a cell, so theoretically, I could have been anywhere), or if I was busy when I answered! It’s nice that she thinks I could have a life, even when it’s kind of common knowledge that I don’t. Anyway, I digress.
She came in, I gave her a hug, some wine and a box of Kleenex and we spent the next 3-4 hours bashing men and dissecting her relationship (which was really rich, coming from me. As IF *I* know anything about men or relationships!). We also began discussing wedding dances (her sister is getting married, one of the many problems that led to the tears that night) and I thought it might cheer her up to hear that I had “decided” that, should I ever get married, I would wear harem pants under my dress, hike up the dress and do the Hammer dance for my “wedding dance” (I also threw in there that my groom would be wearing a tearaway tuxedo, with bike shorts, Doc Martens and a vest on underneath. We will both do the Hammer-shimmy dance and he will sing the “OHHHH-ooooh-OOOHH”s while I scream, “STOP! HAMMER TIME!” See the “You Can’t Touch This” video – then you’ll understand). That’s ROMANCE for you!
So, we started talking about stupid dances from high school and the dumb-ass fashions (WHO ever thought harem pants and bicycle shorts were a good idea?!), and before long, we were on YouTube, searching for instructions on how to do the Roger Rabbit. Oh yes, we did! We’re dorks like that. Actually, we’re bigger dorks than that because once we found instructions on how to do the Roger Rabbit, we moved the furniture and DID THEM. I think I may have injured my pride. It was a MESS but it was fun. 
After the Roger Rabbit, we tackled the Running Man (which is infinitely easier) and lastly, the Hammer Dance. I know it didn’t solve her relationship problems, but really – how sad can you be when you’re full of wine, have a possibly terminal case of the giggles and trying to do the Running Man in your friend’s living room at 2am on a Friday night? 
On to a new rant. I know - you can’t wait! My cousin’s work e-mail automatically rejects spam and any e-mails with profanities or “untoward” language in them (“arse” got rejected!) and, after having numerous (read: most) e-mails rejected (who knew that my daily speech incorporated so many profanities?), I began to think about this principle. They’ve created spam blockers and language blockers… so how come they can’t create grammar or spelling blockers? Reject the e-mails that make NO sense because the writers haven’t bothered to use proper English words and/or grammar! Really, my life would be so much happier if I didn’t have to muddle my way through some of the e-mails I get.
Dear General Populace,
Please take careful note – if it takes you so long to type “to” that you must type “2” instead, you a) need to practice typing and b) should really just write letters by hand and give up on e-mail entirely. Really. I went to school. I learned our language. So did you. Use it. If you don’t know how to spell something, turn on the spell checker. Please! Dictionary.com, people! Bookmark it.
Read more. This will help you to understand English grammar and sentence structure. You have no idea how THICK you seem when you don’t capitalize anything or make use of our glorious punctuation. Reading will also help you to learn the difference between “there”, “they’re” and “their”; not to mention “you’re” and “your”.
Better yet, get the book “Eats, Shoots and Leaves”. Read it, love it, learn it, LIVE IT and stop writing me e-mails that make me want to pull my hair out because you’re communicating in some strange, personal shorthand! Yeesh!
Yours gratefully,
Megs
