Word to the Wise

If this post looks familiar, it's because it's a repeat. I'm following in the footsteps of many of my fellow bloggers and re-posting something from early in my blogging days-- last year-- in the hopes that some newer readers will enjoy it. Have a great weekend!

I was spellchecking my blog recently when the words “J.C. Penney” got flagged. I don’t expect all proper nouns to make it through, but guess what handy alternative the computer offered me? “Japanned.”

This sounded weird and vaguely racist, so I looked it up online. If you are unfamiliar with the word, here goes:Japan –verb (used with object) 5. to varnish with japan; lacquer. 6. to coat with any material that gives a hard, black gloss.

I think my spell-check is pretty snooty for suggesting an obscure lacquer technique from the 18th century. As if I don’t feel intellectually inferior enough spending my days writing about diarrhea and cellulite, now I have to be shown up by my own spell-check.

Hello? I guess J.C. Penney is a bit too pedestrian for its tastes.

This reminded me of a crazy thing that happened to Tom with his Blackberry last summer. He was branching out business-wise and needed an office manager. He approached me, “Anna, do you know of a stay-at-home mom who might like to get into the business world by working part-time while her kids are in school?”

When I stopped waving my arms yelling, “Pick me! Pick me!” I recommended my friend Jane for the job. Before Jane’s interview, Tom got stuck on a business trip and needed to reschedule. He emailed her from the airport on his Blackberry.

When he typed, “We are stuck in California,” his Blackberry immediately changed it to, “We are stuck in validpenis.” Tom was not aware that “validpenis” was an acceptable substitute for California, so he didn’t bother proofreading his message.

For good measure, he signed off with, “I’ll contact you when I get back from “validpenis.” Someone had put this little glitch in the Blackberry software.

When Tom returned from, ahem, CALIFORNIA, he re-read the email and nearly died. He was mortified. I almost wet my pants laughing. We didn’t know what to do.

Should he explain to Jane during the interview that he wasn’t a perv, or would it too inappropriate to even have the word “penis” floating around during a job interview? Should he pretend that nothing happened, in case she hadn’t read her email closely? Perhaps she would think it said, “Valparaiso?”

I encouraged him to ignore the situation entirely. Tom said nothing, and Jane took the job. About a month later, over a glass of wine, I broached the subject with Jane. She had, indeed, noticed the offending word right away when she read her email. For a few moments she stared at her computer screen with a serious case of the heebs.

She lamented the fact that working for a weirdo wouldn’t be the best way to jumpstart her transition back into the workforce. She wondered how the wholesome See family could harbor such a sicko in its midst. She wondered how to break it to me, her good friend, that my hubby made Clarence Thomas look as tame as a beanie baby.

Then Jane did something I never would have thought of: she Googled “validpenis.” Jackpot. In an online chat about phones was mention of how this Blackberry keypad turned the word California to “validpenis.”

Whew!

Technology got us into this crisis and technology quickly got us out. I don’t know whether today’s blog proves we are smarter than computers or they are smarter than we are, but when I spell-check it in a moment, I’m curious as to what choices it’s going to give for “validpenis.” California, perhaps?

Mortification Monday

I’m stealing my title from Marinka at Motherhood in NYC, on of the funniest bloggers around.

When I taught high school in my early 20's, I was also the sponsor of the yearbook. That meant lots of Hawaiian pizza, stress, and late nights when we would “hit the wall” and giddiness would ensue.

One of the prime motivators I used with my female editorial staff was the promise of an embarrassing story about myself every time they made a major deadline. Lucky for them, yet unluckily for me, I had a lot of material. The stories had to be interesting enough to keep 17 year old girls interested at midnight, but they couldn't be more than PG-13.

Sooooo, today I’ll share with you one of those embarrassing stories. Not sure if it will somehow motivate you in any way on this Monday, but we’ll see.

I was in college. It was an early spring day like today, when the weather was unseasonably warm. Back from class early, I entered my empty suite, proceeded to my room, and decided to change into some cooler clothes.

As I stood in front of my cheap full-length mirror glued to my closet door, I decided to survey the estate, including the back 40. You see, my freshman 15 pounds had morphed into a sophomore 20, and so on, and swimsuit season was a mere 8 weeks away (also kind of like today!).

I stood in my bra and underwear and started to wiggle, then jiggle in front of the mirror. The flesh was swaying; the room was rocking.

I looked up. There, in the open doorway of my room, stood a relatively new acquaintance, mouth agape, backpack dangling to the ground. He looked stricken. I screamed and dove under my covers, the flesh still a-flapping.

This poor young man had a few days before asked me to attend a dance with him. He must have found the outer door to the suite ajar when he stopped by to discuss minor details of the date. He got more than he bargained for.

You may be thinking, “What’s the big deal, Anna?” Well, before marriage and kids Anna See was a demure young lady, certainly not prone to jiggling her naked flesh in mixed company.

Remember, these were simpler times. This was before “Girls Gone Wild” videos were introduced, and before 8th grade girls started “sexting” boys by sending nudie pics of themselves to any mildly interested parties.

Aargh.

A few minutes later I got a phone call from the young man. He did not mention the incident, but merely said, “When I was in 10th grade English class, I farted big-time during Silent Reading. Everyone knew it was me.” Click.

What a class act! That was just what I needed to see that I would recover from this, and ultimately go on to have many more embarrassing moments. I appreciated his graciousness and, looking back, I'm even more grateful that thongs weren't big yet on my campus.

Whew.

To read the incredible story of how this young man’s life and mine intersected almost 15 years later, check out one of my favorite posts.