Elaine Ambrose

Bestselling Author, Ventriloquist, & Humorist

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Midlife Cabernet: Avoid Toenails in Your Soup

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waiter_0I often experience profound public humiliation with a daunting magnitude that would send most people screaming into the forest, never to return. After all these years, I accept the fact that I probably will trip and fall in a busy crosswalk, fart during a massage, drop my passport into a foreign toilet, or sprout broccoli in my teeth while giving a motivational speech. That’s what I do.

However, I still cringe at the memory of a recent embarrassment. Due to stress, deadlines, and too much caffeine, I had attacked my fingernails like a crazed wolverine, leaving bloody stumps that were too painful to use even to shampoo my hair. Of course, this was on a day when I had a Very Important Meeting with some Very Important People at a Very Private Club in Boise. Not even my best St. Johns knit suit could hide my tortured hands. It was time to leave, so I frantically pawed through my drawers looking for some fake nails to glue onto my fingers but only found some press-on toenails. The instructions on the box guaranteed that I didn’t need glue because the adhesive would last for a week. I slapped those gleaming toenails onto the ends of my ravaged fingers, picked up my briefcase, and dashed to the meeting, feeling smug that I had successfully survived yet another personal crisis.

At the Very Exclusive Club, I was escorted to the premium table and introduced to a sophisticated woman who looked like a model in a Ralph Lauren ad and a man who appeared to possess all the knowledge of the universe. As she shook my right hand, the toenail on my right thumb suddenly popped off and landed on the white linen tablecloth. I mumbled something about “that darned broken nail” and plucked it from the table. After exchanging professional pleasantries, we ordered herb-infused tomato bisque. As I took a sip, the toenail on the left hand snapped off and plopped into the soup. I tried to push it down with my spoon, but it kept bobbing up as if pleading to be rescued. Apparently, toes are wider and flatter than fingernails, and these things wouldn’t last the hour let alone a week. I resisted the temptation to say, “Waiter, there’s a toenail in my soup.”

My table companions cleared their throats and started their conversation about how I should diversify my investment portfolio to take advantage of opportunities in emerging markets. As they talked, I held my hands in my lap, working quickly to pry off the remaining nails so they wouldn’t sporadically shoot from my hand and put out someone’s eye. Two of the stubborn nails validated the claim on the box and wouldn’t release until I ripped them off and the wounded fingers started to bleed again. I discretely wrapped the linen napkin around my hand until it looked like one of those bandaged fists from a war movie. By the time the elegant woman was displaying a chart of recommended international equity funds, I was sitting on a pile of discarded toenails, applying white-linen pressure to my hemorrhaging fingertips, and pretending everything was okay.

I want the dignified waiter at The Arid Club to know that I really regret leaving that horrible mess. But maybe he overheard some good hints about investing and someday he’ll remove my name from the list of “Guests to Never Allow Back Inside.”

(This is an excerpt from the new book Midlife Cabernet – Life Love and Laughter after Fifty. Buy the e-book now on amazon.com and laugh by noon.)

Midlife Cabernet: I’m a Vindicated Class Clown

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image_13As the author of this blog and the new book Midlife Cabernet, I am gloriously giddy about being selected to present a stand-up comedy routine Saturday at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop in Dayton, Ohio. I’m included on the Erma Bombeck Blog Roll and this blog has been featured on the Erma Bombeck web site, so I am honored to have this opportunity to spin some yarns to a live audience of 400 funny people. And, to my former teachers who were irritated when I was the obnoxious class clown, I apologize but sitting all those hours in the principal’s office didn’t work.

Midlife Cabernet: Please Don’t Pee on the Seat

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image_14That yell heard yesterday in the Minneapolis Airport was me in the women’s bathroom. In a hurry to visit the restroom before changing planes, I dashed into the first open stall, quickly arranged the paper halo around the seat, and then unwittingly sat in the residue of a squatter – those intrepid women who think they can avoid germs by hovering over the toilet and doing their business without sitting down. This physical act required thigh muscles of a wrestler and accurate aim seen only in “The Hunger Games.”

I usually follow potty patrons who have the spray radius of a spigot on an agriculture sprinkler pipe. Irrigating the back 40 acres would be easy for these squatters – just let it go, let it go. (Oops, wrong analogy.) I wonder if the guilty gushers ever think to look back and maybe gauge if any urine actually got into the bowl. With the automatic flushers, it’s difficult to determine. Still, they might try observing the obvious puddles around the seat and the foul lake on the floor. Unless there is a potting training or health issue, there is no excuse for peeing on the seat and leaving it there. Especially if I’m next in line.

Most of us assume we can enter a public restroom and leave without needing to shower and get a penicillin shot. Now we must scope out the stall and prepare to do janitorial duty. Maybe we could have a chart on the back of the door for squatters to add stars in they can hit the bowl and not leave a mess. Otherwise, slap on the paper, Sister, and sit down like the rest of us.

In my travels, I have encountered various types of facilities. In Egypt, you pay an attendant in a public restroom and she will give you one tiny sheet of toilet paper. More pay, more paper. In Thailand, the toilet and the shower were in the same room without a separating wall or curtain. The public bathroom in India offered a hole in the ground and two footrests – but the floor was in gleaming marble. In England, the shared water closet was at the end of the hall and the commode was activated by pulling on a chain. But here in the USA, we have a wonderful invention that removes everything automatically without stress – if used correctly.

One more point. The women’s public bathrooms usually have a long line of squirming women because men design airports, sporting events, and theaters. If men had to wait for a private stall every time and then gyrate out of pantyhose, belts, and buttons while the next person was peeking under the stall to see if they were finished yet, you can bet your bulging bladder there would be ten times more bathrooms. We’d be happy if they would just double the number of facilities for women and these venues would have millions of happy, satisfied female customers. Maybe they could add special stalls designated for “Squatters Only” that would have loud buzzers for excess spraying, grates, and automatic washers on the floors. That could really piss off the worst offenders.