Is My Secret Out?

I think I just wet my pants. And, no, not because I’m now at the age where I wear diapers, but because it’s just too darn funny that there are people out there that think I do. Or at the very least think that at my age, I have some major issues with my girly (now turned granny) parts.

 Just prior to penning this, I sat down to do some online banking and thought it might be nice to listen to some music on Pandora, that free internet music site. It made me register my name and email address, choose a password, and asked for my sex and my age. There was a small highlighted “why?” underneath the boxes for sex and age. I clicked on the “why,” and the explanation was that it allowed appropriate advertising to my sex and age group.

I chose my music preference—Smooth Jazz—and clicked the icon to start. The sultry sounds of Norman Brown and the words of That’s the Way Love Goes fill the room, and suddenly the screen blares the words: YOUR DRY VAGINA, in huge font size to the right of the Pandora screen—an advertisement for my sex and age apparently. It then fades to other less-than-complimentary words about the condition of my vagina, and finally to a picture of the product, some vaginal ring that releases estrogen inside your hoo haw.

I have no idea what advertised products followed, and I hate to guess. And Lord only knows what it would have given me if I entered my age as 65! Nursing homes? Dementia medication? Funeral homes? I shudder to think.

Why Smart Phones Are Like Oranges

Actually, smart phones are nothing like oranges. My analogy is that they’re like orgasms, but I had a nightmare last night that the title got displayed in bright neon, with my name attached to it, and was flashed all over the world like a news headline: WHY SMART PHONES ARE LIKE ORGASMS!!! by Linda Cousine, so I changed it. I didn’t think it was good form to start off my new blog post having to dig myself out of some sort of FCC trouble, so whenever you read the word “orange”—think orgasm.

Smart phones are like oranges—you don’t know what you’re missing until you’ve had your first—and once you’ve experience it, you wonder how you ever lived without them.

I’ve recently had the thrill of having my first. Smart phone, not orange. (I’m delighted to say, those, I’ve been having for years, although modesty and decorum—and possibly arrest—I mean, is there an age that’s too young to admit to? keep me from mentioning exactly how many years.)

And, although, I haven’t quite got down all the techniques (again, we’re talking phone here) I’m wondering how I survived all those years without the ability to instantly communicate to the world-at-large, (which in my world is all sixty-six people in my contacts, thirty-three of them duplicate numbers because of some sort of technical glitch).

For the longest time, I had phone envy, or maybe it was phone annoyance. I’d see all those young kids, texting away, their tiny teenage fingers a blur as they sent long messages in less time than it took me to find and press the ON, (or was it ACCEPT?) button on my old dinosaur phone. Little did I know, they were using some foreign cryptic lingo previously used only on vanity plates and adding little cutesy symbols called emoticons. My phone at the time had the old-fashioned keyboard with A-C, D-F, G-I…Just writing the word “Hi!” took five punches of the keypad and a bathroom break in the middle.

Not anymore, now I have a Smart Phone. An iPhone, no less. Unfortunately, my Smart Phone has a Dumb Human holding on to it, and while it is smart, it’s not smart enough to get beyond that. Still, I can do all sorts of fun things I couldn’t do before: surf the web, get my emails, text, get directions, take pictures, play games. Some amazing things. It even lets me do something called Face Time, where I can see the person I’m talking to. But that means they can see me, too. At 8:00 a.m., without make-up, and my hair a mess.

If only it came with an app that could give me an instant beauty makeover every time the phone rang.

Now, that would be a smart phone.

Linda Cousine
Women's Humor Writer
www.lindacousine.com