In which my ineptitude is your gain
And, perhaps, The Bloggess‘s. As in, the lovely and talented Jenny Lawson, author of the memoir Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, which I found so nice I bought it twice!
Twins!
Or, rather, like a dolt I forgot that I had already added the book to my Amazon.com cart and then I added it again later on and then I clicked “buy.” And you would think that the nice people at Amazon.com might want to alert people to the fact that they have two copies of the very same book in their carts, just a nice little pop-up window that says “Are you sure…?”, but on the other hand, you’d think that maybe they wouldn’t want to do so, so as to profit from our ineptitude. (Solution: buy stock in Amazon.com.)
I do stuff like this not so, so frequently. But filling in blanks on online applications does make me slightly nervous — one too many times walking up to the train departure counter or the airline check-in with a ticket for THE WRONG DAY has left me slightly suspicious of my own abilities. Fortunately, the last time this happened on an airline was during the pre-9/11 era, and they still let me on the plane. Probably they figured I was too stupid to do any real damage. (Today, though, I will say that I managed to book an airplane ticket for the correct date AND time. I know this because I cross checked several calendars and e-mail messages a few half-dozen times just to make sure. I even resisted yelling to Rachel, who was upstairs, to come down and check that I had everything right before I pressed “confirm.” Because I knew in my heart of hearts I had it down pat.) (And now God is going to punish me.) (More about said travel plans soon.)
But really, if anyone should have to profit from my ineptitude, I’m happy that it’s Lawson. And if books were like — I don’t know — cookies, or kittens or underwear or anything else where it made sense to have two of the exact same thing, then I would totally keep both copies because they are, individually and collectively, hilarious. Which may be why the book landed at the #1 NYT BestSeller spot its first week out. (Just above the also awesome Rachel Maddow, by the way.) The NYT one-sentence blurb is simply “A blogger recalls her unusual upbringing,” which is just about the driest understatement of the century. I especially enjoyed the chapter in which she recalls her career in human resources and all the whacked people she had to deal with, like the constant stream of men photocopying their junk, or the woman “who had misspelled or left blank almost all of her application”:
She came in again yesterday with almost the exact same application, but with a different name. I turned her down again. Today she came in again and turned in another application with another new name. I asked her whether she was the girl with the first name. She said that was her sister. I told her that I couldn’t hire her unless her name matched the name on her Social Security card, and she asked for the application she’d just given me, and changed the name back to the original one. I turned her down again and pointed out that everyone lies on applications but not usually about their names. When she left she said, “Okay. See you tomorrow.” I’m pretty sure she’s not being sarcastic.
The part about Harry Potter’s vagina is also highly amusing.
So. I’m going to give the book to you, dear readers. I will pack it all back up in the same box it came in and send it to you rather than back to the online retailer from whence it came. Because that would make me — and hopefully you — much happier. If you’d like a chance to win, simply leave a comment below. If you’d like a chance to win and also make me feel better, tell me about some particularly inept thing you’ve done. Or just write “I want it.” you can also enter by becoming a new Facebook “friend” of this blog (up there, to the right. Your right.). I’ll randomly select the winning name next week, say after midnight on June 26. Bonne chance!
Myself and my partner took a drive to the boarder to head to Minneapolis for the weekend and we forgot the bag with our passports in them. Frustrated, we took the drive back to town and then returned to the boarder again, only to find the passports were not in the bag either. We returned home again to find them in a backpack in the side of the car. Needless to say, we decided it was a sign of some terrible fate and didn’t take the third venture down.
Beth, you are my people.
If I win, you don’t have to ship it in a box. We could do an in-person exchange! I generally have a good track record but when I do something inept it’s usually big. Like the time I went to hot yoga and insisted that someone else walked off with my runners because I didn’t see them there. I made the woman behind the counter search for them. I made my boyfriend drive across town to bring me another pair of shoes so I could drive home only to have him walk over to the shoe rack and pick up my runners.
He: Aren’t these yours?
Blink. Blink.
Me: I thought my shoes were blue?
I blame it on the fact that the heat from the session melted my brain and I sweated it out in a puddle on the yoga room floor.
Another reason for me not to do hot yoga.
Or you could give it to me, because then you could just walk it down and I could pour you a beverage and we could wax philosophic about our own respective upbringings, and I could tell you about the time I went to the wrong terminal at Pearson, with two small boys and some luggage, 55 minutes before my flight. And how I still made my flight, and how running as a hobby does sometimes have some real life benefits.
But even if you don’t give me the book, we can do all that, and I can get it from the library. Or borrow yours. Right after I borrow some more Brain, Child episodes. Or issues. Does the longest comment win?
Marlene, even if you don’t win, I will lend you my other copy. And there is some terrible news: Brain, Child is ceasing publication. To cry! But they say they’re going to start publishing abilities, so perhaps not all is lost.
“publishing abilities” What does that mean? That they are able to publish? Or that they will publish others’ abilities? Will they publish my ability to stay up ludicrously late, every night, and try to fit everything into a massive Venn diagram, like some 6 degrees of Emmylou Harris game, gone horribly awry? Does this count as a second comment? What if you select yourself? Egads.
Argh! Publishing ANTHOLOGIES. inept voice recognition.
I forgot that my son in grade 1 had his major end of the year spelling test and therefore he did not study. He was very pleased that he got 44/50 but all I could think was “If I had remembered he would have got 50.”
Still, 44 out of 50 isn’t so bad. I say you’re being hard on yourself.
Yes, please!
plenty of ineptitude here…the one I’ll never live down is getting lost in the rocky mountains after missing one stinking turn. But didn’t realize I was lost until about 4 hours of driving later…had to backtrack 4 hours and then take the correct turn (which I had missed by one block) and drive the correct 4 hours. It was very dark by the time I arrived!
Argh — the eight hours kills me. Yours in ineptitude.
I’m only commenting in the hopes that I win the book, but your post was amusing, so I may check back.
I’d have my own copy, but I spent the Spring having surgery and it took up all my time and money. Now that you feel sorry for me, maybe I’ll win the book!
Either that or I’ll eventually go out and buy it for myself.
Thanks for the chance to play!
<3
Gosh, I really want it!
OMG, a combo of your blog and the bloggess, two sites I visit daily. Am I dreaming??
I have MANY examples of ineptitude. The one currently bothering me is this. My son still sleeps with a diaper on. Last night we did the whole bedtime routine, my wife and I kissed him good night, and he went to sleep. In the middle of the night he woke up crying. I went into his room and his bed was soaking wet. While I was stripping the bed and my wife was taking him to the bathroom to get him cleaned up I was going on and on and on about the stupid diapers and how we can’t find one to make it through the night and how I was going to get online and find out what other parents do and how tired I am of changing the sheets and how we HAVE to find a solution.
Finally I concluded my rant and realized my wife hadn’t spoken. I gave a sassy “Are you even LISTENING to me??” She came in, patted me on the shoulder, and said “You know, the diapers work a lot better when you remember to put one on.”
Whoops.
Oh. Sigh. I’ve done, too. Including the rant. Sister.
Well, at least I’m in good company
Well, I often open the refrigerator door when the microwave dings…I don’t know why. Maybe I hope secretly for a genie to be in there that will grant me a wish…its not happened yet however. It is nice to know however that I am not the only one that does things that make you stop and think..What the?? At least I can own my nuttiness!
I’ve recently discovered the Blogess and now you. Hilarious reading, although I don’t know how you all seem to cover the things I do in my life (I you watching me? Creepy!). My ineptitude has two parts:
1. It’s 1976, I’m 12, my sister is 7, and we were visiting London. We run ahead of my parents and jump onto the Tube (subway). Needless to say, the doors close before my parents get on. We turn around at the next stop, but my parents go on to the hotel thinking that’s what we had done. An hour passes before we’re reunited, but then we’re yelled at for the misunderstanding….
2. Fast forward 20 years. I’m again in London, now with my husband, baby daughter, mother, and grandmother. Again we head for the Tube, but grandma is slow and doesn’t make in on the train. I’m laughing hysterically (the other passengers are looking at me funny), but this time turning around we find my family waiting at the station. At least we learned this time!
Oh, and I REALLY want the book!
I booked a flight on the wrong day for MY BOSS. It was my first “real” job and I panicked and cried and paid my own money out of pocket to get it fixed. (Which was NOT cheap.) He never knew… Now I’m so extra super cautious about booking stuff like that! Yikes!
Awesome. I once booked a van for my boss’s conference for the wrong day. A bunch of health care execs with no transportation. I went back into the order form and erased my mistake and blamed them. You are my people too.
I’d like to start my taxidermied small animal collection with your extra book. Thank you!
I show my ineptitude daily when I leave things within reach of my 3 year old and then find colorful paintings with lipstick and nail polish on the walls. Or peanut butter spread on the floor. You’d think I would LEARN.
After a few problems with almost forgetting to pick up children at school, I now set alarms and write everything down the night before. I actually have to make myself a daily task list. As for ordering online, I always double check, especially with Amazon. I was looking for rugs online and kept putting them in my cart instead of my wish list. Fortunately I noticed that the total was well over the $10 book that I had wanted to buy, so I didn’t end up with 5 different living room rugs and a massive problem in my bank account!
I want it!
Last winter, I organized my preschooler’s class parents into donating to one big gift card for the teachers. That way, if you can’t afford much, it gets lumped in with folks who can, and the teachers don’t have dozens of $5 cards that they later realize made enough to buy a camera or somesuch.
So, for the end of school I decided to do it again. But I have a new purse and a new wallet. And it’s warm, so I just had pockets sometimes. So…I stashed the money “somewhere safe”…and then couldn’t find it. So I took the second stash I got and put it somewhere safe until I could find the first stash…and couldn’t find it either.
At this point I was going to have to cough up ~$100 to make it up. Plus, I don’t really track who’s giving me money b/c I don’t like harassing people about it.
Luckily one of my kids skinned her knee on the weekend–and voila! In the first aid kit (safety, right?) I found the first stash. Later, I found the second stash in the art box. By this point I had dug up a second wallet to hold the cash, so it went in there and into a purse which I kept glued to me till I got the cards.
It all worked out. I even look responsible to other people. People who don’t know I keep their money safe BY HIDING IT FROM MYSELF.
Feel better now?
Oh, Caren, I have to say I DO feel better now. But I do like the poetry of putting the money in the first aid kit.
I continually run my car into the side of the the garage. In the last year I’ve wasted close to $1500 in repairs. And we haven’t even begun to repair the damage to our house. Does that count?! New to your blog and really enjoying it, by the way.
Totally counts. Welcome to your sisters in ineptitude.
Okay, so this isn’t my story, but it’s something my friend told me not even two days ago! She and her husband went to the library, and when they got home, she realized that her husband checked out two copies of the same book. Now, this wouldn’t be so bad if he was checking out five or so books. But no, he only checked out two….of the same exact book. Your story reminds me of this one. Just like Amazon should’ve warned you, you’d think that the librarian would have warned her husband. Anyways, hope this makes you feel a little better.
Thanks for the giveaway chance!
Hi Susan!
An ice age ago my sophomore English teacher assigned us a paper on our pet peeve. Of course I waited until 11pm the night before it was due, clicked yes on all the spell-check red flags without reading them, and ripped it off the printer as I ran after the bus the next morning. I got it back with a D+ and a short note about exercising discretion with spell-check in the future. What was the problem with my five paragraphs on my pet peeve? Think of another five letter word that starts with P and would be more appropriate for a biology paper than an english paper. Yep! Five pristine paragraphs about my pet… I never looked my teacher in the face again. So that’s my story of ineptitude.
I hope you pick me for Jenny’s book giveaway. I really want to read it and I’ve blown all my fun money on frivolous things like toothpaste and chemo
Lesley! You potty-mouth! Fuckin’ chemo.
Hahaha! I think it makes me a potty pen. Lol!
I just want it! I’m missing out on the bookclub. Lawsbians… heh.
Last winter I made it to the airport to catch a flight home from my parent’s house (an hour from the airport) just in time to catch my flight… just in time to realize that I forgot ALL of my identification and I had e-tickets. Needless to say, I didn’t make my flight.
I attended a dinner at my school (University of Richmond) in honor of a 2 million dollar chair to a POW named Col Thorness. Note: I am an older student who just got excepted on a scholarship transfer from a pow dunk community college. This was within the first semester at a High Dollar Private College. They sit me at a table with two couples (I was suppose to be a representative of a student from the Leadership school). I asked the gentleman what they did and they said they were the CEO and CFO of Smith Barney. The student sitting beside me almost choked when I asked what “Smith Barney” does? The wives just laughed and made me feel a little better. Smith Barney had been the donors of the 2 million dollars to my school and the dinner was to honor them. I continue to put my foot in my mouth on a continuos basis…but that was pretty devastating. The wives of the CEO and CFO did make me feel better by saying they where proud of me for going back to school and knew it must be hard. The other student never said a word to me…but at least I had the whole table laughing as I unintentionally broke the ice.
The stories of my ineptitude are boundless. Like the time I threw the laundry in the dryer, slammed the door and turned it on and it went “clunk”. Turned out the cat was in there. He’s fine by the way. The time I drove down to the barn to ride my horse and forgot the reins. 3 times. In the same day. Or the time I sent my Dad’s birthday card to my Mom’s house. They have been (bitterly) divorced for more than 20 years. I deserve to get something good from ineptness,even if it’s not my own!
I want it too!
I’m loving the books bloggers publish! I would love to win that copy!
I am so inept all the time. This weekend we were hosting a child in foster care who will probably move in with us soon and she wanted to go to the pool, which we did, but then when I was throwing her I managed to bump her with her elbow and she bit her lip, so I get to write up an incident report about how I swear we’ll be great parents for her and I’m sorry I made her bleed. Awesome.