Cause I Said So

Why anyone in their right mind would want me to answer some of life's most important questions, I don't know. Maybe it's because you people are not in your right minds.

Dear Sher,

No advice needed at the moment. Just a note to say, I've enjoyed your articles very much. You have some very interesting stories. You are a very attractive woman. (Notice I didn't say "perty")

Although I don't really know you, I feel as though I love you already through your writings. Please consider me when you are in the market for your next husband. Note: Just give me enough notice to jettison the wife I have right now.

I'm a retired law enforcement Lieutenant and weekend rock n roll guitarist. I live at the Jersey shore (very close to Bruce Springsteen's N.J. mansion).

Take care,
P.S. - I'm not a nut.

Dear Person who actually uses the word jettison,

Thank you for calling me a "very attractive woman". It requires a lot of spackle and duct tape to create that illusion, but I have a Home Depot beauty supply punch card, so I get it cheap.

I'm also happy to hear that you love me because you feel like you know me, but I'm afraid if you really did know me, you might not love me. If I'm going to add you to the long list of husbands in waiting, I want you to know what you're in for.

First of all, I like to drink right out of the beverage containers in the fridge and my current husband, the infamous Mr. Man, doesn't care for that. Something about seeing me chug a gallon of milk disgusts him. This from the man that believes in brushing his teeth once a day whether they need it or not.

You should also know that I am right smack dab in the middle of menopause, so if I should run out of estrogen, it's conceivable that I could kill you in your sleep. I'm not a bad person and I'd feel really bad about it later, but you'd probably still be dead.

And finally, you should understand that I get bored with husbands pretty quickly so just as soon as I say "I do", the countdown clock starts. Therefore, you'd need to keep your clothes in a suitcase, your shoes by the door and you wouldn't be allowed to hang anything on the walls.

If you can handle all that, you will be #124 on the list. It's moving pretty fast, so be ready to "jettison" the current wife around February of next year.

PS: Only people who are nuts say, "I'm not a nut".

Dear Sher,

How tall are you?

Dear Coffin manufacturer,

I'm 5'5" except when I drink. Then I am 5'10", I weigh 103 pounds and I have Dolly Parton breasts.
(That's a joke. I quit drinking large quantities of alcohol years ago. As a result, I have gained a lot of weight and my breasts are considerably smaller.)

Dear Sher,
Where should I go on vacation? I'm thinking of either a cruise or the beach.

Dear Rub it in my face why don't you,

Given the current state of the world and the fact that I have OCD, I would suggest somewhere far, far away from water. Perhaps the Mojave Desert. I would also suggest you wash your hands 42 times after you get off the computer.



Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
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Please do not feed the celebrity.

It's no secret. I want to see my name on a book. Not a pretend book, or a coloring book, or a cook book. I want to see my name on an honest to goodness, sitting in the window of Barnes and Noble, book.

I'm sure when most people think of attaining celebrity or fame, they imagine themselves singing or dancing or eating bull testicles while they lie in a coffin filled with African Killer Slugs. (Oh how I hate reality TV.)

Not me. I see myself sitting at a wobbly card table in a book store in Dayton signing "Love and laughter, Sher Bailey" in the books of the twelve people that showed up and felt sorry enough for me to buy a copy. (In fact, I've been practicing writing that for years... on everything from traffic tickets to divorce papers.)

Naturally with phenomenal sales like that, I'll be rich in no time. And of course, when I do get rich from selling 12 copies of my book in every store across America, The Oprah's people will call my people and I'll be a guest on her show. (I seriously need to get some people.)

And everybody knows that once The Oprah has you on her show, you become crazy famous and have to wear a wig and fake Bubba teeth just to go to the grocery store forever after. I'll be a best selling author, stinking rich and so famous that even Barbra Streisand won't be able to get through when she calls seeking my Maw-Maw's prized recipe for Pig Pickin' Cake.

Wow. I've got a lot of preparation ahead of me if I'm going to be insanely famous and stinking rich.

I should go on record right now as saying that I will not become an obnoxious celebrity. I will still be the same old obsessive-compulsive Sher.

Of course, there will be a few necessary changes. I mean, one does have to change a thing or two when one has celebrity thrust upon one. For example, excessively and pretentiously using the word 'one' when referring to oneself. I will also use the phrase "sort of" so often that it may cause the ears of those within the sound of my voice to spontaneously and profusely bleed.

There is also the issue of my diet. I will have to give up peanut butter and syrup sandwiches once and for all. Celebrities eat something called a macrobiotic diet and as soon as I find out what that is, I plan to eat the hell out of it. At the moment, I'm not even sure how to correctly spell "macrobiotic". For all I know, it's actually the "make me bionic" diet which would mean I'd probably have to eat things like nuts and bolts and mother boards. No matter how much the other celebrities point and stare and administer peer pressure though, I refuse to eat baby boards... which I believe are correctly referred to as veal boards.

I also need to decide what kind of celebrity body I want to have. Let's face it, people. These things don't just come off the rack. You pick and choose everything from your shape, to your nose to how low your ears hang. I was hoping for my sake that Kirstie Alley would pave the way for women of all shapes to be accepted into the celebrity inner sanctum, but what with Jenny Craig spending every waking hour wrestling Ding-Dongs out of Kirstie's hands, I'm totally screwed.

I can't possibly go the anorexic route because frankly the less I eat, the meaner I get and nobody wants a mean, highly successful author. Those Book Span freaks won't tolerate it. I guess the only thing left to do is have completely unnecessary plastic surgeries until I no longer even remotely resemble anyone in my family. (That may or may not be a good thing, depending upon which relative we're talking about.)

The thing that scares me is the realization that it's very likely that celebrities have stopped going to plastic surgeons all together, opting instead for taxidermists. I guess if that's what the famous do, I'll have to do it as well. I just need to be sure I stay away from the one that does Joan Rivers. I want to look life like.

The one thing I won't have to change is my habit of getting married as frequently as the law will allow. I may have to pick up a super young husband once in awhile or maybe marry a wrinkly old rock star to be considered a true celebrity, but I can do it. How hard can it be? I think you just add your name to a roster or something and receive your next husband's name in an email forward.

Once I have a new husband and although my tubes have been out of service since my doctor learned to tie a bow, I will have to have them put back in functioning order so I can pop out a baby and name it after a piece of fruit or a character in a Dr. Seuss book. I didn't really want to have kids at my age, but it's not like I'll have to raise them anyway. I think that Super Nanny lady could be bought. She seems like the kind of chick that could handle whatever tantrums my precious little Banana Fangdoozler might throw.

Yep, being rich and famous and thin and plastic is going to be way cool. I can hardly wait. I guess all that's left is to actually write a book.

Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
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My son.

I won't be laughing it up for awhile. To find out why, click here.

Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
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I don't care for the Tom.

I'm mad as hell and I'm not gon'na take it anymore.

Ok. I'm not really mad as hell, but I've always wanted to say that. I've also always wanted to slap a person right across the kisser when they are freaking out like they do in the movies, but the fear they would slap me back keeps me from it. I'm far too delicate to be slapped.

Here's the real reason I'm writing tonight. I have a friend named Donna for whom I have a huge case of "life envy". She is way cool and writes the best life stories on the internet.

Ok. I'm lying again. She's not my friend so much as she is a perfect stranger I met online. Actually, I don't know how perfect she is. She may be slightly imperfect, much like the socks I'm wearing right now. I just don't know.

Donna is the So Cal Mom who happens to have a life that I find fascinating. She's a fabulous writer and the kind of woman that other women want to drink International Coffees with.

So the other day, when I was cruising her site and feeling like a total failure because she can say she was a writer for Johnny Carson and all I can say is that I once wrote a letter to the editor about the public library, I found myself inspired.

And how did she inspire me? She wrote a little column entitled, "Ten Things I've Done That You Probably Haven't". Her list of things includes things like interviewing Ringo Starr as he remembered his friend John Lennon, being called Sweetheart by George Clooney and getting propositioned by one of the Jacksons. (She won't say which one, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it was not Michael.)

Because I want to be Donna in my next life and because I've done some stuff too, I decided to compile my own list for your reading pleasure. Granted, it won't include having a beer with Bono, (yes...Miss Thang did that, too), but I've been around the block a time or two and some of it's well worth mentioning. Prepare to envy me.

Ten Things That I've Done That You Probably Haven't:

1. I rec'd an award from the Daughter's Of The American Revolution for an essay I wrote in sixth grade about Thomas Jefferson. I actually copied most of it out of the "J" encyclopedia with the help of my teacher, but an award is an award and I'm not giving it back.

2. I have been married more times than anyone I know and that includes that red-headed slutty woman in town that wears her collection of roach clips on her purse and has a different toothless man every time you see her.

3. I rode a bus from Ft. Irwin, CA to wherever it is they hold the People's Choice awards in a fancy black dress I bought on sale in a store that already had lower prices than anyone has a right to expect, and saw Jimmy Stewart and Heather Locklear on the red carpet. I don't think they were a couple, but stranger things have happened. Dick Van Dyke was hosting that year, which of course was the icing on my donut. (Jealous???)

4. I gave birth to two big-headed babies without benefit of an epidural or LSD.

5. As I am bilingual, I once ordered a piece of cheesecake at a German restaurant and after being laughed at hysterically, found out I had in fact ordered myself a cheese kitchen. (Maybe I'm not so much bilingual after all.)

6. I went on a date with a person whose actual name was Bubba Dry. I'm not sure, but I think he became a redneck wine manufacturer later in life.

7. I was nearly arrested once when trying to re-enter the US after a day trip into Tijuana. It seems the men with the big guns don't particularly care for mouthy white women who want to know what the hell business it is of theirs what's in the bag anyway.

8. At one of my weddings, I actually used the colors peach and teal. Enough said.

9. I convinced a man I had a crush on that the dog food I had in a little baggie was actually a brand new, ultra healthy snack craze. He did not go on to become one of my ex-husbands. And I do not care to comment about why I was carrying around a baggie full of dog food.

10. And the most exciting thing I've done that you probably haven't? When I was seventeen I went to a party and got stinking drunk. So much so in fact that I kissed an ugly boy named Butch and then threw up in the middle of the living room in front of no less than twenty people... on my white dress. It was only after that little display was I told that I had only been drinking Tom Collins mixer. There was no alcohol whatsoever in it.

Take that, Donna!




Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
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White men can't rap.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I love men. Tall men, short men, and men who wear pearls and sparkley skirts in karaoke bars. Generally speaking, men are a good thing.

That said, I must confess that I don't understand them sometimes. Sure, that's a little cliche, but a little cliche in moderation never hurt anybody. And by the way, can I use the word cliche if I can't find that little slanty thing that hovers over the e on my keyboard?

Mr. Man is no exception. I love the man terrible, but sometimes I want to poke him between the eyes with a sharp stick. How can one man be so intelligent and yet so completely goofy at the same time?

The other day I'm sitting here in the home office from hell, pounding on the keyboard, completely engrossed in my work when Man walks in the door and stands silently staring at me.

"What do you need?" I say, trying to keep my train of thought on track and stay focused on the task at hand.

"Do you know how far Saskatchewan is from here?"

We live in Kansas. Since when do we care how far Saskatchewan is from here? Are we about to take a spontaneous road trip to Canada to buy some of that low priced Canadian 2% milk?

So I stop what I'm doing and ask very sweetly, "Why in the name of all that is holy do you want to know how far Saskatchewan is from our house??"

"Oh, I already know. I just wanted to know if you knew."

I'm guessing he had an unusually high fever as a child.

And then there is the toilet paper issue. Although Mr. Man spends much of his life protecting our country's nuclear interests from the threat of terrorism, he still is simple minded enough to believe that toilet paper gets on the little round gold thingie by means of some kind of magic that possibly involves tiny trolls.

I know this because he has never once in our entire relationship changed the toilet paper roll. Even if I put a new roll of TP underneath the dispenser so that when one runs out, there will be another roll right there, he still won't change it. And, it's not like he doesn't have the time. The man spends more time in the bathroom than could possibly be necessary in any situation and I'm including situations that might occur after eating leftover Mexican food that I forgot to refrigerate. Surely he could have figured out the mechanics of the TP dispenser by now.

"Honey, I can't change it," he says. "It's what the trolls live for. It would be like stealing their pot of gold."

While I'm venting here, Mr. Man has some other little quirks that strike me as odd. For example, he is the only man I've ever met that uses words like, "whomever" and "awry" in bed. I'm not kidding. Even when he's trying to convince me that I really don't have a headache, he can't help himself. He has a big vocabulary and he's not afraid to use it.

I blame college.

But the thing that I find most perplexing about Mr. Man is his taste in music. He is a middle-aged white boy from Kansas with absolutely no rhythm who also happens to be a rap freak. We live in a quiet little neighborhood with senior citizens on either side of us. I'll be in the back of the house, picking up his dirty socks that are all rolled up in little yucky balls, and I can hear him coming down the street. His car stereo is turned up so loud, it sounds like he finally just threw out his CD's and hired Nelly and Kid Rock to ride around with him and do live concerts.

While other men his age are slowly starting to hike their pants north, his pants are making their way south. I really think that by the time he's forty-one, his pants will finally be around his knees.

Oh well, what are you gon'na do? I love the guy, but I'll never understand him. I guess I should just accept the fact that when we are way old and wrinkled and in a nursing home together, I will still be married to a wannabe rapper that can't change the toilet paper roll.

I can just hear him now. "Whomever those bitches and ho's are that were supposed to change my Depends an hour ago have not arrived. I suspect their schedules must have gone awry. Would you summon someone to help me tie my Air Force Ones please?"


Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
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I'm taking no chances with my thumbs.

I like my thumbs. I've had them for a long time and over the years, they've served me well. Without thumbs, I'd have to open the gigantic bucket of chocolate ice cream I keep hidden under the frozen broccoli, a whole lot slower. Without thumbs, it would be virtually impossible to squeeze the blonde in a bottle to cover my, shall we say, unnatural blonde hair once every couple weeks.

All I'm saying is I like my thumbs.

Know what else I like? Monkeys. We've covered my love of monkeys before. It's not a passing fancy. It's a life long love of primates. I think every American home should have at least one monkey. I especially like them when they wear little people clothes and smile really big.

Currently, I do not own a monkey, but that is only because they don't yet sell them at Wal-Mart. In the meantime to satisfy my monkey desire, I frequently make Mr. Man wear little people clothes and smile really big.

Recently though, I've heard reports on the news that have left me absolutely torn between the way I feel about my thumbs and my need to own a monkey.

It happened just the other day. I was sitting on my couch watching TV, thinking about how much I wanted a diet Dr. Pepper and a can of frosting and how great it would be to have a monkey to go get it for me, when I heard the teaser for the evening news.

"Monkeys go freaking wild and eat a guy. Details coming up on the KOAM news."

They must be mistaken, I thought. Monkeys don't eat guys. They eat bananas and wear short pants. If monkeys eat guys, I'm so screwed. I'll never convince Mr. Man to let me get a monkey.

Naturally, I waited for the news to come on and sure enough, a bunch of rogue monkeys almost ate an entire guy. The poor man was in the hospital fighting for his life. Sure that's bad. But what really got me came next.

"...and his wife narrowly escaped the angry monkeys with her life, but not before they ate her thumb."

Not only did they eat that lady's thumb, but the news proceeded to do interviews with other people who had lost their thumbs in freak monkey appendage eating incidents. One by one, various people from across the country held up nine fingers and spoke of the horrible day when a monkey ate their thumb.

"I was just visiting the zoo, minding my own business, when a monkey walked right up and bit off my thumb. Who knew monkeys ate thumbs? I thought they ate bananas and monkey chow."

Clearly, I have a concern here people. A quandry even. As badly as I want a monkey to do my bidding, I don't want some thumb-eating animal wandering freely around the house.

Maybe if I make my thumbs and the thumbs of my family look less appealing, I can own a monkey without fear of being thumbless. Maybe if I put a sign up on my front door which reads, "Please put your thumbs in your pocket. Monkey on premises", people could arrive with thumbs and leave with them, too.

I'm telling you, this has thrown me for a loop. You spend your whole life loving something, wanting something and then one day you find out it enjoys the occasional thumb appetizer. I'm devastated.

Oh well. I guess until I come up with some sort of thumb protection device I'm going to have to put my monkey shopping on the back burner. Does anyone know where I can buy a tiny little cowboy hat and some velvet pants for Mr. Man?


Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
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People named Rick are funny.

Whether it's the estrogen kicking in or a small, as yet undetected gas leak in our house, I have found myself laughing hysterically this past week. I couldn't help it. Some really funny stuff has crossed my path the last few days. That's a good thing too, because it has helped to balance some seriously unfunny stuff that's happened this week as well. As I always say, it's either laugh like crazy or go crazy. Having done both, I now choose to laugh like crazy. Straight jackets make my butt look big.

I'm going to share this little email exchange with you in hopes you'll get a laugh as well. I'm also sharing it because I'm an extremely lazy person and since most of this was actually written by another person, it was a no-brainer. It has been edited
to remove the unfunny stuff and the stuff that makes me look bad. Rick is a real person and these were real emails. (At least I think he's a real person.)

Dear Sher:
I was just cruising the internet, and stumbled upon your sight. I realized immediately that we must be twins separated at birth, because I have multiple personalities, and once one of me visited North Carolina, or at least he says he did. He was living in West Virginia at the time working as coal miner by day, and singing Loretta Lynn songs by night.

Anywho, I read some of your stuff, and I must admit, it was hilarious. I write a column for a local paper, which, of course, pays me nothing but has increased my fan based from 0 to 1, as my mother subscribes to that paper. This also leads me to believe that we may be kin, as I am almost positive that you have a mother too. My site is at www.RickQuick.com (it was the best name i could come up with). I'd love to get your opinion and possibly chat some, as I plan on living off of my writing someday, and I would prefer that not be a career as a tombstone engraver.

I enjoy your work and have told others about it, but no one listens to me anyway. Yes we do. No you don't. We listened last week when you yelled "stop". I didn't yell stop, I yelled "cop" and dang it, y'all had to slam on the brakes and then he searched my car thinking I was on drugs. I hate those police dogs. They shouldn't allow them to do cavity searches. They have cold noses.

Have a great day,

-Rick Quick
Long Live Spell Check

Dear Rick,

I am actually laughing out loud.... which is something that doesn't happen often enough.

I am so jealous that you have multiple personalities. I've often wondered why I can't be obsessive-compulsive and have about ten people that live inside me as well. I don't mean really tiny little people that would somehow move into my body and set up housekeeping, but rather those Sybil kind of people. I guess God knew that would be way too many hands to wash.

I am equally jealous that you write a column for your local paper. I write one for my local paper as well, but they didn't ask me to write it so it never gets published. Likewise I write columns for the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, but they have that same stupid rule that you must actually have been hired to be a columnist. I keep writing anyway. Sooner or later the editor is bound to get Alzheimers and when he does, I'm in.

I am on my way to visit your site now. My chicken is burning, but that's ok. (That sounded almost pornographic.)

Dear Sher,

I appreciate you emailing me back. So few people are willing to talk to me after that fiasco with the pantyhose, the neighbors wife, and the goat. It was a very baaad situation. I swear i don't know where the handcuffs came from.

Sorry about your burning chicken. I put a roast in the crockpot this morning. I find that you can cook anything in the crockpot and it never burns. Sometimes, guest complain about me cooking their steaks in there, but heck, I can put them on 2 days in advance and serve then piping hot and very tender. Caution: it doesn't work well when frying fish.

I started writing when I was going through a divorce. I found it to be good therapy. I was too cheap to do real therapy. Well actually I did do some, but by the end, the psychiatrist was on the couch telling me about his mother. I think he secretly wanted me to be his step dad. Unfortunately, his parents weren't divorced.

I hope you like the website. It needs much help, but I wanted something that worked with little or no effort, so I accomplished that. My new wife says it looks like crap, but heck, she married me so she prolly has bad vision. . I plan to re-do it, as most of that stuff is one or two years old. I'll send you some newer stuff if you are interested. If not, I'll send it anyway. I like to send. Clogging email boxes is my favorite sport.

I really don't have multiple personalities. I just drink alot and forget who I am. No I don't. Yes I do. Will you two shut up? I'm trying to write an email. You shut up. No you shut up. Geez! y'all are like too little arkansas girls fighting over a dead cat.

I found your site on a place for southern humorists. I was shocked at the cutting edge humor sprinkled with such blinding sarcasm and sharp wit (geez, I am such a kiss ass). I almost cried when your husband came home with that trunk full of tampons though. I always get emotional when I see such devoted acts of, uh, shopping.

Anywho, I'll holler at you later, provided that I am allowing me to speak.

-Rick

This guy is so funny, I can't stand it. I'm so jealous that I seriously hate his guts. And, I mean that in the most Christian way. Check out his ugly site, but be advised you should not read his work while drinking a beverage of any sort as you will undoubtedly spew it out your nose.

Copyright © 2004, Sherri Bailey
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