bear with me, it's worth it

It's going to be one of those days. First, remember my last post about the email referring to gender? Keep that in mind; it's not really relevant, but it's just kind of background information pertaining to how the morning is going. I just walked by the receptionist's desk and she said, "Oh, Chris, when you come back, there's something for you here." So OK, fine, I went to look for someone in acquisitions, didn't find her, and came back to get the envelope. It was a legal-sized envelope with my name and number on the front and also "Nancy" and another phone number. I expected that it was another batch of proofreading from Legal Affairs that was supposed to come over. But then I thought, wait, I already got that batch. Oh, so maybe it's that other job for that "Gender Matters" newsletter that's supposed to come in tomorrow. I didn't think that woman's name was Nancy, though . . . OK, let me just see what this is. So I open up the envelope and pull out the paper and right there on the very top sheet is a big, graphic, hand-drawn diagram of a vagina. I thought, goddamn, what kind of magazine is this?! And I kept flipping through it and vaginas, vaginas, vaginas--vaginas everywhere!

And of course, it turned out that the material wasn't for me at all. It was for one of our many Nancys who work in the building--a manuscript editor who'd told me yesterday that one of her authors might call me and ask me to come out and meet her at her car to pick up something for Nancy--some page proof for a book on women's reproductive health. Nancy said that she would probably be here to do it, but she gave the woman my name and number just in case. But I never heard anything about it yesterday, so I forgot all about it! I was shocked out of my GOURD when I opened up that envelope and saw all those . . . um . . . cooters. It's a good thing Nancy happened to mention what the book was and that the author was a little nuts; without that little bit of information I probably would have run screaming out of the building.

And hey, don't get the wrong idea or anything--I'm a twenty-first century man. I don't giggle and smirk when I see medical diagrams. But, man, that freaked me out a little bit. I was like, since when does a breezy little newsletter on social roles in nursing feature beaver shots?

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Much hilarity ensued at lunch when I told the people at my table my vagina story and my boss told the people at hers. (The story of the vagina diagrams, I mean--not the story of my vagina.) I'm sure they thought I was a rube for telling it, but they did laugh like hell. Besides, it wasn't my idea--Nancy insisted. As for me, I laughed my ass off when Nancy referred to the book in question as "The Yale Guide to Women's Reproductive Health, or Hoo-hoos R Us."

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I got somebody with the dogball tonight.