Everything I Like Causes Cancer

Hey, kids! It's that time again! Time for Blog Share, the only anonymous blogging exercise that I know of. As a refresher, there are many things bloggers hold back about - work, family, secret fetishes, the REALLY terrible things we've done, things that hurt us -- but participation in Blog Share gives each of us anonymity by switching where we post. For example, the post below was not written by me and mine is being hosted by one of the other participating bloggers. Please go read them all!

And now, without further administrative malarky, I give you the prose of my Anonyposter:

Because this post is super-duper anonymous, I feel somewhat safe venting about someone I call my “best friend,” if only out of habit. I’ve been friends with this girl for seventeen years now, and I think the friendship was narrowly saved only by the fact that I moved out of state three years ago. Plus, you’d basically have to sleep with my husband, gouge my eyes out with a fork, burn my house down in the night, and kick my dog before I would end a friendship with you. And since I don’t have a husband, a house or a dog, I guess all my friendships are pretty safe.

That said, there are a few things I’d like to get off my chest about this girl. Here’s what rankles the most after seventeen long years of friendship:

-- She consistently blows me off for a boyfriend, any boyfriend (in fact, a long series of boyfriends), and only finds time to hang out with me when she’s between relationships.

-- She did this to all her friends, until she wound up with no friends. Now she has a boyfriend who travels a lot and she’s in therapy because – big surprise – she’s lonely.

-- She went through a five-year phase when she could not be on time for anything, and in fact was often several hours late. She kept me waiting in bars, restaurants, nightclubs, at shows, and on street corners, literally for hours. The invention of the cell phone and some semblance of maturity seem to have cured her of this habit. Now she’s only 30 minutes late for everything.

-- Her birthday is in July, mine is in December. Every year she gives me one gift for both Christmas and my birthday, despite the fact that I always get her separate gifts for both. And her gifts? They suck. One year she was complaining about the fact that she didn’t have enough professional-looking earrings to wear to work, and also that she didn’t have a small jewelry box to keep them in. I spent several months hunting for earrings that were unique but classy, and eventually found ten pairs of them, all quite expensive. I wrapped them in an embroidered silk bag I had bought in India and put them in a suede-lined leather jewelry box. For Christmas I got her a matching cashmere hat, glove and scarf set. And what did she get me? A single birthday/Christmas gift: a pair of earrings that she bought at the last minute at a shop next to her office and didn’t even bother to wrap. (Did I mention that at the time we both earned the same amount of money?)

-- Along the same lines, I’m currently nine months pregnant, due any day now, and she’s the only person I know who has yet to buy me a baby gift or even send me a card. (For crying out loud, I’ve had blog readers send me baby gifts.)

-- She works in middle management for a publicity company that promotes things like glassware and kitchen utensils, but seems to think her job is not only the most important thing in the world, but endlessly fascinating to everyone around her. I once wrote an entire section of a law review article while we were on the phone and she spent four hours talking about her job.

-- When I try to talk about my accomplishments, she either quickly changes the subject or finds a way to imply that what I do is unimportant. Um, I’m an advocate for third-world child prostitutes. She promotes forks.

-- She finds subtle ways to insult little things I’m proud of. I recently bought my first new car (that probably sounds strange at the age of 34, but I lived in Manhattan my entire adult life) and when she rode in it she said, “God, you can feel every bump in the road in this car.” When I proudly mentioned that my blog finally surpassed a hundred viewers per day, she nastily pointed out that there are plenty of “mommy blogs” out there that get over six thousand viewers per day.

I could go on all day, but here’s the craziest part: I still love her like a sister.