agita Archives – Lisa Scottoline

By Lisa Scottoline

We live in uncertain times.

My TV remote told me so.

Let me explain.

I love TV, and there’s so much to watch that I record shows while I’m watching other shows. I have Comcast, so I can navigate to Guide, press Record to record a show.

In theory.

But it’s not that simple.

After I press Record, a popup appears and asks, Confirm or Cancel?

And I think to myself, Why do I need to Confirm? I just asked to Record.

I don’t change my mind that fast.

Except in my second marriage.

I was changing my mind down the aisle.

Too late.

The same thing happens with restaurant reservations. I booked a few during my vacation with Francesca, and every restaurant sent me a text, Do you want to Confirm, Y/N? I pressed Y.

But I wanted to say, Y do you ask?

Mother Mary used to tell me, “I said what I said.”

Right again, Mom.

One of the restaurants even called me, a woman asking, “Are you still joining us tonight?”

I was like, “Who are you? I’m going to a restaurant.”

She explained she was “just confirming.”

I said yes. I’d already confirmed by text, so now I was double-confirming and since I’d made the reservation only two days ago, I was triple-confirming. I think that’s enough certainty for eggplant parm, don’t you?

Meanwhile it’s a miracle I took the call. I never answer calls from people I don’t know, but I started to for fear of losing my reservations.

Like, Confirm or Else.

Look, I know there are people who make reservations and don’t show up, but I would never do that. I couldn’t live with the guilt.

I never got over a $37 late fee I had to pay at Blockbuster.

I have guilt from paying it, plus guilt from incurring it.

My guilt is weapons-grade.

My hair salon needs confirmation, too, often more than once, and don’t get me started on doctor’s appointments. I got two text confirmations from one doctor, for a colonoscopy.

Okay, that one I get.

Are you still joining us for your colonoscopy?

The text should’ve asked, Are you going to chicken out?

Or, are you going to wait another decade?

Actually my favorite confirmation text came from Penn Medicine, which read verbatim, “Hi Lisa, this is Penn Medicine! Congrats on scheduling your colonoscopy!”

Thank you, alma mater!

It only took me ten years to make the call.

For eggplant parm, I’d call in ten minutes.

Anyway I don’t remember everybody needing confirmation all the time. I’m guessing that we live in an age of increasing uncertainty, and it’s giving everybody agita. Like, there are a lot of big questions we’re unsure about, namely:

Who will be our next president?

When will the icecaps melt?

Will JLo and Ben get back together?

Me, I’m rooting for those crazy kids.

Bottom line, we can’t answer any of those questions, so maybe we need to confirm the things we can and let the rest go. As in, we could be heading for nuclear war, but let’s button down recording My Brilliant Friend.

We’re all looking for solid emotional footing, like psychic terra firma.

Or terra confirma.

But if you ask me, I wouldn’t mind somebody sending me a confirmation text on questions like:

Do you really want another helping of spaghetti?

Do you really need a second glass of Lambrusco?

Do you really want to renew your membership for a gym you haven’t gone to in a year?

Yes, to all of the above.

But really, Y?

by Lisa Scottoline

This week, everybody’s talking about aging.

But don’t worry, this column isn’t political.

I never write about politics.

Agita is Italian for politics.

And this is an agita-free zone.

So we’re going to talk about age, but the lighter side.

There’s only one lighter side.

You’re still alive.

Like if you’re aging, you’re lucky.

It’s good to talk about aging, in a funny way.

Because as every woman who’s getting older knows, somebody has to be kidding.

Like, I find signs of age on my own body and they’re the worst joke ever.

I had one this week.

I looked down and my arm hair was gone.

I swear to God I don’t know what happened to it.

I can never find my cell phone, but I used to know where my arm hair was.

The trick is in the name.

Now you see why I’m a mystery writer.

I cracked the case.

I’m Nancy Drew in The Case of the Missing Body Hair.

But it’s true, suddenly I looked down and I didn’t have any arm hair.

The last time this happened, I looked up and didn’t have any eyebrows.

I didn’t know what happened then, either.

I used to pluck my eyebrows.

Now I need to paste them back in.

And then I realized, I can’t remember the last time I shaved my legs.

And it’s summer.

Wait, what?

If you’re a woman of a certain age, you might remember when shaving your legs was a big thing.

I used to shave my legs every morning.

I even shaved my legs again, before a Big Date, if you follow.

Because God forbid a man run his hand up my legs the wrong way.

Women grow up thinking there is a Right Way to run your hands over a leg and a Wrong Way, like a one-way street.

By the way, while we’re in the TMI category, no man has ever run his hand over my legs in bed, whether the Right Way or the Wrong Way.

In my experience, men are not interested in legs in bed.

They forget you have them.

You’re lucky if you can get them to run their hands over anything.

They don’t like to waste time.

They find something else to do.

I’m not complaining.

There’s lots to do.

To return to point, when I was a teenager, I used to do the hairy-legs check several times a day.

I was way too intense about the whole thing.

I even remember chasing razors with frequency.

Now I don’t even know where my razor is.

I ain’t crying.

Now that I don’t have to pluck or shave anything, I’m saving time.

Which I immediately put to good use searching for things on Netflix.

Note that I didn’t say watching Netflix, but searching for things on Netflix.

Because if you’ve ever used the search function on Netflix, you know it’s a treat.

You’re confronted with a square of letters and symbols that looks like a puzzle you never wanted to do.

You’re just trying to find some old movie, but you will find yourself using a TV remote in a way God never intended.

You will plug in a single letter and wait two minutes before it registers on the screen, then find out you plugged in the wrong letter and forgot the space bar.

That’s twenty minutes, right there.

That would have been prime plucking-and-shaving time.

Now you’re playing with your TV remote, vainly searching for something you barely wanted to watch in the first place.

What do you do next?

Give up.

Live without it.

You don’t need to keep searching.

Same thing with arm hair, leg hair, and eyebrows.

Don’t even bother looking.

You’re better off.

You’re not getting older.

You’re getting aerodynamic.

Terra Firma

Fun With Aging

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