When work gets hard, it's too hard to keep working

While I was living in a high rise apartment building, there was a lot of trust required for the building maintenance guy. There had to be, considering so many things needed to be fixed, and there just wasn't enough time to wait around for scheduled visits. Given this level of dependency, our maintenance guy often came to our place during the day while I was at work and I would often come home to find something had been fixed (only leaving a million minus one things left on the list!)

On one such day, I had a bonus waiting for me. Not only had my running toilet been fixed somewhat, but a shiny iPod was left on the floor next to it. My first reaction was "Yay! I found an iPod! It's mine!" but that quickly turned to "Why is there an iPod in my bathroom, and why is it on the floor?"

What would you do if you realized your maintenance guy left his iPod in your bathroom? Yeah, I know! Look through his music to check out his taste! I was thinking that maybe if I could figure out what my maintenance guy was into, we could have more pleasant conversations. Well, the iPod was, in fact, very revealing. I discovered that the guy who had spent at least an hour or so in my bathroom was interested in hip hop, pictures of motorcycles, oh, and lots and lots of porn. This was a very good way for me to learn that you can keep color pictures on an iPod!

One might think the awkwardness ends there, thinking about what he had been doing with his iPod in my bathroom, but no, I had to give it back to him somehow!

The preferred solution: I wanted to give it back to him the next time I saw him and say "Hey, I like motorcycles too!"

What actually happened: I left it on my television and he came and picked it up the next day while I was at work. My roommate at the time saw him when he came in and apparently he was very quiet and quick.

My toilet never did work that well for the rest of the year, but I never bothered nagging him about it.

Viagra: Enhances performance, not conversations

After spending a week at my boyfriend's parents' house over the holidays, I was wondering if his mother and I would end up having some kind of heart-to-heart. My family holiday movie wish was answered when I found myself alone with her in the kitchen. As we prepared side dishes together for the Christmas dinner, we started chatting about old family recipes, histories, and the story of her marriage. I was delighted when I realized that she was really starting to open up to me, given that conversation for most of the week had been kept pretty tame. As she talked about the age difference between her and Boyfriend's father, she surprised me when she thought it'd be better if a wife was older than a husband instead of the reverse. Excuse me? I'd always heard people say the opposite. Better match in maturity and all that. Well, I couldn't wait to hear good reasoning from the other side.

Boyfriend's mother explained to me that when a man is older than his wife, he cannot perform and thus loses self-esteem. Without feeling comfortable talking about it with his wife, she too loses self-esteem. At this point, I was nodding my head, thinking about how hard it must be to retire and find a new sense of purpose in life. That's when I heard the word "viagra" and realized "perform" was meant in an entirely different way. The conversation continued, but I was too busy wondering where in the world Boyfriend was and why was he not in the kitchen with me??

Solution to this sticky situation? I have no idea. As soon as I had the chance, I ran away to the bathroom. I could not look Boyfriend's father in the face for the rest of the trip or stop thinking about Viagra.