Just embarrassing Archives - Girls Aren't Funny

Please let me walk your dog

A notification appeared on my cell phone.

“Looks like Jessica gave you a tip!”.

I’m stunned. I open my dog walker app and find proof in dollar signs.

My bachelor degree is so useful I was able to land two jobs. My second one is now as a dog walker. This works for me as I enjoy all things fluffy (except for that thing growing under my sink).

I was still riding high off of a particularly good walk with a Labrador named Sam. Little did I know my dog walking app was glitching in my pocket.

When I accepted a walk with Archie, an Australian Shepard mix, I left about 15 minutes before the walk was supposed to start. The app claimed his home was less than a mile away.

On the way, my phone began to get warm and the app experienced what the customer service line called an outage. I called it the worst thing to happen to my very short career as a dog walker.

This was a timeline of the events that followed:

9:59 am: Hi Jessica, it’s your dog walker! I am so sorry but my app told me it would take only 11 minutes, but now it’s saying it will take 30 minutes. I will be late, but I hope you’ll still let me take your pup on his walk!

10:02 am: After walking around in circles my blue dot could give me no direction and I panicked. I’m in a Lyft now. Again, my apologies.

10:05 am: Or at least I think I’m in a Lyft, it was a black car who nodded when I asked if it was here for me. Please report to the police if I don’t arrive in 10 minutes (which I will because I’m going to be still on time). Please let me walk your dog.

10:07 am: I’m not even wearing a seat belt because I’m so ready to jump out of the car and walk your dog. And I’m usually really big into safety. I used to be bullied for always wearing a seatbelt on the way home from church. Not that safety isn’t cool. Your dog will be safe in my hands.

10:09 am: I can’t wait to meet Archie! I’m sure he’s a good boy. I’m usually a good girl.

10:10 am: Please ignore that last message

10:12 am: I’m downstairs! Please let me in! I’m already warmed up for our walk. I’ve got a nice sweat going.

* One hour later *

11:12 am: I’ve been pacing back and forth outside of your building. My app won’t let me end the walk. I think Archie is getting confused.

11: 14 am: It keeps saying I have one more minute on the walk. Time flys when you’re having fun (which Archie and I certainly had) but this minute is not ticking by.

11:16 am: I’m just going to give your dog back.

11:18 am: Please don’t rate my service.

Yet, here I am days later and I receive five stars and a tip. Thanks, Archie! Sorry for all the heavy breathing.

What to wear when you run out of underwear

I haven’t worn underwear in almost two weeks.

This is not necessarily a personal choice. After recently moving to New York City, I realize I simply do not have enough quarters in my life to successfully use a laundromat.

The apartment complex I live in has a laundry room that requires a refillable card. I would love a card of my own, but I haven’t been able to track down the Laundry Fairy who gives out this precious device.

Many emails to the landlord, the building managers, and the laundry gods, I am still without fresh underwear. There is only so many thongs, briefs and diapers a girl can own.

It has certainly made wardrobe choices difficult. As I type I’m currently in a ridiculous creation of clothing in order to hide my genitalia.

Therefore, it is fitting to provide a list of underwearless outfits just in time for New York Fashion Week (#NYFW).

Day Clubbing
- Why wait until your night out to bust out a skin-tight skirt to make sure you really tape your legs together? This look also doubles as a hip abductor exercise in your free time. Pair this with Keegles and your pelvic region will thank you. (And hopefully, repay you in underwear.)
Boyfriend Boxers
- Heard of boyfriend jeans? Well instead of paying 60 bucks for ill-fitted pants, just sneak into a man of your choice’s drawers *wiggles eyebrows*. My personal favorite is the boxer brief as they also work for volleyball practice. (If you’re into that exercise stuff.)
Long dresses
- Relate to the freedom of the Scots in their kilts and stride proudly on a hot summer day. If you feel like Little House on the Prairie or a member of a cult in a Lifetime movie you’ve gone too far*.
Non-denim pants
- For those risk takers out there, you can experience full commando with a cold zipper pressed up against your hoo-ha (yes, that’s a medical term for vagina). I strongly advise against skinny jeans as underwear was apparently made to protect our flowers from being crushed by denim. But if you can find softer fabric and a looser fit, tread lightly and go for it.
Jumpsuits
- Inside a jumpsuit, you are completely sealed to the point that you will have to fully undress to use the bathroom. Try not to make eye contact through the bathroom stalls. Coworkers just want to wash their hands, not experience a moment with you that they will remember even when you bring doughnuts to the morning meeting. I’m sorry, Karen, I thought sprinkles could fix this**.

Editor’s Note:

*At all costs avoid skirts, dresses or long shirts that don’t go past your knees. Find something cute that can blow in the wind without recreating a Marylin Monroe moment with less iconic photography and more public indecency arrests. #airitout

** She is really sorry, Karen, let it go.

“Awkward family moment” she says

I’m just going to get right to it. Nick bought bulk condoms. Well, he bought condoms in bulk. They weren’t bulky.

He thought,”Hey, we’re a couple who is sexually involved with each other and I don’t want to impregnate/possibly give you diseases I may or may not have but those sex ed videos scared me about everything so I’ll just buy a lot of condoms at once to save money like buying toilet paper in bulk.” Except the thought was more erotic. I hope.

Maybe he is just so practical that our sex lives are decided on a budget. We are still searching for jobs so I wouldn’t put it past him.

Anyways, you’re probably wondering why am I sharing this very personal and practical decision with you dear people? Because apparently, it is not just between us anymore so I might as well let you in on a terribly embarrassing moment so maybe one of you will have words of wisdom or sympathy.

We’re staying with Nick’s parents right now to get our shit together after our big adventure in Europe. So Nick sent the condoms here. To his parent’s house. Do you see where this is going?

The package arrived in a giant box for some odd reason. For some other odd reason, the package was addressed to his mom and arrived on her birthday. Are you cringing with me?

As we were preparing for her birthday dinner, just chopping away, she put the box on the counter.

Nick said, “Hey, I’m waiting for a package, that might be mine”.

“It’s addressed to me though.”

“Oh okay.”

Oh okay? This was the response ringing in my ears as the packet of bulk condoms were pulled out and put on the counter. Like a shit ton of condoms.

“Were you waiting for condoms?”

“Yes,” I squeaked like a teenager caught with weed. Or condoms, I guess.

“Awkward family moment!” she said.

I should’ve left it at that, but then I said,

“I mean, do we at least get points for being safe?”

Because that’s what I wanted to do, continue the conversation. Let’s just extend it into a full Health class lecture. In my panic, I lost all ability to maintain normalness and I could only think of condoms being rolled onto bananas by strangely calm teachers.

This led to the three other thoughts:

Do teachers throw out the bananas afterward or do they end up as an ingredient in their mother’s famous banana bread recipe?
Does the banana bread taste like dick?
I want banana bread
Not because it may or may not taste like dick

Since this moment I’ve been coming up a list of better responses to the situation:

“Oh don’t worry those condoms aren’t for sex, we’re hosting a water balloon fight later”
“Nicholas! You’re cheating on me? You know I refuse to have sex before marriage.”
“Those aren’t for us, we’re actually donating those to Planned Parenthood because I’m a good person who supports women’s reproductive rights.”
Run away, simply run away

Now every time we go into the guest bedroom together I am distinctly aware of how she may be thinking we’re having sex when we’re not even having sex. I need non-sex noises to play while we’re in there. There’s no way we could be having sex if there’s just a soundtrack of dolphin and whale noises.

But hey, if it does it for you, don’t let me get in the way!

Ok, I’m gonna go now and eat birthday cake. Because this happened on her birthday. Her freaking birthday. So sorry, so very sorry.

Hire me: Skills include catfishing

I’m currently applying for big-kid jobs and while I was trying to find the latest copy of my resume I found pictures of old cards I wrote during an internship while in college. (First day on the job and the only thing on my desk was a dinosaur head (see image above) which was never explained. Ever.)

Background: I worked for a utility company and it was Linemen Appreciation Day so as the intern I gave people pens to fill out the cards. I soon become bored and wrote a couple myself under different pen names while literally using different pens. When I was done I shuffled them throughout the deck and went on my merry way.

To my horror, before they were sent off to the linemen my coworker went through and read every damn card in the 700 pile stack because he casually read one that happened to be mine and was determined to find others like it.

My team got an email a couple hours later with photographs of the most ridiculous ones (all done by me without their knowledge). I basically sent a reply admitting to writing all of the cards and asked them nicely not to fire me.

Here they are:

We’re so Catholic, you already know

First off, did anyone sing the title of this post to the tune of Fancy by Iggy Azalea? Because go back and do that.

It was the morning of my sister’s first communion. (I’m about to give all non-Catholics a crash course in this religious rite of passage.)

It’s basically an opportunity for seven-year-olds to get crazy rich. Imagine bar-mitzvahs but for Catholics. (I may be offending a lot of people.)

Basically, you eat a wafer that is supposed to symbolize the body of Christ and drink wine, that symbolizes the blood of Christ. It’s basically symbolic cannibalism. But not as creepy as that. I used to think of it as eating a wafer-size Jesus who takes care of your insides. (That’s also why I wasn’t selected for anyone’s team during Bible Bingo).

It’s a big deal in a Catholic family, especially an Irish Catholic family, and I was excited to be in Dublin to see my sister do her thang. It was a small affair because, like most families with their last kid, they don’t try as hard. So she missed her first communion with the other seven-year-olds but five years later she’s going to a Catholic school in Ireland and was put on the fast track through confession and communion.

The local priest agreed to squeeze her in before her Catholic school had their confirmation. (Wow, there is so much backstory here. Maybe this post is only for Catholics. I’ve decided to be uninclusive in the name of God.)

Look how the holy spirit blew through her hair. The hair I spent a decent amount of time styling.

FINALLY, we’re at the actual story of the day. I curled Abigail’s hair all pretty and she had on a lovely white dress and we realized this 12-year-old doesn’t own a strapless bra. (Neither do I, and I’m a grown woman).

I encouraged the no-bra, possible band-aid, technique but she wasn’t having it in front of a priest. So when my mom left the room we dug through her drawer to find an old bra we could cut the straps off.

We were running late to mass and everyone yelled for us to come down. Without scissors in sight, we used an Exacto-knife (she’s into crafts) to shred through. We emerged triumphant. Screw you, Victoria [Secret].

There was too many of us going to the church so we separated into two cars. My brother, my aunt, Nick and I took off ahead of them and arrived at the nearest church within minutes. Since we arrived early we used our time luxuriously. We chatted in the car, we strolled across the lawn, we even took our time finding a seat.

No one else was there.

Mass was starting soon and then it hit us all at once. We gathered our jackets and pride and ran past a confused usher.

“Where are you going?” he shouted at our retreating backs.

“We’re at the wrong church!”

Churchgoers watched us trip over ourselves back to the car.

I yelled back at them,”Sorry, we realized we’re Jewish!”

On the way to the right church, we listened to a radio host discuss a dating site for married people to cheat on their spouses. (Finally something relatable, right? Farmers Only has had its time in the sun.)

“You know, Dr. Seus cheated on his terminally ill wife,” my brother said as we sprinted from the parking spot.

“Stephen Hawking cheated on his wife too,” Nick said as we approached the doors.

“And he was the terminal one, the bastard,” I said as we walked directly into the front of the church.

Silence. The congregation stared at us.

I crossed myself and joined my family in the front row. I thought I would be slowly forgotten once the service started. I soon realized my family was in the front row because it was Abigail’s special day.

“Abigail’s sister is joining us today all the way from the states,” I waved meekly.

Then it was the big moment. We lined up behind Abigail as she swallowed a little bit of Jesus and we each took our own turn. When it was just the priest and I he said, “You’re definitely sisters”.

What was the emphasis for? Did Abigail also call a brilliant recently deceased physicist an illegitimate child in front of the whole congregation?

I had never spoken directly with a priest before, except through the small holes of a confession booth (another Catholic thing) and I panicked.

“I did her hair,” I stuttered and ran back to my pew like a good Catholic.

Thank god (no pun intended) the rest of the day all of the attention was on Abigail. People from the church flocked to her to wish her well.

Two little old ladies looked at her fondly and said, “You’ll never be as holy as you are on the day of your first communion.”

Well, isn’t that nice. I don’t know, is it?

Wet pants and not the good kind

Let me set the scene. We had just arrived in Nice, France. I had dreamt of this moment ever since I watched a rom-com/action spy movie with Ashton Kutcher. It’s based in Nice. Also, he’s topless, a lot. I’m very cultured.

Moving on.

Topless Ashton Kutcher in the movie Killers. You’re welcome.

After dropping off our stuff (precious, precious stuff) at our Airbnb, we headed to the coast. It was evening by this point and the tide was in, this is an important detail we overlooked. (God, I’ve spent way too much time in Arizona, a landlocked, desert state). I wore a swimsuit underneath my sweater and jeans in the small chance it would be warm enough to swim. It wasn’t. It was cold and no one along the beach was dumb enough to expose any skin to the sea breeze (foreshadowing).

We leaned against the wall that separated the ocean from the city like the locals were doing (we fit in so well). Above the seawall, people looked out from their perch on the boardwalk. Old couples growled at each other, teenagers in roller blades ran them over, the good stuff.

I slipped my shoes off and dug my toes into the sand. My phone was sticking out of my back pocket so I slipped it into my shoe for safekeeping (oh, the irony) while I readjusted my place on the wall.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched a woman play with fire (not literally, actually she was playing with water). She would get really close to the water and then run back to the safety of the sand. I watched a huge wave crash down on the beach and essentially swallowed her whole. Like a 4-D movie, seconds after I watched this woman be demolished I was soaked by the same wave.

To my horror I watched my shoes be pulled out to sea. I grabbed them and plunged my hand inside only to come up empty. Further down the coast, I saw my phone sticking out of the sand like an ostrich (or another animal who burrows idk). I darted after it with my soggy pants and dripping sweater as the crowd above made gasps as they discovered this truth with me.

Imagine a phone sticking out of that. Imagine it’s yours. Share in my horror.

This became a show for these people. I heard faint clapping as I tugged it free and basically dried it with my hair (which miraculously remained dry and still looked damn good that day). Once I secured my phone, I had to acknowledge my drenched body. I remembered I had a swimsuit underneath and began to peel my clothes off.

Remember, everyone else was fully clothed. Because it was cold AF. This is an important detail. Apparently, just because I’m in France doesn’t mean people don’t stare at half-naked women in bizarre temperatures. The entire crowd stared down at me as I shivered and laid out my clothes.

When I thought it couldn’t get worse, another wave hit and the time on my [sun] dryer was restarted. I looked up and the grumpy old couples had turned their anger towards me. I waved as they pointed at me and frowned. Looking back they were probably more concerned with the fact that I was this dumb tourist in a swimsuit in the late winter while the tide was moving in. In my shame and experience with angry, religious people I assumed they had something against my body exposure (sexy).

Effective drying technique until another wave hit.

But the cherry on top, the real crowd pleaser (literally), was when the police came. Yes, the police came. This is when I was able to pull my head out of my ass and realize the tide had risen dangerously high and people weren’t just staring at me for no reason. I took a moment to look around and in my self-absorption, I hadn’t realized all the smart people (and by that I mean basically everyone) had left our section of the beach.

A group of five police officers approached us, one was wearing a motorcycle helmet. (That was an important detail, why the hell was he wearing a helmet on the beach? Protection from sun exposure? Seagull poo? Recognition as actor Ashton Kutcher?) We were then escorted off the beach as my swimsuit gave me the biggest wedgie imaginable (but I wasn’t going to pick it in front of helmet guy! He wasn’t getting the satisfaction).

The crowd watched on from above as we finished Act III. I tippy-toed across Nice’s signature pebbles and stones (wonderful souvenirs) and my wedgie only worsened. Soon my butt cheeks had their time in the sun.

Now that I’m safe from French crowds I have come to terms that water damage doesn’t begin to describe my phone’s experience. So I am now the person who doesn’t have a phone thousand of miles from home. It’s thrilling, it adds another layer of adventure, right? Sure, sure.