Nevergirl’s

What’s with we-speak?

A friend told me it’s from the Carnegie School of How to Be More Likeable. Supposedly, the pronouns “we” and “us” show empathy, immediately establishing yourself as a friend, an ally. This makes we-speak a useful tool for interaction. I don’t know if I subscribe to this idea, though.

A woman I used to work with once had this plural first person phase, and everything she comes up with has a corporate-memo feel about it. For instance, “We would love it if you don’t sing to your Youtube clips loudly.” “We find the idea impractical.”

I can’t imagine We‘ing anybody with the same level of perpetuity unless this person occupies the same body as I. Moreover, I wonder if any parent actually raises a child on we-speak. If so, does the child grow up thinking she lives in a socialist collective?

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Does my eggplant look menacing enough?

For lack of better things to write about, this shall be a recap of How I Spent the Last Day of the Year Chomping. I just had ice cream. And a chocolate doughnut. And lots of eggplant. You’d think that I’d be able to hold off on the eating until New Year when there’ll be even more food than usual.

But no, I could not.

There was cheese last night, and lobsters, and shrimp tempura (which I didn’t have a hand in making, thank God!), and mrs fields cookie gifts which we got from relatives abroad, and so many grapes that the girls and I capped the night with a grape-throwing contest. I chucked the most number into Charlie’s litle mouth.

And then, I bopped around the room and got talked into reading about 20 pages of Shel Silverstein’s Everything On It. If you boil and eat me right now, I’m betting I’d taste pretty foul, like a halo-halo gone three kinds of wrong. You can’t make like the world’s biggest glutton for several days running, and not end up vile-tasting and looking. Happy New Year in a few hours, friends and family! I wish you calories that disappear voluntarily!

I know I flail and fail miserably at cooking, but even I surprise myself sometimes. For instance, last month, I learned to make shrimp tempura—and now I can proudly add that dish to my grand cooking repertoire consisting of tadaaaah—exactly two dishes:

1. shrimp tempura
2. egg in all its glory: specifically fried, scrambled, hardboiled, or done sunny side up

The reaction I got from learning to make tempura is nothing short of ridiculous though. You would think I was trying to feed them a Fedora Hat. Or that I’d shown up in the kitchen wearing a psychedically colored shirt and spreading the gospel of Jesus.

“You’re in the kitchen,” people marveled. “You’re actually in the kitchen, chopping off shrimp tails, and nothing untoward has happened!”

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On days when my day is all spasmodic and squiggly, I shouldn’t be let out of the house even if it’s to buy jewelry gifts (though on second thought, you may be better off buying this online because some stores allow an amazing degree of customization! Think rabbit charms, baby shoes, a cabinet-shaped jewelry box—and no, I kid you not!) or dog food, if only for the sake of self, neighborhood, and country.

I tripped in the street thrice today, ran into a door twice, and hit my knee on a table leg more times than I care to remember. Then, on my way to the drugstore, I got splashed with slushwater by a passing tricycle or an overzealous puddlestomper—at least that’s what I assume happened because really, how else would you explain the dirty blothes on my dress? Unless a very low-flying, mud-bearing bird decided to defy the laws of physics just so it could shat on my dress.

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