So I have this friend. We’ll call her “B.” She’s pretty funny, as far as friends go. And by “pretty funny,” I actually mean “the life of every party.”
Here’s a classic “us” moment caught on film…er…SD card. Don’t ask.
Sometimes she names inanimate objects; she finds it comical, and usually I do too. She has a green Honda Accord called Stella, a love seat named Paxy, a sofa christened Alberta, and a MacBook who answers to Gregron (well he doesn’t answer, so to speak…because he’s not animate). She also has a stomach named Sam and a boyfriend named Tanner, who is not inanimate, but Tanner’s stomach Sally most certainly is.
What, that’s not funny to you? I guess you have to know ‘em.
Anyway, I had the good fortune of talking to B today, and she carried on for the better part of 10 minutes about her latest naming frenzy:
“So how have you been, B?” I asked, because I really wanted to know.
“S,” she said mournfully, “I’ve seen better days.”
“Oh, no!” All was not well with my friend B, and I needed to get to the bottom of it. “What’s wrong?”
“Well, it’s this dad-gummed uterus of mine. Every month like clockwork it starts giving me the most horrific problems. Just today I was thinking it would be less painful if I cut it out with a searing-hot steak knife from Black Angus.”
“Ouch! That sounds like a problem indeed—they have surgeries for that, you know. But either way, I wouldn’t recommend Black Angus’ knives. I’ve eaten there before and they are a bit on the dull side. You’d be better off going to Outback.”
“Oh,” she thought aloud, a bit more cheerful, “I could go for some Outback,” she said. “Those bacon cheese fries…mmm… But that’s just Sam talking—Sam is my stomach, you know.”
“Oh, no, I hadn’t heard. Congratulations on another splendid name.”
“Thanks,” she replied. “Then again, it could be Eunice talking… She has that effect on me.”
“Sam and Eunice? Two stomachs, B? How’d you pull that one off? I thought only cows had two stomachs.” I was incredulous at the thought of all the bacon cheese fries she would now be able to consume.
“Actually, cows have seven stomachs. But that’s beside the point—Eunice isn’t a second stomach. She’s my uterus.”
“Oh. My. Well that sounds like a fitting name for a uterus.”
“Yes, I thought so. My uterus was causing me so much misery last month, I decided I needed to name it, and it needed to sound awful. Awful and ugly—because that’s how it makes me feel, you see. I wanted it to start with ‘U,’ since I’m all about alliteration, but the only name I could think of that started with a ‘U’ was ‘Ursula,’ and that’s ugly—
“But not ugly enough,” I guessed.
“Right. Not ugly enough. In the end it had to be ‘Eunice.’”
“Well…Eunice is a pretty ugly name,” I agreed. “But it doesn’t start with ‘U.’”
“I know—do you think I’m stupid? But I got over it because really it’s the ‘you’ sound I’m going for. It’s onomatopoeia or something like that—Ms White would know.”
“I hate Ms. White. She made the eighth grade so miserable for me. And ninth.”
“Me, too. Anyway, I was telling Tanner about how I named my uterus Eunice, and he seemed to feel really bad about it. He was all, ‘Lindsey, you might think your uterus is a Eunice now, but it will pass. I know it’s giving you problems, but someday it’s going to be a vital part of giving you children. You’re really going to be glad you have a uterus—maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow…but someday. I think you’ll have regrets if you name it Eunice.’”
“That’s what he said?” I clarified.
“That’s what he said,” she confirmed.
“He’s so good for you.”
“I know, right? He’s a good man. So anyway, I asked him what he thought I should name my uterus, since he’d suddenly taken such a keen interest in it, and out of the clear blue, he goes, ‘Karla.’”
“Karla?” I asked, again for clarification.
“Karla,” she confirmed. Then she continued, “Well at first I was worried because I didn’t know about the name ‘Karla’ for my uterus—it sounded too sweet, somehow. But then it occurred to me that if it was spelled with a ‘C,’ it might not be so bad—“
“ ‘Cs’ are so much better than ‘Ks,’” I added.
“Totally. So I asked Tanner, ‘Carla with a C?’ and he said, ‘Of course, how else?’ and it just…fit. So three weeks out of four, my uterus is called Carla with a ‘C,’ and the miserable week of the month when Tom is here [Tom…Time Of Month…get it?], it’s called Eunice.”
“With an ‘E,’” I added, for clarification.
“That’s right—Eunice with an ‘E.’”
That would have been the end of our conversation, had I not thought to ask, “Hey, B? That’s a really great story. You should blog about it. You could call it, ‘My Uterus Has a Split Personality.’ It would be amazing.”
“Hey, that’s not a bad idea. It would be funny. Why don’t you do it, though? I’m too busy, and it would be better if you told the story. Tell it as if it were you.”
“You mean you would sell me the rights to your life stories? Like Kramer sold his life stories to the guy with the deep voice on Seinfeld?”
“Sure, why not?”
“You must really love me.”
“I do, S….I do.”
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