Category: Columns

Sex, politics, fashion and everything else a Gen-X everygal loves to dish about.

Shopping for Stun Guns

Published on October 10, 2013

I was 12 years old, riding home from school on an L.A. city bus, when I noticed the middle-aged man staring at me. When I got off the bus, he did, too. As I walked, he followed 30 feet behind me. When I turned a corner, he turned, too. I picked up my pace. So did he.

I didn’t know what he wanted. But I knew, like an animal knows it’s being hunted, that I was in danger.

Unarmed in an era before cell phones, I considered my options. Break into a run, try to beat him to my house, lock the door, and call the police? No — he’d know where I lived. Bolt to a stranger’s front door and start banging, hoping someone was home? Dive through the hedges up ahead and hide? Or start screaming “HELP!” and crying like the little girl I was trying really hard not to be?

When I think back on that day, I get angry. What enrages me most is that I can’t even remember how I made it home safely. All I remember is being terrified, humiliated, certain that I couldn’t overpower him, uncertain if I could outsmart him — and filled with a resentment that’s never really gone away.

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt threatened by a middle-aged man. But last week, I was invited to a party billed as “a girls’ night that could save your life.” It was a casual sales presentation for Damsel in Defense personal protection products — think Pampered Chef but with pink weapons that pack a wallop: the Tiny Takedown stun gun. The Pouch O’ Pepper spray. And a very pretty, palm-sized, keychain-ready martial arts weapon used to “jab soft tissue or break bones.”

Surf Lesson

Published on September 26, 2013

I’d like to tell you that I’d always wanted to surf. That I’d spent decades on the shore, secretly longing to be out shredding tubes with the sun-kissed stick jockeys. It would be romantic to say it took 40 years to get me to climb onto a surfboard. But the truth is it took only two words:

Champagne. Brunch.

My son’s school organized a surf-lesson fundraiser with booze, breakfast, and a band of adventurous, surf-virgin moms. As a California native who’d never hung 10 — and whose arm needn’t be twisted to slurp mimosas with her toes in the sand — how could I say no?

My surfing friends say there’s something spiritual about a day on the board. It’s meditation in motion. It’s prayer without words.

So imagine my surprise when our instructor informed us that he was fresh off a tequila bender from the previous evening. He zipped us into wet suits (which offer a full-body SPANX effect that I rather enjoyed) and began a lecture about point breaks, riptides, offshore winds, and other facets of physics that I was still entirely too un-mimosa’d to care about.

My attention ebbed and flowed like the tide, but I heard instructive blips like “zip up your ankles … squat low … no ballerinas… eyes on the beach … or you’re gonna nosedive …” We practiced popping up from our bellies to our feet while we were still on the sand. And then we hit the water.

Selling Used Pregnancy Tests?

Published on September 12, 2013

I love the Internet. I do. God bless that sprawling cyber jumble of eclectic digi-data. Today alone I used the dub-dub-dub to figure out what the hell is going on in Syria, to satisfy my curiosity about whether pigs can swim (yes! I saw the video!), and to find a synonym for uncouth (see crass, below).

And yet … I have to be the Cantankerous Person Born Before 1980 here and point out that having an information free-for-all at my fingertips also serves as a daily reminder that the world as we know it is coming to a crass and unattractive end.

The latest evidence: Pregnant women across the nation are posting ads on Craigslist offering to sell positive pregnancy tests to anyone who, um, needs one. No joke. They’re peddling used plastic wands bearing the little blue plus sign or parallel pink lines in the tiny indicator window — and they’re asking $20 to $40 a pop.

“I will provide the positive test and deliver to an agreed-upon public location,” read one last week.

“This will NOT be a dollar store test,” assures another — a label snob. “Will be either Clearblue, First Response, or e.p.t. Let me know!”

Some of the ads offer suggestions for precisely how to use the sticks to your advantage:

PMS: A Safety Guide for Men

Published on August 15, 2013

To the males in my household and all the rest of you:

We have arrived, yet again, at that odious interlude of each lunar cycle when there is a small chance that I will throw something heavy at your head. There’s also a chance that during the next three days I will snatch something out of your hands because you are doing it wrong, shriek “WHO ATE THE LAST BROWNIE?” at a pterodactyl pitch, and begin weeping inconsolably because you set the table and gave me that fork I don’t like — that one freaking fork that is so easy to avoid in the utensils drawer and that you know very well I dislike, but you just had to put it at my place, didn’t you? You never have respected me, not for one minute of our lives, and this is how you choose to show me.

Welcome to hell, fellas.

Because I am kind and generous for 27 days of the month, I’m going to offer you advice for surviving this bumpy patch with me, and any woman who is riding the prickly premenstrual pony. It is dangerous to be you in this situation; I won’t lie. Your wife/mother/girlfriend/sister is a porcupine who has swallowed a hand grenade and doesn’t want to die alone. But with a steady supply of wine and simple carbohydrates, she might — might — be able to keep The Beast shackled in the basement of her soul.

Kids Left in Cars

Published on July 18, 2013

This column won’t make you laugh. In fact, if you even crack a grin, then I’ve done something wrong. But I have to talk about this issue because it haunts me, and I need to believe some good will come from airing it.

Every year in this country, about 20 infants and young children die after being accidentally left in a car. Not left for 30 minutes while a frazzled mom runs into a Walmart. Not left for an hour while a delinquent dad ducks into a bar. Those are just bad decisions: deliberate and ill-advised.

I mean left for hours upon hours in a closed-up car, where temperatures can climb to 125 degrees, by otherwise responsible but disastrously distracted parents who forget that their baby is strapped in the backseat and so get out of their vehicles and go blithely about their lives while their child suffers heatstroke and dies alone.

It’s horrific. Gut-twistingly, skull-throbbingly unthinkable. Yet it happens all the time. It happened to babies in Virginia and Maryland over the Fourth of July weekend. It sounds like something that only happens to soft-headed imbeciles unfit to reproduce. But it’s happened over the years to a college professor, a cop, a rocket scientist, a clergyman, a nurse, a social worker, a pediatrician… It happens to protective parents who put foam bumpers on every sharp corner in their home and organized parents who start college funds while their babies are still in utero.

I know because it happened to me.

Teenage Summer Views

Published on July 4, 2013

I asked my 14-year-old son to write my column this week because he was “bored” and couldn’t think of anything to do with his summer besides parking himself in front of back-to-back episodes of Ancient Aliens on The History Channel. Yes, it’s really him, and not me pretending to be him. Kid has a sarcastic side; not sure where he gets it.

Hi. Judging by my one-word lead, you probably know that this is not Starshine. My name is Stone, and I am Ms. Roshell’s oldest son. This column will not, for a change, make fun of Christians, vegans, or any other thing my mom is not.

If that’s what you’re into, you’d best stop reading now and check back a couple of weeks when my mom will probably write a column that straddles the line between raunchy humor and uncomfortableness, as usual. This column, however, will discuss a few things my mom doesn’t talk about and will not mention vaginas or flossing. Or vagina flossing, for that matter.

You may be wondering, “Why is Starshine making her son do her work for her?” Well, I’m not sure either, but the reason I accepted her offer was because she told me the only way I could get a glimpse at a TV before 8 p.m. was to bang out a column for her. And of course, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Lines 'n' Lies at Disney

Published on June 20, 2013

School’s out and more than 5 million kids, teens, and adults are already looking forward to visiting Disneyland and Disney World this summer. I’m guessing that 4 million of them are dirty, rotten liars.

I wouldn’t have thought it before. But recent stories in the New York Post and on the Today show exposed a disturbing trend: families hiring disabled tour guides to escort them through the theme parks so they can skip to the front of ride lines. Both Disney parks allow handicapped guests and their families to bypass long lines and enter rides at a special entrance. So guests with a glut of cash and a dearth of scruples are paying upward of $1,000 per day to abuse that privilege.

“This is how the 1 percent does Disney,” a Manhattan mom reportedly told the Post — which makes you want to shove her mouse ears where mouse ears don’t belong, doesn’t it?

But I asked around and discovered something: This isn’t new. And it’s not uncommon. Friends of mine confessed to strapping on an old knee brace as teens and taking turns pushing each other around the park in a rented wheelchair to get quick ride access. Another tells me that although her son has outgrown his mild autism symptoms, they still use his diagnosis report to get front-of-the-line passes at the Magic Kingdom — and they have no intention of stopping.

Atheists Saved!

Published on June 6, 2013

For a brief moment last week, I was saved — and as an atheist, that was new for me.

During morning mass at the Vatican, Pope Francis offered a sort of absolution for heathens. The Lord has redeemed all of us, he said. “Not just Catholics. Everyone! … Even the atheists.”

Well, the world gasped. After 2,000 years of astonishing rigidity and intolerance, the Catholic Church was suddenly handing out pardons?

But ole Franky didn’t stop there. The Vicar of Christ upon Earth (for real, that’s what he’s called) went on to imply that our character is reflected as much by our actions as by any religious affiliation — maybe more. “‘But I don’t believe, Father; I am an atheist,'” the pontiff posited. “But do good. We will meet one another there.”

Wait, did he just …? It sounded like he … What the heaven just happened?

It was an interesting week for infidels all around. The Boy Scouts finally voted to allow gay scouts to join their ranks — while godless lads remain unwelcome. But nonbelievers found a hero in Oklahoma tornado survivor Rebecca Vitsmun, who responded to CNN reporter Wolf Blitzer’s comment “You gotta thank the Lord” by giggling, “I’m actually an atheist.” As odd as it was for a journalist to suggest that she praise God while standing in the rubble of her former home, and as unlikely as it was for Blitzer to get stuck on camera with an “out” atheist in the middle of the farm belt, the woman’s admission inspired thousands of faithless folks to contribute to a relief fund to help Vitsmun and her toddler son. You can even buy “I’m actually an atheist” T-shirts to aid the cause.

No, I Won't Go to Your Kid's Show

Published on May 23, 2013

The last few weeks of the school year are a grueling gauntlet — a narrow, clamorous chute of activity that swallows every last hour of a family’s free time. Evening performances. Weekend tournaments. Early-morning muffin-and-melon affairs in Appreciation of Someone or Other. The only way to get through it all is to keep your eyes focused straight ahead and be impervious to distractions.

It’s like Zumba class or (from what I’ve been told) the urinals in a public restroom: You’re supposed to just mind your own shakey-shake and pay no attention to the person next to you.

And yet you have a friend — we all do — who is going to break this sensible, unspoken rule and invite you to her child’s concert/meet/ recital/play-off even as you’re scrambling for something clean to wear to your own kid’s ceremony/championship/potluck/musical. And when you don’t show up to her child’s event, because, let’s face it, you haven’t hit a grocery store in 19 days and your family is eating old trail mix for breakfast, she is going to judge you. She is going to raise her eyebrows, purse her lips unattractively, and be wounded by your conspicuous absence.