THE HOROSCOPE PROJECT
DAY 1: FLIRTING WITH DISASTER
I had an interesting idea the other day after reading my horoscope. Let me first point out that I don’t normally feel a need to seek out my horoscope to guide me through the day; it just happens to be on the same page as the comics, something I do feel a need to consult every morning.
The idea was this: What if I were to follow the advice for my sign, Scorpio, no matter what it was. What would that be like? It may not seem like a difficult task for most, but for me it was monumental. You see, I don’t cotton to being told what to do, and I never have. I’m more about bossing others around, which as a mother of three, comes in quite handy. I am told that even as a toddler, I was a Miss Bossipants. I would instruct my father on the correct way to change my diaper. Someone had to inform him because he obviously didn’t know what the heck he was doing.
So for me to be told by some ambiguous person to lay low today or contact an old friend or party hard tonight, had me automatically digging my heels in. Even if it was something I would normally be doing anyway, such as take it easy tonight, I suddenly don’t want to do it if it is dictated by someone else.
Which is why I thought this would prove to be either a fascinating experiment or a gigantic mistake; we would see. I plan to take a few of the more intriguing horoscopes in a week and try to follow them to the T, or something close to a T, perhaps a U or V.
My first horoscope read: Scorpio, be flirty today! You are naturally sultry when you flirt! Who knew? So I had to try to pull off a sultry flintiness while wearing my normal outfit of khaki Capri pants, sneakers, and a T shirt. That would be a challenge. But if anyone could make ‘momwear’ sexy it would be a Scorpio. We are the passionate and slutty sign, after all, so I was confident I could do it.
The only problem I had was, who would I flirt with? I didn’t have any plans to go anywhere that day. That left my husband and my dog to be the victims, I mean, recipients of my charms. I should point out that if I even look in my husband’s direction, he thinks I have lovin’ on my mind and he’s all over me like a lion on a three legged wildebeest. In fact, I can’t even have gas pains without him thinking it’s Go Time. I had things that I needed to accomplish, so that was out of the question. I was going to have to look elsewhere. For those of you that may think my husband might feel hinky about my flirting with other men, don’t worry, I was only doing this for experimental purposes, he’d understand. But if he doesn’t understand, I was counting on the fact that he’d never find out about it because he doesn’t know how to turn on the computer to read my blog.
So I headed to my home away from home, the local café where I do a lot of my writing. Now all I had to do was to think way, way back to my single days when I would flirt on a regular basis. But that was BC (before children) and since then, all of my memory storage units dropped out of my uterus while giving birth. My past was a blur, but thanks to the many hours of watching Nickelodeon tween shows with my daughters, I was well versed in how to let guys know you are hot. I just had to play with my hair, giggle, say OMG, and moisten my lips and the men folk would be all over me.
Fortunately, there were subjects (men) at the café. I had to rule out the dudes that work there, though, because I was hoping to show my face at the café in the future. Sadly, there weren’t many unaccompanied fellows on the day I visited. The only person who was alone, was ahead of me in line, ordering coffee. This person was wearing a pink shirt, had longish hair, and had an amorphous shape. I had no idea if it was a man or a woman. Even his/her voice was androgynous. When he, as it turned out, turned around, I noticed stubble on his chin, but a belly that looked pregnant. I guess the stomach could be just a beer belly, but I wasn’t completely convinced of his masculine gender until another patron addressed him as John.
I hesitated with proceeding with my experiment because John looked like a card carrying member of the Phoenixville Club for the Weird and Wacky, which has a roster in the hundreds. I didn’t want to come onto this guy and end up with my own personal stalker, so I sat back and observed for a few moments. I soon found out more about him than I ever wanted to know. John was one of those annoying people who’s under the impression that he was alone in an office with the door closed, which meant that he could make multiple loud calls on his cell phone.
Unfortunately, I could overhear every one of his conversations. In the first one, John said, “That really does something for me. You’re making me all hot.”
Take my word for it; NOBODY wants to see John getting all hot and bothered.
A few seconds later he said, “Now you’re just becoming too needy.” This guy really blows hot and cold. Nothing to fear, because on his third call, he talks to his same lady friend and says, “When you talk baby talk to me, it drives me crazy!”
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m so glad that every shoe has it’s mate, but I don’t want to be witness to any pot-bellied, long-haired, pink-shirt wearing dude lacing up said shoe, if you know what I mean.
I immediately aborted any ideas of flirting for the day since what I overheard had the same effect as taking a cold shower naked on the Polar Ice Caps.
I left the café thinking that the idea of flirting with my dog suddenly didn’t seem so creepy, when I spotted the pretzel shop a few stores down. There were men that work there; men who looked like men and not pregnant homely women. Frankly, the thought of yummy carbohydrates has been known to put me in an amorous mood, so I walked in.
I approached the front counter where a good looking young (enough to be my son) man asked, “May I help you?”
I gave my biggest smile, tossed my hair, and said in a very perky voice, “Yes, I would like five mini pretzels.” The poor guy looked startled by my enthusiasm, but got me my order. Another man in the back of the shop started to sweat the moment he spotted me. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that he was standing in front of an enormous oven.
He said, “Would you like some free pretzels?”
My Scorpio seductive skills apparently weren’t as rusty as I thought, because I walked away with about eighteen pretzels I didn’t want.
I guess I still got it, even though I don’t remember ever having it in the first place.
Copyright 2012 cwaldman