Debbie - Part V

Vignettes:

• A discussion about some subject on which we disagreed:
  
  Debbie: "87 percent of yada yada yada . . . ."
  
  Donnie: "And your source for that is?"
  
  Debbie: "What? What do you mean?"
  
  Donnie: "That 87 percent. Where did you get that?"
  
  Debbie, indignantly: "I made it up. It's the number I always use."
  
  
• At a Friday night gathering at the water hole:
  
  Donnie: "Does anyone know anything about saying 'Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit?'"
  
  Link Monster: "I do." Illustrating . . . "On the first day of a month you pinch someone on the arm and punch them on the arm and say 'Pinch, punch, first of the month, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.' This has to be the first thing you say that day. Then you're supposed to have good luck and the other person bad luck all month."
  
  Debbie, to yours truly: "If you ever do that to me I'll never speak to you again."
  
  (One couple present, Jack and Karen, immediately became competitive about this, each promising to be the first to "get" the other. The rest of us knew that there was no chance that Jack could win. Karen could be relentless.
  
  Month after month she nailed him, and on one such occasion he came into work in a grumpy mood. The night before, after Jack was asleep, Karen nudged him at one minute after midnight. She kept nudging until he woke up and then said "Pinch, punch . . . ." He filed a protest with the group, saying it was a foul, but the protest was widely disallowed. Karen positively radiated smugness all day.)
  
  
• Debbie at work:
  
  
  • At some point she got bored with being home and went back to work. She was a headhunter an employment counselor and went to work at an employment agency.
    
    Her English pronunciation was still pure Boston/New England, and her midwestern colleagues enjoyed both hearing it and teasing her about it. She dropped the letter "r" at every opportunity and tacked it on elsewhere. She once reported to me that at a work brainstorming session one employee asked with great glee if she had any "idears."
    
    
  • One windy and bitterly cold night she called me at about the time I would have expected her to arrive home. She said "My cah won't staht." We agreed that I would pick her up and in the meantime she would call the nearest Oldsmobile dealer and have it towed.
    
    I picked her up and we went out to dinner as a little consolation for her.
    
    The next night she had the Olds and drove herself home. She said that the dealership had called, laughing and saying that the car was just out of gas. I said something along the line of "Well, we've all done that at one time or another, or come close to it." She said "I knew it," and only then told me that her colleagues, nearly all women, had expressed unanimously the opinion that she should make something up rather than tell me the truth.
    
    (Are men really such ogres?)
    
    
  • The two of us had gone to a nice restaurant and Debbie was in a vile mood, a mood aimed at me if I remember correctly. I tried to lighten things a little and said "I have a great knock knock joke for you. Say 'Knock knock.'"
    
    She wasn't really up for this but finally looked at me and said "Knock knock."
    
    I said "Who's there?"
    
    Immediately, I could see the look in her eyes which said, "How did this moron get me into this position? But she decided it was funny, and couldn't wait to try it on a co-worker, a nice person but not necessarily the sharpest knife in the drawer. The next night . . .
    
    Donnie: "Did you try the knock knock joke?"
    
    Debbie, disgustedly: "Yes. And when I said 'Who's there?' she said 'I don't know. Nobody's there.' Now I feel like two of you got me with the same joke."