Oprah Makes Me Feel Bad, But This Time I Think It’s Worth It

When it comes to guilt trips, I have logged more mileage points with Oprah than I have with US Air, American Airlines and my mother COMBINED. Oprah makes me feel bad for so many reasons. Thanks to her constant crusades, I feel I should be eating a "kinder" diet, reading better books, doing more for charity and saving better (that Suzy Orman can really give you a good scolding). I’ve realized I’ve been plucking my eyebrows all wrong. Oprah has even let me know I poop wrong. It should look like an “S” according to the big O and her experts. And, thanks to Oprah, I know that chances are I have been wearing THE WRONG BRA my entire breast-toting life. Now she is making me feel bad about something I suspect you should feel bad about too, and I’m glad.

In case you haven’t heard, Oprah’s latest crusade is to get as many people as possible to take a pledge to make our cars “no phone zones.” According to Oprah, Nearly 500,000 people are injured and 6,000 are killed each year because drivers are talking, texting and e-mailing behind the wheel.

I am not a big cell phone user. My boys are constantly chiding me for how little I know about my cell phone. I think too many in our society are pathetic cell phone addicts. While shopping, I daydream of tasering fellow shoppers who insist on loudly blathering about the most inane minutiae on their cell phones - especially those lugging poor, neglected tots with them. I also think it is incredibly rude to have someone constantly scanning their phone, crackberry - or whatever they have - while you’re talking to them. I don’t do any of that, but I confess I have, on occasion, taken or made a call while driving. Studies now show it is just as dangerous as drinking and driving – something I would never consider doing. So, I have taken Oprah's "No Phone Zone" pledge and knew you, as a sister (or brother) of the Ungirdled Nation would want to consider doing it, too.

To see some very compelling arguments and videos for signing the pledge, go to oprah.com and hit the “no phone zone” icon to the right. (Or click here after reading this post.) Once there, you can also access and sign the pledge to make your car a no phone zone and lessen the chance that you or someone you love will be killed or injured due to cell phone use while driving. I can pretty much guarantee after seeing just this or this, you’ll think it’s the right thing to do. There are three different pledge options from "I will not text while driving," to "I will not text or use my phone while I am driving. If I need to use my phone, I will pull over to the side of the road."

I know, I know. It’s easy for Oprah to preach no talking or texting while driving. I’m sure she has a driver taking her everywhere, just as she has a chef cooking her kinder diet, a personal accountant helping her save, and millions of dollars to help charity. I'm sorry for the less-than- light-hearted post this go around, but I know you agree 6,000 deaths a year due to using something we easily (and literally!) lived without until just recently is enough to make you want to say “amen” to this sermon.

Images from Oprah.com "No Phone Zone" page

Shopping Etiquette For The Un-Ungirdled

There are more peri-menopausal and menopausal women in the U.S. right now than ever before – over 40 million of us.  What does this mean for the rest of you?  Well, chances are, that while running errands, you’re likely to encounter a woman whose patience has been stretched dangerously thin by an overabundance of insults from teenagers, rapidly-plunging estrogen levels, and hot flash-induced sleep deprivation.  This is not someone you should irritate. So, as a public service, here are some tips for getting along with the Ungirdled while shopping.  Ungirdled Women:  you may want to copy and print out copies for your fellow shoppers!

1. Do NOT bring your screaming, crying, lunch-and-nap-deprived tot shopping.  The only possible reason you could have for subjecting your fellow shoppers and your precious child to this torture is that you are in desperate need of food, medicine or diapers for him, and I am pretty sure Off Broadway Shoes does not sell any of these things.
2. When you are in line behind an Ungirdled Woman in the checkout aisle, do not, I repeat DO NOT, put your purchases on the cashier’s conveyor belt UNTIL the Ungirdled Woman has finished placing ALL her purchases on the belt and then placed the little bar designated to separate orders on the belt. It makes us rather agitated to see your things whizzing by on the belt as we’re still unloading ours from our carts.  DO NOT stand at the check-writing podium in front of the cashier while the Ungirdled Woman is bagging her groceries and BEFORE she has paid!  If you do so, we can not promise that  you will leave the store with all the hair you came in with.  At least not still attached to your head. 
3. Do not stand WITH YOUR CART in the middle of the overcrowded Trader Joe’s/T.J. Maxx/Target aisle, blocking the rest of us from gathering items on our shopping lists. Stick to the side of the aisle, keep moving, or leave your cart at the end of a crowded aisle while you retrieve the desired item from it.  Bottom line:  SHOP LIKE YOU MEAN IT OR GET OUT!  
4. Please do not loudly blather on and on about every inane detail of your trifling life on your cell phone or blue tooth while shopping.  Kudos to you for knowing someone pathetic enough to be interested in knowing that you are shopping for a sweater to go with your coral Carpi pants and you found one you absolutely love but they only have it in small and large, and you really think you need the medium, but the large does look like more like a medium, and you are wondering if you should just get it and try it on at home, because you really hate to try things on in the store, but you also hate returning things, so you’re just not sure.  Isn’t this what that Twitter mess is for?  To instantaneously share such vital, fascinating news with all your fans?  Please spare Ungirdled shoppers, as we would rather listen to our own thoughts, nails on a chalkboard or even a screaming, crying, lunch-and-nap-deprived tot.
5. We know it’s America and you have every right to smoke if you so choose despite nearly every public place in America now banning it, but please do not stand just outside the entrance of a store to exhale and share all the noxious chemicals with the rest of us.  See, that is the reason why a lot of the stores have banned smoking inside them.  People who don’t smoke, really don’t want to.  It smells.  Really bad.  And, believe it or not, they have found it’s bad for your health.  EXTREMELY bad.  Thanks for wanting to share and everything, though.

Thanks ever so much for your cooperation.  Following these tips should help make for more pleasant shopping experiences and less assault and battery charges for all of us!

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