Imagine Jenny McCarthy As Your Masseuse, But Like, Not Really

I have to apologize for the serious lack of posts in Ye Ole Famous Last Word(e).  I'd tell you that I was busy dealing with the holidays, with my cluster headaches, with desperation apartment cleanings, with finding a new job (mission accomplished!) and finding my own replacement, but really, I hit a major writer's block and all of the above are just excuses.

I tried to break the spell, truly, I did.  There are 27 different drafted posts in my folder right now, of which three are maybe decent, but I kept opening them up, staring at them, typing a sentence, and then opening up Imgur in a new browser tab instead. 

"Katie," I told myself.  "You need to relax." 

So I did what any other downtrodden urbanite would do: I dialed up my regular masseuse and requested a massage in the immediate future.

Unfortunately, Marcus, former masseuse to the Women's Olympic Soccer team, was not available. 

And thus my trauma begins.

So I made an appointment at a small salon near our apartment and walked over.  I sat myself next to another woman in the reception area and continued A Dance with Dragons until a very small, skinny man with a mustache came out and immediately triggered my NOPE NOPE NOPE alarm.

In case you haven't noticed, my Photoshop skills are slowly but steadily coming along.

 He started looking on the list for his next client. Not me, not me, not me, I thought.

The Famous Last Word's Guide to Small Talk

After I stopped playing softball, my dad helpfully suggested that I start following professional sports, since I was "bad at small talk" and would "need something to talk about."

Look, I'm no wunderkind like Ashton Kutcher Paris Hilton Jenny McCarthy, but I think I can reasonably say that my parents have always underestimated my social skills. 

Now, some of that may be my own fault.  High school Katie didn't play the long game.  Uninterested in explaining who my friends were and where they lived, I would always just tell my parents that I was at one of two people's houses.  They're not illogical people.

They concluded that I had only two friends.

I love you Wilson.

This conclusion had consequences.  The reason they encouraged me to play a sport in college, my brother later told me, was because they thought it would force me to socialize.  "Katie only has two friends," they told him.  "This way she'll be forced out of her room."

Computers: 523891098   Parents: 0

And then I dropped softball, and my dad and I had that talk on the front porch.

His words come back to haunt me all the time.

I was told by one former co-worker, who caught me hiding at an event, that I "don't play the game."

"Baby," I cooed, "I don't play no games."

Baby I bowl but baby that is a sport.

It's true.  I don't play games.  I master them. You can therefore count yourself lucky that I will share my wisdom and help turn you into the social butterfly of every occasion. Just stick to the below topics, and the moment, as they say in France, will be perdu a jamais¹.