Dear Ovaries,
It’s been a swell thirty-some years carting you gals around. I don’t have many complaints, but I do have one suggestion: I’d love for you to invest in a communications department. It’d be nice to get an email alert about your product releases. A follow-up note about any conferences with the boys, and if you ever decide to take one of them up on their offer, it wouldn’t go amiss.
In my twenties, email reminders about your product releases really should have been part of your protocol. You gals didn’t send any alerts and I had to Plan B it all over the place. Contrary to popular belief, boys don’t offer to get the pill. The CVS pharmacists track this sort of information, you know, and for the next decade all the websites I visited advertised IUDs and car seats. Screen sharing during office meetings was a nightmare!
And now, in my thirties, an email reminder would be super nice, so I am completely prepared for your product releases. Timing is super important, as you gals well know. Otherwise, the boys come too early, or too late, and your product, the thing that you gals worked so hard on, just gets stood up, and that’s such a shame! You know what it’s like being stood up. You’ve experienced it for what, a decade now? So please help me help you!
I mean, you sort of have a marketing department. The mid-cycle perkiness I’m supposed to experience is supposedly your communication style. Those signs, I’m afraid, are too subtle and misleading. For instance, I could feel horny for all sorts of reasons—while taking a shower, or eating a mango, or watching Avengers. Or watching anything with Scarlett Johansson. An email alert would avoid any confusion.
And don’t forget about the follow-up note about any successful conferences. So I know for sure the brown spots on day twenty-eight mean blood and not baby, or baby and not blood. Last month I thought the spots meant baby (no thanks to you, WebMD) so I gave in to this luscious ice-cream cake at the bakery down the street I’d been resisting for days. I even told the eighteen-year-old at the register to pipe BABY all over it. (Presumptuous of me, I know, but I thought I was supposed to give in to cravings—another very ambiguous sign, btw!) A couple of days later, you sent along Mrs. Flow, and I had to scramble to give away the half-eaten cake. Do you know how hard it is to find someone who’ll take half a baby cake off your hands? You can’t post that kind of stuff on Facebook.
Lastly, to quote Gertrude Stein’s thoughts on Cézanne’s process: “He insisted on showing his incapacity… showing what he could not do, became an obsession for him.” I’m obsessing over things you cannot do. I don’t think I should be held responsible for your shortcomings. So how about an email to loop me in, a little heads-up so you and I can be on the same page, together? That would be awesome.
Sincerely,
Your overly worried owner, Shilpi