08/19/03’s illustrious band:

Stalking Stuffers

Brought to you by Dr. Amy and her recent trip to a professional conference.

Amy has always attracted interesting people, and never more so than at this recent conference. First, there was the lady on the bus. Upon learning that Amy was a magazine editor, her seatmate, a wannabe writer, proceeded to schmooze for an assignment -- and then went on to confess that she didn’t understand why every editor she’d ever worked with had hated her writing. She had won a writing award in high school, she explained, so she knew she was good. Yet editors kept telling her that her articles were unprintable and that she was in the wrong business.

With this “Top 10 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Hire Me” list in mind, Amy declined to assign the woman a story. This did not, however, spare her from hearing a full and complete recitation of the woman’s most personal information during the day-long bus tour.

At a later function, held outdoors, the hosts had provided insect repellent wipes: moist towelettes impregnated with anti-bug stuff that one can swipe over exposed skin. After using hers, Amy went to the trashcan to throw it away. As she tossed, a little voice in her ear said, “I stuffed mine in my bra.”

Put yourself in her place for a minute. You’re at a business function. You’ve just slathered your skin with strong chemicals. And suddenly, out of nowhere, there’s a little voice talking to you about bra stuffing. Has the all-confessing writer lady, whom you’ve been dodging since you got off the bus, snuck up on you? Or is your overstimulated brain imagining it? And if you really are making it up, why are you talking to yourself about other women’s lingerie-enhancement tactics?

Turning cautiously, Amy found herself facing a little old lady of around 70. “I don’t want the mosquitoes to bite through my clothes,” she continued, “so I tucked the wipe into my bra. See?” And she opened her blouse a button or two to display the insect repellent wipe spread across her bosom, neatly tucked into the cups on each side.

There’s some special aura about Dr. Amy that makes complete strangers want to bare their souls (and other parts, apparently) to her. El Queso Grande has the same problem, as do I. In my family we refer to this phenomenon as “getting Bettied,” after an incident in which an older lady named Betty cornered me on an airplane and talked about herself nonstop for a couple hours straight.

Or there’s the time a woman I knew only slightly asked to catch a ride with me to a social function. My then-husband, whom she’d never met, was driving. Before we even had our seatbelts fastened, she began regaling us with details of her recent stay in the mental ward of a local hospital for a combination of psychiatric symptoms and female reproductive problems.

Whoa! Time out! Too much information! Needless to say, we didn’t offer her a ride home.

Got Betty?

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