Sticky Communication

As much as I enjoyed Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-seller Eat, Pray, Love, I could not relate to her love-trumps-all modus operandi. You see, I’m in my fifties, divorced and way past expecting a man to “complete” me.

As a sandwicher, with kids still at home and needy aging parents, the last thing I need is someone else to take care of. If someone were to show interest, he would have to present a good health seal of approval and chef’s papers or other proof of domestic self-sufficiency. Since no one is asking, as fewer do after 40, this is academic.

It’s not that I’ve given up on love. But ever since the estrogen well began to dry up, I’ve realized that true love is the compassion I try to feel for everyone around me.

Unfortunately, I can stay on this Buddha path only when I’m not dashing off to the washroom. The constant yearning for romantic love has been replaced by the incessant urge to pee.

As long as a woman can reproduce, she is driven by this love-conquers-all belief, shared by Elizabeth as well as the very funny thirty-something women in the movie I saw last weekend Bridesmaids.

I had to go so bad. Even worse than after morning coffees or gym water. But I could not risk missng a funny bit. From the long line for the loo after, I knew I was not alone.

Perhaps the laughter trigger is behind Whoopi Goldberg’s new commercial for Poise. Although I plan to adopt her word ” spritzing,” I cannot relate to her Cleopatra, Statue of Liberty and other impressions.

Neither am I drawn in by the Tena commercials about the fashion model peeling off  period costumes like a Russian doll. They should have stuck with the older commercial, where the woman my age  at her front door digs frantically for the keys  while a fantasizing a washroom drop onto her lawn. Now that’s funny.

That could be me, as could the food-poisoned movie bride-to-be Lillian crouched in the middle of a busy street. You can’t see, but you know she is pooping under the designer gown.

That’s what women want. A story we can relate to. Reaction without yucky details. A good laugh.

Are you listening, companies that are advertising to women?

Not that I’m ready for this kind of protection–yet. Though I could probably unleash more of that compassion I now call true love  if my moments of enlightened bliss were not shattered by my subconscious scrambling for the code for my yoga building’s washroom lock.

1. Girls just wanna have fun « Sticky Communication says:

   June 3, 2011 at 3:32 pm

   [...] has allowed me to tap into my fun side. I would never have written about the relationship between laughter and peeing in the corporate world. But maybe I should have gone for more amusing anecdotes or wry comments, my [...]