Quick, Stéphanie, Consuela and Niamh, pee on the nearest man you can find--the Americans have arrived!

Any American woman who has spent any time abroad can tell you that foreign women are (in the case of the horsier European women, literally) chomping at the bit to pee on their men. And no, I'm not talking about the prevalence of some really fucked up porn in certain parts of Europe, but rather the significant percentage of foreign women who feel threatened by us American gals. Sure, it could be that they just don't like us, but I noticed that their coldness tends to significantly intensify when we're in the presence of a male, in the same way that my Australian cattle dog was a sweet old thing but used to get seriously heated when anyone else tried to get near HIS tree, the tree that he had lovingly coated in piss.

Let's get one thing straight: not once back home in America has another girl EVER treated me as a threat. And frankly I can see why they don't. My hair looks like shit, I have glasses (and, to top it off, they're never clean), I have a stomach the size of a medium-sized planet, and the homeless man who lives outside the Subway shop by the freeway has nicer clothing than I do. I can't recall a single time a stranger has ever tried to approach me or hit on me in the US.

Abroad, however, things are quite different, and whenever my Yankish roots become apparent (usually when I talk too loudly in fancy restaurants, try to communicate with foreigners by speaking SLOW AND LOUD ENGLISH, or just wear bright white sneakers), it's like someone beat me with a sexy stick. (Never thought I'd be able to say that about myself). I don't know if these men are enchanted by my American eternal cheeriness and pioneer spirit or if they're just desperate enough for a green card, but they seem to make a beeline for me and my fellow American girls, carelessly mowing down tons of sexy local girls on the way, and they are apparently oblivious to the fact that I'm fugly and could also stand to buy a better fitting bra.

So I guess that sort of answers my question about why foreign women get so territorial over their men. And I guess I shouldn't complain about the fact that my sex appeal is going to increase tenfold when I move to the UK, and instead use it as an opportunity to bag Prince Harry.

This is why you shouldn't do drugs, kids.

Just listen.

If there is one lesson that I learned from spending half a year marooned in a laundry room where no one spoke English, it is simply to listen. I'm not saying I'm totally cured of my former illnesses (talking for the sake of talking or trying to constantly crack jokes instead of actually listening), but spending that much time in an environment where any response on your part requires two weeks of advance notice to ensure all the tenses match really makes you weigh the importance of any statement you make. And more often than not you realize that what you have to say is not worth what you could be listening to.

Well apparently no one taught this lesson to Ivy League graduates. Because, based on my experience during a 4th of July party, they are incapable of shutting the fuck up for any moment longer than it takes to take a sip from their glasses of wine. I see occasional silent moments as a welcome moment to catch my breath and reflect on the conversation so far. They, on the other hand, seem to consider occasional silent moments as welcome as loud farts in polite company. I suppose I shouldn't judge them for not listening, because with their constant, loud ramblings the problem is actually that they don't even hear--actual active listening would be too much to ask for.

This is why I'm fat, PART 1: Elementary School PE

The best part about middle school was the fact that the seniors had to park their cars on the football field because of the construction. I wish I could negate that statement with something about how the best part was how accomplished I felt being in the middle school play (I actually felt deeply, deeply embarrassed over how stupid it was; I played the role of someone's conscience) or how the best part was Science Fair (The teacher actually told me he was "embarrassed" over how idiotic my experiment was), but in reality the aspect of middle school that at the end of the day made me feel the warmest and fuzziest inside was the fact that I was able to hide from the PE coaches while running laps.

I look back now and wonder how my life would be different if I had just given in to the barely intelligible demands that I run faster and longer which were delivered through a bullhorn held by a woman who looked like a Brazilian Arnold Schwarzenegger driving a golf cart. I would be much less of a lardass, that's for sure. Or maybe I wouldn't. When I think of all the diving behind Volvos, ducking underneath Jeeps and William Shatner shoulder rolling to the other side of BMWs that my friends and I did, we worked up quite a sweat. And I'm not entirely sure that it was less work than just doing the laps in the first place.

But before I go any further about how I ended up sucking at PE in middle and upper school, let's take a trip back to elementary school...

Ah, to be 13 again

It's kind of reassuring to me that, even across the pond, gravity still pulls us downward, the sky is still above us, and 13 year old boys are still complete perverts. I am greatly comforted by the fact that the 13 year old boy's unique composition has the same kind of obvious international presence as McDonald's. Except instead of ubiquitous Big Macs it's this ubiquitous struggle of feeling extremely frightened and confused (like the male version of "Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret") while also trying to project total confidence (“Although I only figured out what my penis was for just yesterday, I have now decided that I am Casanova/the God of Sex/Gene Simmons.”).

Call me strange, but this is what I find so wonderful about 13 year olds—the girls have sprinted ahead in the puberty race by this point and from an outsider perspective seem to have quite suddenly woken up one morning with a bad case of the boobs, and the guys have to pretend that they’ve caught up. No, the guys have to pretend that they were never behind, and so they resort to wildly inventing stories and experiences that they can boast about to their similarly pre-pubescent guy friends (within earshot of the girls, who by this point are so far advanced in their development that some have actually started menopause), but the wonderful thing about a lot of these boasts is that they don’t ring true to the ears of someone with actual experience or to the ears of anyone in possession of female anatomy. But, most of the time, this doesn’t apply to 13 year old boys—I mean, there can’t possibly be too many of them with female anatomy. ...