When I used to work in advertising, people were always coming in to sell us on their lame advertising platforms. There were the traditional sales reps from TV, magazines, newspaper, etc., but the really terrible ones were for the non-traditional media.  Urinal cakes. Crop circles (yes, you have your logo ‘engraved’ into a field of corn), beach prints, condom wrappers, whatever.  The sales reps for these media were always really odd, maybe because you have to be pretty odd to take on a job selling ad space on a condom wrapper.

Once, this company came in that was putting little TV screens in elevators.  They were selling ads on them. In wasn’t the weirdest idea by any means, but it was pretty stupid.  There point was that people in elevators have nothing to entertain them for the 30 seconds, on average, they are in the elevator, so they’d definitely be interested in these screens.

The woman who was pitching us was an odd lady, who was very, very pregnant.  She went through her pitch. Something about it must have really annoyed me, because when she was done I spent about ten minutes explaining why I thought it was a stupid idea—that people in elevators are thinking about where they are headed and that whatever info they consume in the elevator will immediately be forgotten.

Nothing unusual about that—sales reps are used to rejection.  But this woman, she took it hard. She started to cry.  Right there in the meeting. Sob actually, saying that she had an unborn baby to feed and why was I being so unreasonable and mean.

It was awkward.  At least for everyone else in the room. I am unmoved by crying pregnant women, so as she was crying I asked her if she need us to validate her parking.

Second story.  I am in the grocery store yesterday, in the produce section.  There is another woman in the section with me who is also very pregnant.  I notice her but nothing more. I’m a little preoccupied because I’m trying to remember if I like Macintosh apples better than Honeycrisp apples? Or do I go with Fuji once again?

Suddenly, the woman starts talking to me.

“Yeah, I’m pregnant. Get over it.”

“Huh?” I ask, unsure if she is talking to me.

“Year right. Whatever,” she answers, clearly disgusted with me for some reason and walks off. I am confused. Profoundly confused. So confused I forget to buy apples all together, which was the whole point of my coming to the store.  What did I do to provoke this anger?

So I am wondering, what is it about me that pregnant women find abhorrent? Is it a cruel evolutionary warning to them that I will make a bad provider for their children? Or am I inexplicably acting hostile toward these women in ways I’m unaware of?

In any case, please let this serve as my preemptive apology for anything upsetting I do to any pregnant women in the future. I don’t mean whatever it is I’m doing. All I want is to buy apples and mock elevator ads. It’s as simple as that, honest.

To be read in the highly unlikely event that, at some undisclosed time in the future, I am on my deathbed:

So, the unthinkable has happened and I am about to die. Perhaps, given the sum of human experience up to this point, I should have seen this coming. In any case, as I contemplate my final moments on this earth, I can think of only a few small requests to you, my living friends/family/creditors–

1. Tell someone dear to you that you love them.
2. Tell someone not so dear to you that you love them too. Not someone you hate, just someone you don’t know that well. Like maybe the guy who responds compulsively to mass e-mails at the office with funny little quips. I think his name is Jason.  Anyways, that guy is alright, and it sure would be funny to see his face when you, who barely know him, profess your love to him. I wish I could see it but, as you know, I’ll be dead.
3. Rearrange all the possessions I left behind alphabetically and by date of purchase. Some guesswork will inevitably be involved here, but I trust you can ballpark it. Once you’ve done this, donate all my possessions to a charity that helps blind children learn to appreciate beach volleyball.
4. Invent a new kind of synthetic butter. The market for synthetic butter has really slowed down recently and that bothers me on a spiritual level.
5. Cremate my body and scatter the ashes on the white sandy beaches of whatever Caribbean country is currently fashionable for celebrities like Ashton Kutcher.  Someplace expensive without any foreigners around. A year later, retrieve my ashes and from the remaining DNA, remake the dinosaurs like they did in Jurassic Park. But even cooler.
6. I think maybe I left an avocado on top of my fridge in 1993. You might check on that for me.
7. Live every day like it’s your last. By which I mean, run around in a state of panic making ill-conceived declarations of regret, squandering your money, and weeping profusely.
8. Lie to my children about my life. I don’t mean embellish or make better, I just mean deceive. As in, “Your father really enjoyed swordfish and his real name was Barney.”
9. Pay my back taxes. This isn’t so much a request as your new legal obligation per the state. This could get expensive since I stopped paying taxes around the same time I made that avocado purchase.
10. There’s a folder filled with reading material I keep under the mattress of my bed with big black letters on it that say DO NOT OPEN.  Whatever you do, DO NOT OPEN.