Free American Thighs by Jill Conner Browne

piece of joo-ry that would, in case of a falling-out on her part, alert the appropriate persons that she was, in fact, a card-carrying diabetic.
    Of course, she got a 14-karat-gold MedicAlert bracelet—I mean, it’s something she’s got to wear, like, ALL the TIME—so naturally, it needs to be fine. She was delighted to learn that her new bracelet provided for ten full lines of engraving and that since, so far, she happily only has that one little health issue to declare—after listing “Queen S” and “diabetic,” she still had awhole nine and a half lines with which to convey other equally important facts about herself to anyone who might come across her in a coma or other distressful situation.
    So far, on her bracelet, she has “Queen S. Diabetic. Crazy Funny. Really Cool. Always up for a Good Time. NOT FAKING—I’M SICK! Clean Undies on When I Started out Today. Get Me a Private Room. Don’t Just Stand There—PRAY FOR ME!”
    But she still has a little room so she’s thinking of adding “Leave My Jewelry and Makeup On.” Her children, of course, think she is insane and also trying to boss the medical team, even if she happens to be unconscious. I fail to grasp their point.
    Queen S just wants the EMTs to know her feelings about certain pertinent issues, in the event that she is temporarily incapable of communicating those feelings verbally. And also, if possible, through that illuminating peek into her heart and mind, to inspire the health-care workers to treat her as they would their very own crazy mama.
    6
Howdy, Sports Fans
    A gaggle of us used to loudly occupy the third-base bleachers on hot summer afternoons at Smith-Wills Stadium for the old Jackson Mets baseball games—back when Mookie Wilson and Keith Bodie were on our team. Afternoon baseball games met many of our needs then. We could get some sun—which helped us in the furtherance of our quest for golden-brown deliciousness. We could drink beer and eat crap—always entertaining for reasons obvious to like-minded individuals. We could go to the bathroom and/or concession stands at will and often without fear of “missing something” in the game itself. (Baseball is so slow, you can literally leave for hours at a stretch and pick it right back up where you left off upon your return. Baseball is like a soap opera for guys—they can walk away from it for twenty years then turn it back on and be totally caught up in one episode.) And, of course, there were the hot guys.
    All the guys were hot, of course; it was summer in Mississippi—everybody was hot—but some of them were also “hot.” Some of them were on the field, some of them were in the stands, usually not too far from us—because, due to our golden-brown-and-delicious imperative, we were most often scantily clad, which upped our curb appeal considerably.
    The guys in the stands would sometimes pretend to be actually watching the game, and when they did, they would frequently, as guys are wont to do, holler at the other guys—the ones who were out there actually PLAYING the game—an assortment of somewhat predictable phrases designed to advise, encourage, inflame, and/or belittle and otherwise denigrate them publicly.
    One of the most oft-used buzzwords was “GOOD EYE!” which would be shouted at the batter when he would decline to swing at a particular pitch, deemed by my esteemed and usually inebriated male colleagues to be “crap.” Occasionally, the umpire would concur with this evaluation and indicate his agreement by signaling “Ball.” This concordance with the ump was rare, of course, because for some reason, if one is at all convinced by the plethora of epithets customarily hurled at them by even the most normally mild-mannered of fans, the world of baseball has apparently become a safe haven and source of steady employment for scurrilous, underhanded,