Over on Life As A Human, I reveal the rogue sixth stage of break-up grief: putting down the imaginary dog.

NTKOG Year 2, #11: The kind of vivacious, breezily social cafe-hopper who, when beckoned to the next table over, figures, “What the hell?”

I am: notoriously picky about the people I spend my time with. All I ask is that they be smart, cool, socially aware, and capable of making me laugh so hard my stomach cramps.

I am not: asking too much, am I?

The Scene: Borders Cafe in Copley Square, at 8pm on a Saturday night. I’d been working on grad school applications since 10am and, dudes, let me say that while in the best of times I’m no pageant queen, duuuude, I was A Situation. For starters, I hadn’t showered since Thursday, and my hair was pulled into a fifth-generation ponytail. And as for make-up? Ha! Not since October!

At some point, realize I haven’t used the restroom all day, so catch eyes with the guy at the table across from me and point to my computer. “Hey, can you make sure no one steals my computer? If they try, maybe rough ‘em up a little?”

He nods and I leave. When I come back, I give him the thank-you wave, but instead of turning back to his own laptop, he takes a step over to my table.

Cafe Dude: Hey, are you good at punctuation?
TKOG: Uhhh, yeah, I’m really good at it.
CD: I could tell when I first saw you!  You’re an English major or something, right? The second I saw you, I was like, “This girl looks like she knows about punctuation!”

Weird. I don’t remember putting on my “I brake for Oxford commas” t-shirt this morning. Although I was wearing my “I said anarchy not MANarchy” pin…

Walk over to his table, where he pulls out a chair and pats it; I resist and look at his screen to see the punctuation query — then he closes the computer altogether and proceeds to tell me a lengthy, intricate story about his med school experience, the residencies he’s applying for, and the philosophical convictions shaping his particular phrasing of the last sentence of the first paragraph.

To this, two immediate reactions: 1) whoa, this guy’s friendly; 2) but he’s a doctor. If I leave the table right now, my mom will KILL me.

So I open his computer back up and set to work helping him redraft the thank-you letter he was writing, attempting to rein his rather fractured grammar and add some concrete language to his uncomfortably flowery prose style. Between every sentence that I edited, he would spin me tales about the unpleasant environment at his current medical school, the backstory to the academic strike blemishing his record, the qualities he valued at the hospitals where he’d interviewed.

After half an hour, I’d reworked the first of three paragraphs and he blinked up at me in surprise: “Whoa, you’re actually a good writer.”

Um, yeah, obviously. Why else would he have — oh. Oh. Is this that thing that the kids sometimes do? That flirting thing? It all started to make sense: the subtle way he’d coaxed my name out of me, the casual allusions to facebook, asking how long I’d been in the city, why I was spending Saturday night hunched over a laptop.

But whatever, dudes, we had a botched thank-you letter to finish editing.

I moved my things over to his table, and we worked on the letter for another hour, mixed in with conversation on just about every first date topic you can imagine. He told me about his moral opposition to the institution of pet ownership; I teased him pretty ferociously about it; he admitted he’d only joined Facebook the previous day, but would I friend him?; after he whipped out his laptop I, after some deliberation, agreed.

Eventually I looked up and realized that three hours had passed and the cafe was closing around us. So we packed up our things and he walked me back to the T station, told me he hoped I had a nice night.

Only when I was walking down the stairs to the station did it dawn on me: wait a minute, did I just accidentally go on a date?!

Except it was better than a date, because where most real dates leave one with nothing, this one at least resulted in a pretty exquisitely rewritten thank-you letter. Plus, I didn’t have to shower first.

The Verdict: Though I have less than zero interest in this guy, I’m always pleasantly mystified when interactions like this crop up organically in nature. While I sincerely doubt that I’ll meet the Great Love of My Life randomly in a cafe or bar (unless said bar is across the street from MIT, obvi), this was a good reminder that there are pleasant people out there, and it wouldn’t kill me to waste a little time with them.

Although if there’s any speculation as to whether this guy and I had a love connection, allow me to end it right now: At one point, he gestured to his keyboard and told me, “Hey, you know there’s a more efficient keyboard system, but they started using this layout because people like typing slower?”

“Oh!” I jumped in, excited, “you mean Dvorak?! That’s actually an old wives tale!” I started to explain some of the backstory behind that urban legend, but he just furrowed his brow and started shaking his head in bored confusion.

Sorry, Cafe Dude, but discussing things like Dvorak v. QWERTY is practically bedroom talk for a girl like me, and if you’re not on-board with that, this isn’t going to work out. Come to think of it, there might be a “talk nerdy to me” t-shirt in my near future…

Warning: the following post is extremely silly. For a slightly more substantial reading experience, head over to Life as a Human for: “NaNoWriMo: Pass the prom dress, ’cause mama’s got a novel to write,” a quick reflection on writerly quirks.

Meet Pete. After an absolutely ghastly day at work on Tuesday — only Tuesday! — Co-Worker and I dashed to the restaurant across the street and imbibed a downright irresponsible amount of beer. (“How much beer can you legally bring me?” she asked our server, while I attempted to construct a makeshift booze trough out of laminated menus.)

Twenty minutes later, I downed the last third of a schooner, swiped foam off my upper lip and decided to MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE. Which, in my state, amounted to picking up the lonely tortilla chip on the table and — with the aid of bleu cheese dressing and a Sharpie — brought forth into the world Mr. Peter A. Chip, Esquire.

Peter A. Chip, Esquire. Yeah, I realize he's not a pita chip. Look, life is complicated.

I’ve got a pretty exciting weekend lined up. Laundry, grad school applications, maybe cleaning my kitchen — all part of my rockstar lifestyle, baby.

But hey, while I’m stuck inside, stressed and sober all weekend, at least I can remember the warm and support of my beloved Pete. Slash photoshop some pictures of him working his charms for you.

King Pete is the master of all he surveys!

Holiday Pete is waitin' for you under the mistletoe!

Hooligan Pete is your biggest fan! Woooo! Go you!

Quarterback Pete's dedicating this next touchdown to you!

Sexytimes Pete doesn't know quite how to say it but, baby, he thinks tonight's the night...

Well this was an awfully silly post. Happy Friday, kittens. What’re y’all drinking tonight? Allow me to have a vicarious social life through you!

Over on Secret Society of List Addicts, a few Dudes I Wouldn’t Mind Marrying Immediately. Like, yesterday, if possible.

NTKOG Year 2, #10: The kind of brooding commonspace poet who, so moved by the transcendence of everyday interactions, writes you a blistering sonnet in exchange for some mozzarella sticks.

I am: often moved to volcanic warmth for strangers, based on the way they clear their throat before they talk to me or how they shift their weight to one hip when they’re lost in thought.

I am not: crazy enough to actually tell them this. Plus, as discussed, I’m nobody’s poet.

The Scene: In and around the Boston Public Library every night in this suddenly gray, drizzly city. As a dude who’s only ever lived in cities where early November was considered late summer, I’m in a bit of a malaise about the impending onset of my second-ever (and possibly last!) New England winter. Compound that with endless library-bound nights banging out MFA applications, and my morale’s about as high as a sopping wet motivation-post kitten, clinging to the tree branch called “everything’s probably going to be okay”.

Grad school apps, y’all. I’m apparently saving my good sentences for them.

But for the past few weeks, I’ve been fighting to get out of my head appreciate this sunless city’s charms by doing what I do best. Er, eating peanut noodles in a bathtub filled to the brim with Beaujolais. But after that: trying to find new (to me) ways to never stop seeing how really enchanting other people can be.

It’s no real secret that my favorite people to interact with are dudes behind cash registers and wearing aprons on a professional capacity. Because I’m an emotionally guarded person, I feel safest channeling most of my warmth into one-shot social transactions. And for the past little while, I’ve been focusing on doing just that in, y’know, as weird a way as possible.

Limericks. Post-Its. You know it.

Scrawled on a neon-green Post-It attached to a dollar bill in the tip jar at the Copley Square Borders Cafe:

In this season of all things pumpkin
My night needed a little somethin’
Your recommendation
Drove me to elation.
Madame, you have set my heart thumpin’.

A hot pink missive stuck to the inside of the check-holder at Other Side Cafe, where it is a question for the ages whether servers are more knowledgeable about beer than adorable or vice friggin’ versa:

There once was a server named Dan
Who vended us sudsy shenans
Until we were quite full
Of beer most delightful –
Of your work, dude, I’m a huge fan.

A note tucked away in a black bag of medical equipment outside a temple in Brookline:

To your trade it is clear you are loyal,
Working heedless of struggle or toil
With keen precision
and your clean incisions –
You’re Boston’s best friggin’ moyel!

Okay, you got me, I didn’t really give anyone the last one. YET.

The Verdict: Hey, look at me, makin’ jokes, bloggin’ about circumcision. Just like old times! You win this round, limericks. That actually felt pretty good.

It’s not only Friday, but an amazing Friday, getting ready to kick off an enchanting weekend. So put your stupid modesty aside for a moment and tell me — what’s your superpower? (Mine is, among others, an astounding ability to ignore my lack of talent in the visual arts…)

Check out Secret Society of List Addicts for the top five movies that never fail to make me weep my friggin’ face off.

NTKOG Year 2, #9: The kind of analytical, contemplative life-organizer who — instead of tripping all over herself to agree to the latest scheme — puts you on the back burner ’til she’s made her decision.

I am: apparently a people-pleaser. Or at least such has been suggested to me, though I’m rather skeptical, as…

I am not: an especially pleasing person. Just ask, um, anyone who’s ever met me.

The Scene: Uh, the MFA-related nervous breakdown I can’t seem to shake? And if you want, we could take a Magic Voyage through all of the symptoms — my stomach pumping bile directly in my blood stream, the unexpected three-hour sprints of 120+ bpm heart rate, the dust bunnies clamoring all over my pregnant-with-anxiety brain and causing me to do stuff like accidentally prepare and actually eat a raw-egg quesadilla without noticing last night — but let’s assume we’ve all been here, right?

The one side effect my perma-freak-out hasn’t caused, though, is the only one I wanted: forcing me to clamp down on my ridiculous tendency to try to make plans with the entire universe.

Yeah, I’m definitely one of those people. I like to shimmy through life like the caricature of a smarmy ad exec, clicking finger-guns at people and assuring them that “we should definitely get drinks!”. I swear, if I talk too long with the restroom attendant in a Moroccan airport, I’m constitutionally incapable of leaving without suggesting, “Hey, if you’re ever in Boston, you should look me up!”

And in my defense, it’s with good intentions. I genuinely like people, and in the ideal universe (in which I’m also the mistress of Alec Baldwin’s island estate, obviously), this is a pretty good impulse: what better way is there to enjoy the universe than mingling with its inhabitants?

The problem isn’t so much with the plans, as when people set a direct time and date and in one horror-movie montage, I’ll imagine double-booked plans or my messy apartment or three nights of insomnia and all the application stuff I need to do — and instead, my accidental “Yes!” comes rocketing out like a superball out of the barrel of a shotgun.

I really need to work on my impulse control. Even when yielding to those impulses does lead to gin-soaked nights and charming conversation.

So, for the past week, I’ve made a simple rule for myself: take twenty-four hours before getting back to anyone. About anything. No cocktail dates, no brunch plans, no immediate yeses to friends looking for a Boston apartment to crash in. I may be a “yes” person, but I’m trying on some “no” clothes.

And so far, the results have been tentatively encouraging. The first test was when my friend Anglophile emailed to ask about spending several nights in my apartment on a trip up from New Jersey. Although a few months ago I’d happily offered to let her crash whenever, and if my life were slightly different, I’d be more than happy to stick with said offer, I bit the bullet, drafted list fifteen potential emails, and ended up telling her: “Hey, I can offer lodging if you need it, but I really only have one day this weekend to hang out. But let’s definitely hang out that one day and make it count?”

The result? We’re still going to see each other on the visit, but she’s staying with another friend, and I’ve stopped convulsing with guilt every time she signs on gchat.

There have been a few other tests: a high school friend looking to catch drinks on a busy night, various hang-out offers threatening to crowd my scheduled writing days, fifteen thousand emails that don’t really demand an immediate response (but I promise I’ll get back to you this weekend)!, bars I don’t want to go to with people I just don’t have time to see.

I think it’s funny, that doing the adult thing (waiting for a while and contemplating my decision) is making me channel my inner two-year-old, but what can I say? My answer lately seems to be: No. No! NO!

And I’m kind of psyched about it.

The Verdict: I was surprised at how easy it is to say no to people, once I get past the initial shock of the unfamiliar. It’s easy to get so wrapped up in your own stress that you forget that everyone else has been here before too. But of course they have. So while people’s responses to a “no” might involve slight disappointment, truly, they’re not going to ruin everything forever.

Plus, I forget sometimes that my overactive social life is literally the reason I had to leave California. Like, I triple-booked so many brunch plans that I had to physically move three thousand miles away. So, if that isn’t a warning sign, I don’t know what is.

NTKOG Year 2, #5: The kind of casual superhero who, promenading the streets of a night, notices a stray kitten clinging to the highest tree branch and punches it down.

I am: more mild-mannered than Clark Kent, only because…

I am not: extraordinarily good at doing anything that’s actually useful to other people. Writing? Sure. Calculating tips? As long as it’s not an end-of-night bar tab. Righting wrongs and doing good deeds? Dudes, my cape is at the dry cleaner’s.

The Scene: The chaotic streets of Allston/Brighton, only a few weeks after the city-wide menace known as Moving Day. And if you’re from a city too smart to observe this horrifying tradition, a word of explanation: because the population of the greater Boston area swells exponentially when all the college kids come back, sadistically brilliant landlords have set something like 90% of leases in the city to start and end on September 1st. In theory, this allows our nine-month residents to move into new abodes at just the right time, and leave a solid three months on their leases to sublet when they move back home or take internships over the summer before coming back. In theory.

In practice? If you ever want to see a seventeen-mile traffic jam consisting exclusively of U-Haul trucks, well, get thee to Allston/Brighton on September 1st.

One of the many harrowing upshots of this citywide menace is that furniture stores, hardware shops and big-box sundry emporiums (love you, Target) are nigh unbearable for the week or so following the universal move — leaving many apartment-dwellers to camp out with the bare necessities for a few weeks, then spend the last half of September lugging purchases into their new homes.

Even now, it’s not uncommon in my neighborhood to, near midnight, watch a dude struggling with an oversized Target bag or IKEA bookshelf, broadcasting that particular animal scent of despair that accompanies all housing woes.

So, last week, I decided to focus my (utterly non-existent) spidey sense on one of the few demographics I know I can help: dudes carrying heavy stuff. Y’know, no big deal. Just avenging physics.

Came upon my first opportunity while dragging myself home from my sister’s last Monday, near 10pm. As I shuffled along the main thoroughfare connecting our apartments, noticed a woman — mid-thirties, sweatsuit, hair coaxed into the type of extreme frizzball that can only signify a short, intense period of physical duress — apparently attempting to wriggle her body through the crack between her apartment’s double doors while lugging two boxes full of anvils.

In my mind? Swooped up to the stoop invisible, a force of nature, swung the door open, then disappeared into the night before she could turn her head and even flash a smile of acknowledgment.

In actuality? Turns out if you’re going to suddenly appear behind someone well after nightfall, you should, uh, give them verbal warning from a few paces away. Yeah, I don’t know, dudes. It’s not like there’s a WikiHow on this.

For the next few days, when I saw people on their stoops in my neighborhood, struggling with door handles through armfuls of boxes or grocery bags, flashed up behind them (after giving sufficient warning!) to grab the door. Such a little thing, but the kind of thing I’ve never been socially forward enough to do.

Then, on Friday, the excuse to take things just a little further. As I dashed downstairs to the convenience store, noticed a girl in my foyer struggling with two boxes of unassembled bookshelves and a small coffee table. She was one of those girls who, y’know, accidentally-on-purpose wears a translucent shirt to work, who has thoughts about bronzer, who, ten seconds after meeting you at a party, compliments your hair and then touches it. Not the kind of girl I know personally, is what I’m saying here.

And over the course of my short life, I’ve seen many things that touch my heart. Summer sunrises, babies laughing, the works — yet still, there is nothing in this world or probably the next that I find quite as compelling as seeing an extremely beautiful girl in distress, mewling like a kitten at her own helplessness. Ironclad don’t-talk-t0-neighbors policy be damned. Finally, an opportunity to fully utilize my newfound social proactiveness?

Asked if I could help her move them anywhere; she cautioned about fifteen times that the boxes were extremely heavy, and offered to go halvsies on the lifting; I laughed with gentle scorn, then let her step aside as I carried the boxes into a neat pile in front of the elevator.

Which was broken.

Cue twenty minutes of lugging increasingly heavy boxes up to the entrance of her fourth-floor new walk-up, after which, one quick thank you, and back I flew onto the streets, ready to receive my next assignment. As long as it didn’t require any heavy lifting. ’cause, I mean, ouch.

The Verdict: Hee! That was super fun! I think it’s bizarre that — based on my own experience, conversations with friends, and the occasional email related to this blog — most of us suffer this universal paralysis when it comes to stepping in and helping strangers with something minor. Counter-intuitively, we’ll sometimes hold ourselves back from helping a dude because we’re afraid of what they’ll think of us. (Like, oh, I don’t know, “what a helpful person!”?)

Presumably, after a few more years roving this occasionally hostile earth, it’ll sink in forever: people are kind. People are good. People want to give and receive love, even in disposable one-bite doses, like catching a heavy door or showing off your strictly average upper-body strength.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an extra set of bedsheets I need to sew into a cape.

At Life As A Human, I realize my neighborhood convenience store is nothing less than an urban farmers market.

At Secrety Society of List Addicts, I angst about which of my 24-year-old habits my 16-year-old self would have HATED.

NTKOG Year 2, #4: The kind of disgustingly perky Pollyanna who love-bombs semi-strangers with thank-you-(for-existing) notes.

I am: insanely grateful for the hundreds of quasi-anonymous strangers it takes to make just one of my days great — or at least keep it from lapsing into apocalyptic status.

I am not: as good as showing it as I am at thinking about it.

The Scene: Looping my favorite Coolidge Corner haunts after a fairly grisly day at work. Something about the grey autumnal weather casts a pall over my usual nauseating chipperness. All day, I cursed my computer and grimaced through phone calls, and just when I’d hit my breaking point, I did what any good American would do–

I went shopping.

Specifically, I ran to the big-box supermarket across the street from my office, vowing not to return until I’d found a way to buy a little sliver of sunshine. And, as is its providence, happiness was lurking in the last place I’d suspect: the stationery aisle.

Specifically, in the guise of a ridiculously overpriced pack of “Mommy Messages” — those little notecards printed for Dr. Phil-watching’ suburban housewives to tuck into their little cubs’ lunchpacks.

As I was taking this picture, an old man walked by and said: "I wish I were cool!" He was wearing a fedora, so I felt no qualms about immediately telling him, "I'm pretty sure you are cool, sir."

Quick jaunt around Coolidge Corner after work, while I wondered how I could possibly dig up five recipients. There’s … let’s see … the girl who rang up my last Wodehouse book at the Brookline Booksmith. And can’t forget one for the driver of the 66 bus. Oh! And big-smile cashier’s on duty at Trader Joe’s!

Huh, what do you know. After ten minutes of note-writing, I began to wish I’d picked up a second pack.

Sadly, there’s no real story to the giving of the notes: I went to each respective retail location (slash awkwardly swung myself onto one bus, before declining a ride and walking home), waited patiently in line, then smiled at the respective cashiers before muttering, “I, uh, I wrote you a note. Have a good day!”

PS: Marry me, please, Brookline Booksmith.

Got smiles in return, but didn’t stick around to watch anybody read them, ’cause why ruin a pretty okay thing?

Although, nice coda: whether it was the brightened weather or my disgusting love for Pollyanna-ing, my mood for the rest of the evening was all gossamer and unicorn nuzzles. Stopping by a neighborhood hardware store on the walk home, I spent five minutes bantering with the clerk about various types of drain snakes and, when he told me to have a nice day afterwards, I could only grin ’cause, dude, how could I not?

The Verdict: How do I always forget that the best way to ninja-kick yourself out of a funk is just to pay more attention to the people who are trying to make your life great?

And I think it’s no secret on the blog that I’m a little obsessed with chatting with retail clerks. In truth, the subject is dear to my heart. The summer after freshman year of college, I got my first-ever real job, working as a customer care rep in a big-box video store. For the first few days, I was overwhelmed by the indifference and casual beratement customers showed me while running their annoying everyday errands.

Then I realized how often I ran my own errands, snapping at salesclerks and chatting on my phone in line — pretty dang often, considering I was locked in that teenage it’s-cool-to-be-jaded mindset that, thankfully, most of us outgrow. And I thought about how many days I spent pacing a fretting, sinking into the quagmire of my own dissatisfaction, praying for just one little goddamn thing to go right for once.

So I made the first good decision of my teenage years: every day, at my stupid job, I’d try my hardest to be that one small, good thing for someone. Somehow, as though by magic, that silly summer of alphabetizing videos taught me how to be happy. Finally.

And now, many happy years later, nothing else makes me quite as ecstatic as seeing conscientious and enthusiastic retail clerks and cashiers making that same decision — to make their little corner of commerce a slightly dazzling place to be.

Oh goodness, I’m way too perky today. Who in your life deserves a little shout-out? Favorite barista, inspired hairdresser, cute old man who sits alone at the library every day? Let’s hear it!

Happy Friday, loves! Engaging in random acts of Follow-Up Friday to give you a little update on the That Kind of Penpal Program — my teensy little initiative to provide a safe-haven mailbox to serve as a return address for people who would like to write to inmates, but don’t feel comfortable revealing their home addresses to their pen(itentiary) pals.

Since I got the mailbox in early August, I’ve made a personal goal of writing five birthday cards a week to inmates, and am thrilled to report that I’ve started receiving replies! It takes a while for letters to get processed through prison mail systems, but the results? So, so worth it.

In the past two weeks, I’ve received letters that include: a lengthy literary critique of The Odyssey, which a young man had just read because “Odysseus reminds me of me, kind of”; a beautifully rendered line drawing of a motorcycle; two short thank-you poems; and many, many lines of complaints about prison food.

A few of the letters I’ve received have been simple thank-yous that didn’t really call for a response. Others, though, have sprawled through several pages ripped from legal pads.

I’m doing my best to respond to every letter in a timely manner — a bit daunting for a dude who hasn’t written anything longer than a to-do list longhand since elementary school. A few weeks ago, I grabbed a seat in a tiny Bay Back coffee shop for three hours, rereading and then hand-writing responses to three letters on nice stationery in my best cursive.

As I sealed the last envelope, the waitress wandered by with my check, then hovered while I fished out my debit card. “That’s a long letter,” she said. “Boyfriend?”

I tipped her five percent extra just for the look on her face when I happily chirped, “Inmate!”

I’ve gotten emails from some readers who are taking part in the project, and I can’t tell you how ridiculously kittens-and-hot-cocoa it makes my chilled steel heart. So if you’ve been writing letters, thank you! And if you had only considered it, might I suggest you send out even one birthday card to an inmate today? It only takes a minute. And you never know what small, good thing is going to shift your world just a little on its orbit.

Have a gorgeous weekend! See you back on Monday!

On Secret Society of List Addicts, I temporarily stub out my cigar and give up my honorary chair at the Old Boys Club to reflect on a few everyday moments that make me feel divinely feminine.

NTKOG Year 2, #2: The kind of vivacious perma-hostess who halts your daily business and forces you to play a party game with her.

I am: an inveterate player of games. Not mind games, but old-school parlor games.

I am not: one to bring others into the madness. Unless you’re invited to one of my dinner parties, in which case, dude, you know what you’re in for.

The Scene: The Back Bay, a strange melange of snoots and tourists and, well, basically everyone else I’d never invite into my living room. Nonetheless, I shook off my usual standoffishness, and decided to engage the city at large in one of the all-time great party games: Mad Libs.

Purchased a bachelorette-party-gift edition of Mad Libs at Sugar Haven, and proceeded down the city streets with burbling cub-reporter earnestness, ready to coax every pedestrian who crossed my sight for a [noun], [adjective], or [part of body (plural)].

Flipped open the notebook to a page titled “The Ideal Mate,” and tentatively approached two dudes taking a bawdy smoke break on the Pour House patio. “Uh, hey,” I broke into the conversation. Alpha Smokebreak looked up — the type guy of who, were I a mid-level record producer, I’d hand twenty grand right there to grace the cover of my latest tweens’ll-buy-it pop-punk endeavor. “I’m, uh, I’m doing a Mad Lib. But I can’t do it alone? Can you, uh, help me?”

Requested an adjective and he immediately shot back: “cantankerous.” Multi-syllabic. Hot. He registered the surprise on my face and switched his cigarette to his non-dominant hand to go in for a well-deserved high-five. Three words later, I flipped the Mad Libs pad closed and he high-fived me again, then pulled his phone out.

“Sorry,” he said, texting rapid-fire with both thumbs. “I just really need to update my facebook status about this…”

Weirdly, the next half-dozen people I approached were no less chuffed with the random interruption. I’d anticipated people would be non-plussed by the random grammar lesson — hands up, guys, do you really remember what an adverb is?! — but of everyone I stopped, not a single dude denied me my random request.

The adorable college girl who stared up and sifted the stars for twenty minutes before deciding on “pendulous”; the Cactus Club bouncer who, when asked for a part of the body, immediately grunted “balls!”; the gaggle of techno-cuties clustered around the Apple Store who, pressed for a male celebrity, gave me an AP Euro crash course on the exploits of Hannibal.

With my Mad Lib half-completed, I paused briefly outside the fire station on Boylston, where four of Boston’s finest slouched on lawn chairs, staring over the velvety late-summer night. Gingerly, I approached and begged four words of them.

“Hell, honey, we’ll give you forty,” one of the guys grinned at me. “You want some cake? We’ve got some cake upstairs.”

Which is how, loves, I ended up spending thirty of the most utterly baller minutes of my life sitting inside a fire station, cooing over a gorgeous female pitbull, gathering increasingly risque [body part (plural)]s, and eventually being fed cake from the hands of honest-to-frig calendar-posing fireman.

Look, we may live in a world of “no,” but let me tell you, dudes, life never gets more exciting than when you decide to become an island of “yes.” It’s basically the most interesting word you can ever choose. Right after [body part (plural)], of course.

The Verdict: Say yes! Always say yes! Life is made of magic, and how the frig are you going to know that before you spend an evening inviting strangers to your phantom dinner party and being enchanted by every. single. one. of them?! Though I can’t guarantee that they’ll feed you cake. After all, not everyone’s life can be as charmed as mine.

[Edit: And for those of you who are curious, check out the completed Mad Lib here!]

Reminder: on Sunday, August 22, from 12:01AM to 11:59PM, my life is a Choose Your Own Adventure. Except you’re choosing my adventure. Tell me what to do via Twitter or blog comment and, as long as it isn’t illegal or too expensive, I’m all over it, dudes.

NTKOG #249: The kind of immaculately groomed pain-scoffer who — assuming women actually had armpit hair — would shell out the big bucks for a complete stranger to rip hers out by the roots.

I am: a complete wimp about wax-induced pain, which isn’t doing much for my future as a Career Dominatrix.

I am not: sure why women are so grossed out by their armpit hair anyway. We’re sexually mature mammals, dudes. Hair is a genetic factor here.

The Scene: Total Skin Care, a family-run waxing and skin salon in the ever-glamorous Allston. After a few weeks of angsting, breezed into the salon after work on Thursday and asked if they had any appointments for underarm deforestation. The charming woman at the counter penciled me in for an appointment forty-five minutes later then — as I dashed out to find the nearest DIY anesthesia center (ie: bar) — called out anxiously: “Wait, are you sure your armpit hair is long enough to wax? How long has it been since you shaved it?”

Uh, will six months do?

Guys, let’s talk about armpit hair. I realize this is a completely TMI admission, and verges on societal unacceptability, but — I kind of like it. I know, as women we’re total failures unless we pluck, pinch and alter every square inch of our bodies, but, dude, what’s so wrong with a little underarm foliage? About four years ago, I made the aesthetic decision to grow mine out; because The Ex and I were of one mind about the allure of a little spray of hair, I haven’t really looked back since.

The way I see it, my armpit hair is who I am. I’m not vain, I love my body, and my primary goal in 98% of social interactions is to weed out dudes who don’t have a high tolerance for personal eccentricities. Plus, whenever I contemplate shaving, I always think: dude, what if I’m stuck in some sort of missile-launching scenario with half a dozen foreign leaders, all locked in an underground bunker in our shirtsleeves for eighteen hours a day until we reach a final decision and, just at the fever pitch of military negotiation, I’m asked the single most important question of my life — if I shave under my arms, what the hell will I have to stroke contemplatively?

TKOG: greatest sex symbol of our time? Or of all time? Discuss.

Regardless, it was with the heavy heart of Sampson lowering himself into Delilah’s barber’s chair that I wandered down the salon’s steps and thrust myself into my fate. Not ten minutes later, I was folded into the embrace of Barbara, a woman a little older than my mother. Flowing skirt, unfussy hair, radiantly sarcastic grin — you know, like the cool aunt who takes you out whenever she’s in town and talks cute strangers into salsa dancing with you in the middle of taquerias.

Within the first five seconds in the waxing room, she told me to take off my top. Um, okay, I hesitated, waiting for her to leave the room. She didn’t. So off came the shirt and I splayed myself on the chair, arms up, my whole body clenched like a fist to protect me from the awkwardness and pain that was about to come. Except that didn’t happen either.

As she spread the hot wax on my first ‘pit, she launched into a hilarious diatribe about her gay dog and his heterophobia. Dude, you should lend him to me to take on dates, I laughed, then started to warn her that I’d probably scream when she pulled the wax out — except when I looked down at my underarm, it was already shorn. Magic.

“Dude, how’d you do that?!” I yelped. She beamed, almost coquettishly, the sly guru of hair removal, and admitted the secret was in her stories.

“Which one do you want to hear next, honey?” she asked, squirting lotion into her hand. “Wanna hear about my porn stars?” She massaged the lotion into my armpit, firmly, while gazing into the distance. “Some of the ones that come to me are gorgeous. I wouldn’t mind having one of them myself…”

From there, she described trade secrets about removing testicle hair, then told a story about a conservative judge and his hair-removed junk so uproarious that I had to beg her to stop because my abs were cramping from laughter. Big improvement from my last hair-removal experience, which I left shrieking like a freemason during the Inquisition.

By the time my ‘pits were soft and hair-free, I was too in love with Barbara to just let her wander out of my life. Uh, hey, I asked, trying to drag out the interaction, you know those, like, hairs on your toe-knuckles?

“Oh honey, say goodbye to ‘em,” she grinned, dribbling hot wax on my much maligned feet. “This one’s on the house!”

Too soon after, I got properly dressed again and followed her to the counter, where I paid the (incredibly reasonable) fee, volunteered to ghostwrite her memoirs, and promised to be back soon. And, between us, I definitely will.

The Verdict: Wow! Glad I retried waxing! Turns out that the sum of your experience has almost nothing to do with wax types or salon quality — the right warm, radiant personality can turn torture (literal torture!) into a deliriously delightful experience. Frankly, the fact that my armpits look great (and socially acceptable, for once) was just a bonus. I would have paid her just to stand there and listen to her stories.

Also, for what it’s worth, Sampson may have been shorn, but isn’t altogether powerless. I’m still nervous about my lack of meditative strokeability in a nuclear winter scenario, but, that aside, forgot that shaven ‘pits look pretty okay. I may or may not keep it up, but if I do, waxing all the way.