Behold, a scale! In the ladies’ room! Not in the ladies’ room of a gym or a health club, in the ladies’ room of a regular corporate workplace. When I saw this standing against the wall on my first day, I was sort of offended. What was this scale meant to imply? I asked the guys in my office if there was a scale in the men’s room and they told me there wasn’t. They also told me about the horrors that could be found in the men’s room, which I will not terrorize you with, but did make me very glad that I had lady parts.

So, why was this rickety old scale placed in the ladies’ room? Did management think their female employees were fat and needed to watch their weight? Did they think women are all weight obsessed? I have no idea. I doubt the scale was placed in the ladies’ room as part of a nefarious agenda. I doubt much thought was put into it at all. Regardless, it always pissed me off a little when I went to take a piss.

* Grammar police: I tried to determine whether it’s the ladies’ room, ladies room, or lady’s room, but Google wasn’t much help on the issue. If I used the wrong form, I apologize. Please take that into account at my trial. Thanks.

I have a compulsive smiling problem.

When someone gets on the elevator with me, I smile. When the bagger hands me my groceries, I smile. When someone opens the door for me, I smile. The only time I don’t smile is when someone at the grocery store says, “Hey, why don’t you smile for me?” and I want to stuff arugula down their throat, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic.

I think this is a female thing. I also think it’s a desperate-need-to-please-others-and-be-liked thing, which I am working on getting over. I listened to a RadioLab podcast recently about the nature of laughter which revealed that we often laugh when things are not funny. We laugh as a social function to let people know, “Everything’s ok! We’re all friends here!” I think smiling is the same way. I smile to let people know I am not a threat. Please don’t give me trouble. Smile, smile, smile.

It is hard to stop smiling. I find the corners of my mouth being pulled up by invisible marionette strings. Don’t do that! I murmur in my mind. I have been reading my guidebooks in preparation for my trip to Europe and they say “Don’t smile in Paris! It can be seen as flirting.” The French don’t smile willy nilly like Americans do, which is part of the reason they are sometimes seen as rude. I don’t want to attract weird French men to me, so I’ve got to stop this compulsive smiling…or buy a fake wedding ring.

This is not to say I am going to stop smiling. I will not Botox my smile muscles closed. I will still smile when someone has been nice or if I really do want to flirt. I just need to stop smiling for no reason or strictly out of fear or discomfort. Don’t worry, I promise to smile in all my touristy photos.

So, the maintenance man came and checked my breaker box, flipping the switches enough times that I had to reset my stereo clock. Then he got on his ladder, unscrewed the light fixture, replaced my light bulbs and before God could say “Let there be light” the kitchen was bright enough that you could see all the food crumbs on the tile floor.

“Oh, wow, that was embarrassingly easy,” I said feeling dumber than the countertop.

“No problem,” he said, probably grateful this was an easy problem to solve. Either that, or he was silently making a “How many single, white, females does it take to change a lightbulb?” joke.

Tuesday evening I hopped in my car to meet some people for dinner, but instead of making a “Vrooom!” sound the engine made a “Crick, crick, crick, crick” sound followed by silence. I called by brother for a ride to the fairly important dinner meeting and got his voicemail. I started make half-baked plans about running to the restaurant, when he called me back and chauffeured me to my meal.

The radio still worked and the lights came on, so I figured this was not a battery problem since the battery was obviously working. The next morning I called AAA and a nice bearded man with a big belly and an even bigger truck parked behind my car. I signed the paper, did a stirring interpretation of the “crick, crick, crick, crick” sound for him over the roar of his truck’s engine, and he quickly determined, “It’s probably the battery.” He hooked up his jumper cables, stuck my key in the ignition, and whallah, my car was running.

“Oh, wow, that was embarrassingly easy,” I said feeling dumber than the blacktop.

“No problem,” he said, probably grateful that he didn’t have to put down his flatbed to tow me to Firestone.

So, I have felt like a moron twice this week, which is odd for me because usually I feel quite capable. It’s a downer because I feel like I’ve badly represented my gender, reinforcing stereotypes that women can’t fix cars or electrical equipment. I have to remind myself that I was able to talk intelligently about domain hosting options and server configurations to my dinner companions who looked at me with the same confusion I gave the AAA guy.

It’s just a reminder that depending on your circumstances, everyone looks stupid eventually. These moments where I look like a dolt, are balanced by the times when I fix someone’s computer in 2 minutes when they’ve spent 2 hours trying to connect to the Internet. I know a lot about certain things, but very little about others. But at least I can learn. Next time I’ll be checking my light bulbs and getting out my jumper cables before I call for help. Which will be pretty weird if it turns out just the toaster is broken.