Just when I thought that life might be too irritating to be worth it, it turned out that I have a knack for performing miracles. It’s not that hard. It’s like practicing mindfulness, like meditating—only, I would say, more directed. More goal oriented. Instead of clearing your mind, you make your mind focus very, very intently on the miracle you want—like making a wish on a birthday-cake candle, only you don’t need a candle or a cake. I wished for everything that I don’t like to go away, and it did. That is how I became Saint Stephanie, patron saint of the annoyed.
First I caused the family that lives in the apartment upstairs from me to vanish forever. This is because they had twin teenage boys who bounced basketballs on the floor twenty-four hours a day, and because when I complained to their mother last year, she told me, “It’s a family building, Stephanie; deal with it.”
Then I transmuted the skim milk in the little stainless-steel “cream” pitchers at the Mt. Vesuvius coffee shop in Carroll Gardens into half-and-half.
Then I caused all the little children who have lunch with their mothers at the Mt. Vesuvius coffee shop after Gymborini class to stop shoving french fries into each other’s faces and running around the table and screaming at each other and to sit in their chairs and use their “indoor voices.”
Emboldened, I tried my hand at smiting things, starting with all reruns of Two and a Half Men. I smote them, just like that.
Then I smote those brightly colored French macaroons because they’re too expensive and not that delicious. Also because macaroons are supposed to have shredded coconut in them—okay, maybe not in France, but everywhere else—and these are, instead, almond flavored, with no coconut.
I smote the word muesli because it sounds too much like mucus, and the word moist because it’s just upsetting somehow. I smote secretion because—well, ewwwwww.I smote helm when it is used to mean “direct a movie,” and penned when it is used to mean “write.” I smote all of those words that mean “said” but are not said: replied, averred, demurred, retorted, remarked, quipped, etc. I smote chortle and chuckle.
I smote lover, because it’s gross.
I smote the senseless, offensive capital R in Realtor.
I smote the phrase It is what it is, because I don’t get it and no one will explain it to me.
I smote fat-free half-and-half.
I sundered Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb and caused them to be plunged each into her own black abyss.
I caused Sean Connery to be thirty-seven again so he could keep being James Bond, as every James Bond who has followed has seemed sort of gay.
I cast Comcast into a lake of eternal fire, and I began with the billing department.
I turned my attention to transportation miracles. You know how when you’re driving on an interstate, and the signs at a certain exit say GAS FOOD LODGING, and you take that exit, believing that gas food lodging will be right there, and then there’s nothing there, and no signs pointing to the right way to go? And you have to drive around those creepy dark local roads until you finally find gas food lodging in a grubby town twenty-five minutes from the exit?
First I caused signs to appear on the interstates next to those particular exit ramps, and the signs read GAS FOOD LODGING IS NOT NEARBY, BUT IN A GRUBBY TOWN TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES AWAY FROM HERE. DO NOT TAKE THIS EXIT IF YOU HAVE TO BE AT YOUR FINAL DESTINATION IN A TIMELY MANNER. And then I caused signs with directional arrows to appear at the end of the exit ramps, and they said THIS WAY TO THE GRUBBY TOWN WITH THE GAS FOOD LODGING.
Speaking of driving, I smote all “power” windows and doors on cars, as they are the worst invention ever. No one knows why all of the windows automatically seal shut in the locked position sometimes, yet at other times it is possible to open one window but not another, or two windows and yet not the other two; or why all four car doors will suddenly go into lockdown at once, with that scary locking sound—it feels punitive if you’re inside the car when this happens, like you’re a criminal being transported to jail—but at other times only the driver’s door locks, or the two doors in the back. No one knows how to make individual doors (or windows) open or shut except by jabbing, willy-nilly, at the various controls on the driver’s-side “control panel,” hoping for the best, meanwhile leaving their ninety-two-year-old parents outside the car in the freezing cold, helplessly yanking and yanking at the door handle while their lips turn blue.
I caused the return of car windows that roll up and down with crank handles, and car doors that lock, manually, when you press down with your thumb on that piece of metal that used to stick up out of the top of each door, and I didn’t care if it violated child-safety laws.
I transmuted all Porta Potties into real toilets that flushed. In another toilet-related miracle, I cast all single-ply toilet paper into a bottomless pit.
I made flossing bad for you.
I caused the hinges of drugstore reading glasses to not lose their tiny pins after you’ve barely owned the glasses for a day.
I turned Young Adult Dystopian Fiction into a small animal that was crossing the road, and I ran it over.
On behalf of the math-challenged, I made the metric system go away because converting to feet and inches is too hard, and I banished military time.
I made dreadlocks on white people, ponytails on balding men, man buns, and soul patches go away for unto eternity.
I made it an act of extortion, punishable by imprisonment, for any organization to solicit funds with advertisements showing extremely sick bald children.
In another civic-minded gesture, I created a new federal agency, the Office of Unambiguous Recycling. The only job the agency has is to answer e-mails and phone calls from people who are confused about what does and does not get recycled. People call up and say, “What about those small square plastic ‘baskets’ that strawberries and blueberries come in? My husband always puts them in the recycling bin, and then I take them out and put them in the regular trash, and then he puts them back in the recycling bin. All we do is fight about it, and I think I hate him now. Who’s right?” A live operator gives them a definitive answer.
So those are my miracles so far. Oh, I almost forgot. Remember the family above me that vanished? I caused to move into their apartment an extremely attractive man with an appealing slight Scottish accent. His work, which he is always vague about, keeps him away for weeks on end and seems to require him to wear tuxedos quite a bit. Anyway, he really, really likes me.