Revenge of the Paste Eaters Read Online Free

available information about breast cancer, implants, and their accompanying potential problems. She opted not to replace one problem with another. Now, however, she is considering a career change into an industry where conventional physical appearance is more important—she’s decided to become a professional dealer for one of the local casinos, and flat-chested women don’t get as many tips.
    “I hate them,” Mary says. They get in her way and make her feel claustrophobic. She is allergic to virtually all adhesives, and the breasts are glued in some fashion to her chest. “I can’t wait to get where we’re going and see what this adhesive has done.”
    Right now she works for a heating and cooling company where she is one of perhaps two women—the rest are all plumbers and metal fabricators, all men. She has never made any secret about her breast cancer or the mastectomy required to save her life. For all I know the men she has worked with know all about the $6,000 replacement breasts she bought—they’ve had all day to notice them.
    The women in Nancy and Mary’s family are heavy-breasted women, even while the rest of their bodies are, like Mary’s, fairly standard. Her breasts have always embarrassed her and she has told us more than once she is perfectly happy flat-chested.
    I don’t know what to say to a woman who has faced down cancer—who is still facing down cancer—but I know that facts are more comfortable for her than emotions, so we talk about size. She tells about walking into a lingerie store and trying on bras, stuffing wads of toilet paper in them to try to decide what size she felt would suit her. She told us the salesclerks were all women our age who looked at her with silent panic in their eyes. They told her they had no idea how to fit her and called their manager, a pert little “twenty-year-old” whose friends were all alive and who therefore saw the whole adventure as a lark.
    We are flying through the dark between Fort Wayne and Anderson. Nancy is still driving. She has me tell the group about my desk partner, a redheaded woman of size who was driving off some bottled-up hostility the night she was pulled over by a state trooper for talking on her cell phone while driving.
    She saw his flasher in her rearview mirror, but she determined she had done nothing wrong and kept driving.
    He pulled up beside her and waved at her with his index finger.
    She ignored him.
    He started “getting obnoxious,” she told me, which I took to mean he pulled up beside her and edged her toward the side of the road, so she pulled off.
    He walked up to her car. He said, through the two-inch crack she made for him, “You were driving down the road and talking on the cell phone at the same time—that’s a very dangerous practice . . .”
    “But,” said my cubiclemate, “one that is completely legal in the state of Michigan.”
    “Still,” said the trooper, “it’s dangerous.”
    “Did I use the proper turn signals when I passed you?” she challenged.
    “You did.”
    “Was I speeding when I passed you?”
    “No.”
    “Then why did you stop me?”
    “I stopped you to warn you . . .”
    “You didn’t have any reason to stop me,” she said.
    “Ma’am,” he said, “get out of the car.”
    She said, “No.”
    He said, “Get out of the car.”
    She said, “You go call your supervisor and bring him down here—otherwise I’m not getting out.”
    He said, his voice very determined now, “Ma’am—get
out
of the car.”
    She said, “You don’t have a leg to stand on and I’m not getting out of this car.”
    He stood there. He turned around, walked back to his car, got in, and drove away.
    We all agreed we would have been peeing our pants in terror when he told her to get out of the car, and we elected her our honorary queen.
    About half of the year, travel in Indiana involves the perpetual question, “Is that their time or ours?” Hoosiers claim the confusion is the fault of