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July 27, 2006
the jen clause
Jen has ruined my life.
We met online some seven years ago, when she was a lowly undergraduate. She began to watch my dog, Ed, when I was out of town, although we took care never to actually meet. Whereas giving someone I'd never met the keys to my house seemed natural enough, and finding her long brown hairs in my bed didn't bother me, meeting her seemed freakishly weird. We agreed that when she got married, she'd set up a webcam feed for me. I think she was kidding, but I wasn't.
Somewhere along the way Jen morphed from a chemistry major to holding the same Master's I do, in technical communication. Inevitably, she landed at Microsoft. More inevitably, she started working with people I know.
"Jen is housesitter Jen?" Dorkass exclaimed. "I thought she was, like, 20."
Sigh. So did I. Damned kids these days keep getting older. It flummoxes me, I tells ya.
Knowing that my virtual kid sister is roaming Microsoft's campus has positively ruined girl-watching for me. How am I supposed to objectify a woman who might, upon closer examination, be Jen? It's not like I could identify her from 20 yards. Mathematically, this mistake is inevitable. I well remember accidentally staring at my sister-in-law's posterior at Northland Mall one day. A repeat horror is something my heterosexuality might not be able to withstand.
"You can safely leer at tall blonds," Jen suggests. Great advice. In Scandinavia. In Seattle, not so much.
"Okay," she sighed, which I don't know for sure but I heard nonetheless, "You can have ponytails. When I wear my hair up, it'll be pigtails."
Wow. Now this is friendship! My only fear is that word of this will get out and women across Microsoft will set their scrunchies aflame.
posted by john at 7:27 AM • permalink