The Rectangle of Sadness

Plus, what's on my HOT DOG / NOT HOT DOG list!

I’ve been with my husband for more than half my life. When I think of my personal timeline, it’s divided into BF (Before Fletch) and AF (After Fletch). AF is definitely better than BF.

One of the many benefits of having spent thirty years with someone—and this works for friends as well as spouses—is the conversational shortcuts we’ve developed, based on shared understanding.

We recently watched the series Silicon Valley for the third time. Thanks to Mike Judge’s genius, the work holds up. There’s a scene where developer Jian-Yang (played brilliantly by comedian Jimmy O. Yang) creates an app that’s supposed to be like Shazam for food. You’d take a picture of your meal and the app would tell you what it was. In a demo, Jian-Yang took a picture of a wiener in a bun and the app identified it as HOT DOG. Everyone thought it was amazing and hilarity ensued when too late, investors found out the twist was the app could only identify hot dogs. If you were to snap a shot of a pizza, it would be identified as NOT HOT DOG. Thus, HOT DOG and NOT HOT DOG have worked their way back into our daily lexicon, meaning “good” and “not good.”

Since we moved, I’ve been setting up what Fletch calls my Rectangle of Sadness. It’s an elaborate children’s pool that I wallow in when I don’t have enough time to go to the real pool at our club. It’s about 6 x 9 x 3 and holds 1000 gallons of water.