I Still Have It . . . I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It

by Rudner, Rita

• ISBN13: 9780307394606
• ISBN10: 0307394603
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2009-05-05
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press

Summary

While there are people who actually embrace getting older (although we confess not to know any) most try to deny it. Rita Rudner is no exception. When she reached 50, she couldn't even bear to admit it: "It was more comfortable getting a laugh and telling people I was filthy than having to say the word fffiffffty," she writes. In her hysterically dead-on bookI Still Have It...I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It, she relates her absurd adventures as a woman of a certain age navigating the strange and terrifyingly funny world of "near-sighted insights." In chapters such as "Artificially Hip"; "Older Than Springtime, Younger Than Angela Lansbury"; "I Won't Blog, Don't Ask Me"; and "The Advantage of Vintage," Rudner tackles body issues, style, and technology, and looks at the wonders and surprises of life on the dark side of 50. So put on your bifocals and get ready to laugh. Just don't blame Rita if your laugh lines become visibly deeper. "Sexy deadpan is comedian Rita Rudner's trademark style, never more in evidence than inI Still Have It ... I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It... Pure vaudeville, a kick at any age."O, The Oprah Magazine

Author Biography

RITA RUDNER is a celebrated and award-winning comedian, actress, screenwriter, and author. Her past books include the bestselling Naked Beneath My Clothes and the novels Tickled Pink and Turning the Tables. She currently performs exclusively in Las Vegas. Visit her online at www.RitaFunny.com.


From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpts

I Can't Believe I'm Filthy

There is something so traumatic about a woman turning fifty that for a while I was unable to form the actual word. It was more comfortable getting a laugh and telling people I was filthy than having to say the word fffiffffty. In fact, I still stutter a bit, even in print. Half a century is a long time to be on the planet, and though I'm grateful to be not only alive but healthy, being healthy gives you the freedom to obsess over the things that don't really matter, like wrinkles, veins, and how tricky it is these days just to be able to turn on--excuse me, I mean power up--a television.

I feel that life is broken down into these stages: you're born and you don't know how anything works; gradually you find out how everything works; technology evolves and slowly there are a few things you can't work; at the end, you don't know how anything works.

With the passing of every decade, our mortality becomes a little clearer and our eyesight a little fuzzier. One day the writing on the menu becomes so blurry you just can't bluff anymore. Now, I have to mention that in this optical respect, I'm lucky. I can see close up and my husband can see far away, so we're covered. He tells me who's in the movie and I tell him what's in his sandwich. Together we're human bifocals.

The comforting factor about age is that nobody is immune. The blond-haired bombshells of today are the blue-haired ladies of tomorrow. When I turned fifty, it also gave me cause to reflect on all the things that have gone right in my life. Marrying the right man, choosing the right career, and making sure my closet had lots of hanging space were all good decisions.

Fifty also caused me to reflect on friends who have left me too early due to genetics, disease, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I hope I'm lucky enough to live until I'm totally incontinent--I mean incompetent. In the meantime, I'm determined to enjoy and celebrate everything about being in my filthies.

Catalogue Addiction

While I do occasionally order items on the Internet, it's hard to teach an old shopper new tricks. I'm convinced that the catalogue will eventually disappear, but not until the last baby boomers have kicked off their smelly Nikes and been buried in mulch.



There is currently no treatment center in Malibu for catalogue addiction, so I was forced to assemble a group of women with similar problems to meet in my living room. They all had room to sit once I moved some catalogues.

I blame Victoria's Secret. My friend ordered a blouse for me as a birthday present, and the company's first final clearance catalogue made its way into my clutches three houses ago. It doesn't matter how often I move; the catalogue knows where I'm living. If I'm ever kidnapped, I'm certain it would find me before the police.

After perusing the final clearance issue numerous times and folding down the corners of pages showing outfits that were in the running but had not yet won my love, I ordered a pink sweatshirt and matching sweatpants. Since then, I have received roughly three hundred catalogues featuring buxom babes clad in scanty attire. On page 27 you can still find the same pink sweatsuit I ordered ten years ago. Either I am the only woman in the world who likes pink sweatsuits or they dramatically overstock--or possibly they just like the picture.

Now, I love the Victoria's Secret catalogue, but I have to mention that with each issue it edges closer and closer to pornography. The bosoms on the otherwise skinny women appear to be inflated. The last issue was so chock-full of overly endowed ladies, I couldn't even keep the magazine closed. And where exactly would I wear a head-to-toe black lace jumpsuit? At a Peeping Tom convention? Plus, as far as I know, there are only two types of women who prefer garter belts and stockings to panty hose: hookers and my mother-in-law. Hookers becaus

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Excerpted from I Still Have It ... I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It: Confessions of a Fiftysomething by Rita Rudner
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