Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Dungeons & Dragons (20 page)

After I tackled my car, there was only one thing left to do: prepare for adventure. There's no shortage of resources out there advising on how to maximize your D&D character. I've got several books touting just that on my bookshelf, in fact. It's like R&D is made up of a gaggle of Judys, which is weird considering I don't think any of them are mothers. I select a handful of books from my shelf and start researching. Let the spontaneity begin! Wait, it's 7:00. I'll get started right after
E! News.
I promise.

MONDAY

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED. THEN EAT IT.

Obviously, if I wanted to live like a Tabitha, I had to break the hardest habit of all. Tabitha doesn't know where her next meal is coming from, let alone exactly what it is. At least for the next five days. I spent half of Sunday looking for my Crock-Pot and the rest finding various recipes for vegetarian chili. Is everyone an expert on how to turn a few cans of beans and diced tomatoes into thirteen weeks of lunches? Man, one Google search turned up about 4,829 results. I guess millions of 1970s crock-pot cooking households were right after all. (Unless you count key parties and high-waisted bell-bottoms. Those were definitely wrong. I'm talking to you, Jessica Simpson.)

I didn't mean to make so much food, but that darn Crock-Pot took one kidney bean and churned out about four pounds of chili. Those things are amazing! (Look for me on an infomercial near you.)

I love chili, and this batch is pretty darn good, if I do say so myself (thankfully, considering how much I made). The ban on veggie burgers shouldn't be a problem at all.

When lunchtime rolled around on Monday, I forced myself to finish a project I was working on before I allowed myself to go to the kitchen. I'm all about prolonging the agony
and
the payoff. Usually I'm in there between 12:05 and 12:17 every day, and so are lots of other people, as I always see the same bunch waiting for the microwave. My body is apparently used to being fed between 12:05 and 12:17 and it was starting to express its displeasure at the delay.

“Oh my God, was that an earthquake?” Laura asked.

“No, I think a train just went by,” I answered, and much to my delight no one questioned this, even though there aren't any train tracks nearby.

It was my stomach, but I wasn't about to admit that. My sugar levels were dropping faster than
Project Runway
's ratings after moving to the Lifetime channel. If I prolong the agony any longer I'll be at risk of getting a write up from HR for:

A. Yelling at a co-worker

B. Throwing scissors at a co-worker

C. Taking a bite out of a co-worker

I'm in the kitchen at 12:19. Success! I lived outside of my comfort zone.

If it's one thing I can rely on more than my food scale, it's my lack of a short-term memory. I couldn't find my lunch! I mean, there was my lunch bag (it's gold lamé so it's pretty easy to spot) but that wasn't my lunch inside. Instead of the usual tin foil square and small Tupperware container filled with carrots, it was a large Tupperware bowl and a small Ziploc bag filled with blue corn tortilla chips.

“Aw, man!” I groaned when the realization hit me. “It's chili!”

A different batch of co-workers were in the kitchen heating up their lunches as this was not my regular kitchen time.

“Do you have someone else make your lunch?” one asked.

I scoffed at the preposterous notion. Who did this person think I was? Oprah?

“No,” I said. “I make my lunch!”

She raised an eyebrow. “Weird. Did you make that like fourteen years ago or something?”

“No.”

“Then how did you not know what you were having for lunch?”

Okay, these 12:19 people sure are nosy. The 12:05ers would be much too busy debating the new chip choices the vending machine had to offer to even hear my complaints.

“I just forgot, okay?” I made a big to-do out of tearing the lid off the Tupperware and throwing it at the microwave. I should have just emptied the whole thing in the trash and gone to Kidd Valley for a veggie burger, but I feared my hunger would negatively impact my driving abilities. Besides, that chili had a tendency to multiply. If I tossed it in the garbage it was liable to regenerate as a swarm of bees and mow down my co-workers on its way to punish me. That for sure would be an HR violation.

Aw, suck it up
, Tabitha said.
Try eating journeybread for thirty-three days straight.

“I would love that, Tabitha. Sounds right up my alley.”

“Who is Tabitha?” Nosy co-worker number 2 asked.

Oh, I so don't like this 12:19 p.m. kitchen crowd.

“Oh, never mind,” I mumbled to her stupid face. (Author's note: She doesn't have a stupid face. That was the chili talking.)

Back at my desk, I tried to regain some of the enthusiasm I had yesterday for the chili. Wasn't I Googling chili cook-offs so I could enter my sure-to-be famous chili? If the contestants on
Big Brother
can eat slop week after week, certainly I could eat this for lunch. But whose dumb idea was it to include apple slices for dessert? I made a note to stop at the co-worker's desk that I normally avoid because she always has a bowl of chocolates ready for the taking. I'll do that on my way to HR to turn myself in.

When Laura got back to her desk she asked, “What smells so good?”

Seriously? What was wrong with these people?

As I was about to write up my own incident report, I noticed something written on my napkin. It's inscribed just like Judy used to do, but it's my handwriting.

“Change Happens,” it reads.

Sometimes I hate me.

TUESDAY

USE PROTECTION (AND WE'RE NOT TALKING ARMOR)

I thought I'd be soy-deep in veggie burger withdrawal by today but I'm still associating them with my wackadoodle neighbor's plantar warts, so for now I can resist. Today I bring a Field Roast sandwich loaded up with sprouts, avocado, and pickles. Yum! But it didn't fill me up like my usual fare did. Maybe it contained less fiber. Maybe it's subconscious. Or maybe I was just looking for an excuse to get a bag of Sun Chips and Fudge Stripes cookies out of the vending machine. Fudge Stripes cookies are food of the gods!

My friend Audra and I decide to meet at Panera Bread for dinner. A Mediterranean sandwich and Greek salad will more than make up for my less-than-stellar lunch. (Excluding the amazing Fudge Stripes cookies. I'd almost give up carrots altogether for another taste of them.) I was at a red light near the mall when I noticed a strange aroma emanating from nearby. Nearby, as in
from my body.

“What the heck?” I muttered. I took two showers today, one in the morning and one after that hellaciously hard workout in our company gym—the only space in the building that appears to be free from air conditioning. If there's one area I should be a little flexible with it's my workout times. If working out at my usual 3:00 p.m. time means passing
out from heatstroke and sporting a magenta, sweaty face for the rest of the afternoon, then by all means, I should go in the morning.

But that smell. That's not a stench that emanates from
me.
That's an odor reserved for high school gyms and New York City subways. In fact, I take lots of steps to ensure this is a smell that I'm never responsible for. Was it possible I forgot to put deodorant on after that second shower? I got some new lotion and I was excited to use it. (It won an
Allure
beauty award. Tell me that's not exciting!) Perhaps my excitement caused me to forgo a very important step?

Experiment aside, my personal hygiene should not be sacrificed, nor should Audra's pleasant dining experience. I mean, would Tabitha set forth without a sunrod and some tindersticks? Or maybe a sprig of lavender tucked in her rucksack in case she found herself in a glandular emergency? The bloom can come off even the most expensively scented rose.

Fortunately, it's also not a problem for me because I've got some backup deo—oh, no! The Great Car Clean Out! How could I be so stupid as to leave the owner's manual in and take the deodorant out? Maybe I had time to stop at a drugstore on my way but that would mean driving eight blocks in the wrong direction and Audra was already in a time crunch. I may be uptight, overprepared, and rigid, but I'm not tardy. There had to be something in the car to mask the smell. Some antifreeze, maybe? Or perhaps I could pull into a Shell station and dab a little gasoline behind my ears. I checked the glove box, under the seat, and the pockets on the back of the seats. My car wasn't this clean when I bought it! Was that red light taking longer than usual?

I was really sweating, which was bringing this situation up to an orange alert. And seriously, what was up with this red light?

By some stroke of divine intervention (or maybe cantrips by Tabitha), a trial-sized bottle of hand sanitizer materialized under the passenger's seat. I dabbed a few drops under my arms, even though I suspected it would be like trying to mask a decomposing corpse with an unscented candle. And yes, I did just compare my underarms to a decomposing corpse.

I really wanted to go home, take a shower, and eat some instant oatmeal for dinner, but this was the new world order. Would Tabitha forgo a meal because she was a little ripe from crawling around a dungeon all day? Probably not. And I'm really craving Panera's black bean soup.

“Why do you keep scratching your pits?” Audra asked when we sat down, right on time. “You look like Koko the gorilla.”

Looking like a gorilla I could handle. Smelling like one was a different story. The hand sanitizer stunk enough to temporarily mask the smell, but it was sticky. The drier it got, the pastier it became under my arms. Perhaps
it was the extra onions I ordered for my salad but Audra seemed none the wiser about my less-than-fresh feeling. Or maybe she was being polite.

“Seriously, Shazzer, you need to stop with the arm flapping,” she said, laughing. “You're making me nervous.”

Nah, definitely not being polite.

WEDNESDAY

DON'T MAKE MOUNTAINS OUT OF MINOTAURS

Ugh. My stomach hurts. And why does my mouth taste like a gym shoe? Oh, that's right. I ate my body weight in onions last night. I bypass the usual cup of coffee and Facebook morning routine in favor of taking an extra-long shower. I need to double the dose on my ginger body wash just to cut through the stench. I have onions coming out of my eyeballs. Maybe I should make an emergency appointment with my aesthetician.

Last night's dinner coupled with today's ginger moisturizer is probably making me smell like a big bowl of spicy Thai noodles, but I'll take it. In fact, I'd take it for lunch over what I find in my lunch sack—a frozen black bean and mango Kashi meal. The people in the commercials look so happy and carefree as they lift a hearty, seven-grain forkful to their healthy mouths, but I'm already dreading it. At least I have my workout to look forward to. Wednesdays Nina and I go for a run, and it's less like exercise and more like happy hour with your long-lost bestie. I know what you're probably thinking. If we can chat it up for the entire run, we're probably not working as hard as we could be. We think you're wrong. Obviously, it's being in incredible shape that allows us such pleasures.

I reach into my gym drawer to pull out clean clothes when I'm overwhelmed by a cold terror. My clothes! I forgot my stash was cleared out, and worse—I am not in the habit of bringing my daily duds. Oh, no! I called Nina right away.

“Emergency!” I screamed into the phone. “I need gym clothes!”

“Um, hold on. I have to call you and borrow some.”

I gently reminded her of my weeklong experiment, and then we were both depressed.

“But I was going to borrow some socks,” she said.

“Haven't you learned anything from me?” I asked. “Why don't you have backup?”

“Because I have you!”

Whatever. What I should be asking is what would Tabitha do if she was faced with a mighty quest and lacking the proper robes? Well, being a wizard and all she could probably conjure some up with an enchantment.
I guessed I could rush over to Macy's and conjure some up with my credit card, but a quick glance at my work calendar showed that couldn't happen unless I could suddenly pull off a six-minute mile in jeans and heels.

My Tabitha miniature stared down from my monitor.

“Wimp,” she said. “You'd find a way to make it work if you were hardcore like me.”

“Look, you mouthy mage,” I responded. “You live in a fantasy world. If dragons are things you see on your daily commute you can't tell me how to live in the real world.”

“What kind of adventurer are you?” she asked. “You're going to let a little thing like Spandex keep you from accomplishing your goal?”

“Spandex? What decade did you teleport to?”

“Are you on the phone?” a co-worker who snuck up behind me asked.

I hate not having a door.

“No. I mean, yes,” I pick up the phone to continue my conversation with Tabitha.

“No one wears Spandex unless they're competitive bike riders or super-heroes,” I whispered. “And whatever. I can work out tonight at home. I'll do one of those On Demand programs.”

“Liar,” Tabby said. “Big Brother is on tonight. You'll be sprawled out on the couch with your fat cat wallowing in the self-superiority complex you stupid humans get whenever you watch people melt down on national television.”

“Wow,” I said. “Those are some pretty big words coming from someone who isn't even two inches tall.”

“I'm just saying,” she continued. “I wouldn't back down. Neither would the Wyld Stallyns. We've faced bigger challenges and always rise to the occasion. Time for you to rise up, too. If door number 1 is locked, try door number 2.”

“And if door number 2 is locked?” I asked Little Miss Know It All.