Everything's Trash, But It's Okay

by Phoebe Robinson

When you’re in your twenties, red flags are like the Microsoft Word paper clip that pops up on your computer screen, asking if you need help, yet you click the X immediately with an “I got this, boo” confidence because you think you can and should be able to date anybody and you’ll walk away unscathed and in slow motion like George Clooney did from the car bomb explosion in Syriana. However, by the time you hit your thirties, it’s different. You. Take. Dem. Red. Flags. To. SeriousTown. Suddenly, you and your friends become Woodward and Bernstein, fact-checking, calling on sources who shall not be named, going over all the evidence any time the person you have designs on does the smallest questionable thing, like not calling when they said they would. It might be a sign of the person’s flakiness, but usually it is just an honest mistake and falls under the category of red flag false alarm. But then there are situations that are so bad that not only does a red flag appear, but it’s accompanied by “Ironside,” the siren song Uma Thurman hears in Kill Bill right before she fucks some shit up.