Broken (in the best possible way)

by Jenny Lawson

Someone once told me that the difference between introverts and extroverts is that introverts recharge by being alone (like any normal person) and extroverts recharge by being with others (like vampires). I live with two extroverts, which is helpful in that they keep me from becoming a complete hermit but also terrible because they have no concept of the utter emotional and physical exhaustion that comes from living in a world that is too peoply.

I couldn’t tell what they were because they were so fast. Also, they were really just small rodents, but if I’d started the story with that sentence you’d have dismissed my fear level, and trust me when I say that they scared the shit out of me. I’m still not sure what they were but there were several of them and they ran from one bush to another near my feet and Dorothy Barker’s eyes were enormous and she was like, “WHAT THE SHIT IS THAT? PICK ME UP, LADY,” and I get it because I totally wanted someone to pick me up too, but also I was thinking, “Aren’t tiny dogs like you bred to kill rats?” and she looked back at me like, “You’re thinking of rat terriers. I’m a papillon. I’m fucking French, bitch. WE DON’T EAT RATS.” And she had a point but stop being so goddamn uppity, dog. Just this morning you shit in the yard and stole a sandwich out of the trash, so maybe we can drop the pretentiousness.

“But they’re smaller than rats,” I offered weakly, and she very plainly said, “Well, then you’ve got teenage rats. You know they aren’t born full-sized, right?” And then I might have screamed, “THIS STUFF NEVER HAPPENED WHEN OBAMA WAS PRESIDENT,” and she was all, “Um … ma’am?” and I took a deep breath and apologized and explained that I had a lot of stuff going on right now and she was like, “Okay. Whatever, crazy,” but in a very nice way that made me think she probably missed Obama too, but not so much that she thought he’d made rats extinct while he was president.

Denise told me that there were several different methods, including a poison that dehydrates the rats and makes them leave your house to look for creeks and rivers, but that we’d need to make sure that we closed all of our toilets because “sometimes they’ll try to climb in there to drink,” and I was like, “SO THEN YOU HAVE TOILET RATS? WHAT THE FUCK, DENISE? YOU JUST DESCRIBED A PHOBIA I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE UNTIL NOW.”