I just don't want any Mary Kay!

Damn my slightly-defective freakish memories for numbers. I have this insane skill for remembering numeric figures -- I can tell you my grandparents' phone number, which I haven't dialed in ten years, I can tell you phone numbers of my best friends growing up, my old dorm room phone numbers, the exact amount of my last cell phone bill, etc. But sometimes I get a little glitchy. Happens to the best of us, right?

Sure, if that mistake doesn't involve your ex thinking you're a freaking psycho.

A few months ago, A and I went to my hometown's county fair. While walking through the merchant's building (scouting for free stuff), I got cornered by the sister of a girl I went to high school with. (The girl and I weren't exactly friendly, actually I made her cry in class, but apparently her sister wasn't aware.) The Sister was selling Mary Kay, and good goddamn, ya'll, I don't want Mary Kay. I hate it, it smells funny, and it makes me break out. But I just couldn't get around talking to this girl despite my attempts to escape. And because I still owed A for the whole Tahiti Village fiasco, he wasn't going along with my hints and subtle cries for help.

Using my acquaintance/rivalry with her sister as her in, the Mary Kay Sister kept talking to me and using her subtle questions from Mary Kay Brainwashing Training to figure out I was a stay-at-home-mom, and have I ever considered selling Mary Kay? You set your own hours and it changed her life, and holy shit, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I just want to leave, I don't care.

So somehow the Mary Kay Sister asked me if I wanted to sign up for her drawing for a free makeover, and damnit, I thought maybe if I did, I could just get the hell out of there finally. I didn't know how to say no, so I filled out the "drawing entry", which let's face it, the Mary Kay Cult just uses it to get ahold of you. There's no drawing. And as I filled it out, I filled out a fake address, fake email, and fake phone number. Well, sort of fake. I wrote down my old cell phone number. I thought.

To understand what was about to happen, you have to go back a few years to when I was dating The Notorious B -- my first love, first heartbreak. It was time for me to move away to college and I didn't have a cell phone, but I didn't have enough credit to get my own. So he signed me up on his plan, and as such, because I was young and stupid and thought it'd be cute, our phone numbers were one digit apart. We broke up, I got rid of the phone, life moves on.

Until you try to write your old cell phone number, and your memory takes a shit on you, and you write your ex-boyfriend's phone number.

I didn't even realize I'd done it until I got a Facebook message from him recently telling me that someone from Mary Kay had called for me. Then I realized what had happened. B and I aren't on bad terms, really -- we're both married now, and talk once in a while, and every time we do it's cordial and friendly and I remember why the hell I dumped him -- but still. It doesn't really look too swift for your heroine for people to be calling your three-years-past ex-boyfriend asking for you.

I responded to him, apologizing profusely and explained what happened. He was cool about it, but I still felt like a douche.

But not so big of a douche that I felt bad for putting his phone number on all those credit card applications I filled out in college for free t-shirts and foam #1 fingers. Whoops.