I was watching a Lifetime movie the other day (don’t judge me) and I actually learned two things. The first is that the Lifetime network is actually capable of producing a movie that stars neither Valerie Bertinelli nor Alyssa Milano. But the second is that Amish people actually can use electricity. They just want you to think they can’t. I don’t know why Amish people would want to perpetuate this lie, but I clearly saw them using electricity in this movie. They rode in cars, too. Yup, I checked, it was Amish people I was looking at.

So I had to do some research on the Internet and see what the deal was with these new-age, technologically advanced Amish people. I mean, how do we know it’s not all a front and the Amish have actually discovered cold fusion and a better smart car? What if they’re all sitting in hi-tech underground bunkers, Tweeting on their iPhones? I think my whole world view would just dissolve.

It turns out they don’t use electricity. Like I said, I checked. But in life threatening emergencies, doctors are allowed to use electricity on them. That just sounds weird. I don’t want people using electricity actually on my person. Regardless, as long as they’re not the ones flipping the switch (or driving the car, although they can accept a ride in a car), they’re still kosher.

Speaking of kosher, it’s kind of like certain denominations of Jews—what, you didn’t know Jewish people had denominations, like they’re all one big Jew or something—that have different beliefs about working on the Sabbath. Some Jews believe it’s a divinely ordained day to set aside a little bit of time for communing with God, and other die-hard Jews won’t even turn on a light switch because that’s technically work. I actually have a New York cousin (can you imagine another me, only not required by law to be polite?) who got in big trouble once as a kid when her parents found out she was charging the Jewish residents of their apartment building to come turn their lights on for them on the Sabbath. Ditto hitting the button in the elevator for them.

The really awesome thing about that employment plan wasn’t her ingenuity since her idea of manual labor only involved the pinkie finger, it was that her clients saw no problem with not only paying her to work, but paying her to go straight to hell for violating God’s command. Do you know how much I would be willing to pay to send key people straight to eternal damnation? How much would getting to pick the eternal verdict on Hitler and Glen Beck be worth to you?

I’ve decided on a similar business model in which my clients pay me to point out that they’re doing something stupid. Driving the car with your unbelted five-year-old in the front seat? That’ll be $12 for me to point out that you’re a slack-assed badgerhole, including the discount for getting to call you that to your face. Walking around with toilet paper stuck to your shoe? Costs you slightly less because a) you may not have known about it and 2) we’ve all been there. I could afford to pay for any future experimental full-face transplants if I could just prevent people from drunk texting their bosses ($50 a pop) or their ex-boyfriends ($35, because he was a loser and I really don’t want you two to get back together). Bitch-slapping you will cost extra.

I’ve been eagerly watching the news in hopes that this tragic story would die down and we could all just get on with our lives, but it seems like that’s not going to happen soon. When something this monumental takes place, as citizens we can’t just look for a band-aid solution and put it behind us. We have to investigate every angle and whip that dead horse until it gets up and rides again.

Yup, another famous man was so enamored of his own genitalia that he felt like more people should be allowed to appreciate its greatness. As a woman, I know of lots of other women who are outraged. I don’t think “rage” is exactly what I feel, mostly I just feel sorry for Congressman Weiner because he’s been operating under false assumptions for years.

Many, many years ago, someone, probably his sweet mother, held him in her lap (let’s hope this was a really long time ago) and told him he could be anything he wanted to be when he grew up. Well, she lied. You cannot run for President with the last name Weiner, and one of the sad truths to come out of this scandal was all the speculation that a lot of people in the higher up parts of politics really thought this guy had a chance at the White House. Even if he didn’t look sort of skinny-rodent-like, his last name is Weiner. That’s not a campaign I can live through.

But that’s not the worst of the lies this poor man was told. The real whopper, the one that was his ultimate undoing, has been told to men all across the planet since the dawn of time. Basically, ever since the first caveman looked down and wondered, “What is this extra part for?” and then figured out what it’s for, men have been SHOWING it to people. Sadly, most of the people who end up having to see it either have one of their own to look at or are people who thank God on a daily basis that they don’t have to put up with having one.

And the lie is that men still think other people want to see it. How many celebrities have been caught showing their extra parts to people, often in public restrooms or darkened movie theaters, only to get arrested for it? Why aren’t there more mammas smacking their sons in the back of the head and saying, “If I ever find out you did something like that, I will make you wish I’d never given birth to you?” And Weiner certainly isn’t the first man to not only show it to someone, but to provide permanent, fossil-record kind of permanent proof that he did it by taking a picture and putting it on the Internet.

What men don’t realize about this lie they’ve been told is that women are not enthralled with looking at them. Think for a minute about the meteoric rise in popularity of Playgirl magazine. It hasn’t happened, has it? There’s a reason for that: it’s not that hard to get a man to take his pants off. You basically just have to ask, you certainly don’t need to go pay $4.99 at the gas station on the other side of the railroad tracks to buy a copy. I know men who would proudly show it to you without even thinking sex might be involved, just because they, too, have been told the lie.

If you’ve never had the chance to peek between the pages of Playgirl, let me enlighten you. It’s full of pictures of very rugged-looking, handsome men, lounging naked on porch swings or in various locales like that. Let me tell you something important, men:

The sexy part of that photo isn’t the penis, it’s the porch swing! Pause and re-read that sentence. If you’re still thinking of flashing people, online or in person, read it again.

Women who can appreciate the beauty of a handsome, sexy man are appreciative of his “charms,” but what’s really got most of the readership excited is the thought that just maybe there will be sex but that afterwards there will be coffee and conversation on that freakin’ porch swing, and oh, my, is that porch overlooking waterfront property? Holy hell, does this sexy man own a lake house? Swoon!

And before I mistakenly give the impression that women are shallow creatures who will have sex with someone just to get access to a wrap-around porch with gleaming hardwood floors, I have to tell you men are just as guilty. That’s why Playboy magazine has pictures of women lounging naked in bed or in showers or sprawled across motorcycles, because men are also hoping that after sex there will be something else to do, like sleep, shower, or ride a motorcycle. My favorite was the photo array of a very beautiful naked woman in a kitchen, because you know after that joyride is over he’s gonna want a sammich.

It is still interesting to me that Weiner was so heinously lied to that he’s not willing to step down as a member of our nation’s legislative branch. What kind of career can you hope to have now, sir? All I can picture about this man now is him sitting naked at the family computer at night, possibly using the same digital camera that he and his wife took on their vacation to the Grand Canyon. I can’t let the man who votes on the nation’s healthcare plan be the same man who is one episode of Chris-Hanson-from-Dateline away from being caught by a camera crew in a fake kitchen trying to meet a girl who was planted by a To Catch A Predator sting operation.

In summary, poor Congressman Weiner is the victim here, the victim of lies perpetrated by society and history itself. Slap him on his extra part and send him home in shame. He might actually have a future ahead of him if he takes on a new identity and changes his name. But I would have recommended that in the first place.

Having a degree in biology means I’ve spent a combined total of about twenty years of my life voluntarily doing really gross stuff. I once spent three weeks shaving a dead wet cat, and if its facial expression was any indication, it did not die in its sleep. I’ve dissected somewhere in the ballpark of fifty oversized frogs, and once had to anesthetize a hefty turtle, cut its shell off with a saw, and mess with its innards before finishing it off mostly humanely. I don’t even need to describe the required coursework in microbiology and having to stir Petri dishes containing every manner of itty-bitty organism, down to E. coli. It is the end of drinking tap water after you look at flesh-eating bacteria under a microscope for weeks at a time.

So I’ve always considered myself to have a strong stomach, but I have to admit that I have one, true heebeejeebee reaction to a commonplace biological occurrence: I cannot pull teeth.

I admit that’s weird. If we’re on a plane that goes down in the Alaskan wilderness, I can catch a squirrel, use its intestines to make twine, whittle a needle from some bark, then use both of those to stitch up any life threatening injuries you may have. But if a six-year-old plants himself in front of me and shows me a wiggly tooth, I’m going to vomit.

Ordinarily, tooth pulling isn’t considered a life skill. But when you have children, you sometimes find yourself reaching into a tiny mouth to finally snap the little piece of meat holding the corner of pearly baby tooth in place. There is always screaming involved, and sometimes the child cries, too.

I discovered early that I don’t have to have much to do with teeth. I can manage to brush our kids’ teeth before school, but that’s about all. I often had to send our kids and their ejecting body parts to other family members, friends, even school teachers, to get the disgustingness over with.

One horrible tooth pulling involved sending our firstborn next door to her grandfather to have one of her front teeth pulled. She cried when we announced it was time, but went with her daddy while I stayed comfortably inside our house with the window blinds shut.

Forty-five minutes later, they hadn’t returned, with or without the tooth. I went to investigate and was met with hysterical screaming at the door. Fortunately, my need to get away from what was a re-enactment of a Saw movie was overridden but my maternal instincts. Shut up, I do, too, have maternal instincts.

I tiptoed to the back room where I found my husband, my father-in-law, my wide-eyed and runny-nosed daughter, and a long piece of string tied to a doorknob. Those losers had actually spent most of an hour slamming a door with the string tied to my daughter’s tooth. With every slam, the string slid right off her little tooth, but not before scaring the crap out of her every time. Somebody alert the CIA, because repeatedly convincing someone that you’re about to rip a tooth out then not doing it is way more effective than waterboarding as a form of torture.

The end result was I had to pin my baby in my lap and let someone who supposedly loves her just rip the damn thing out by hand. But when it came time for a visit from the Tooth Fairy, there was a very brief argument before this mamma grizzly won out; at the time the Tooth Fairy only had a five and a twenty on him, and that much abuse warrants a heck of a lot more than five bucks. Yup, our baby girl got twenty bucks from the Tooth Fairy and we became the most hated parents at our church when she told all of the other kids.

About a year ago, my sweet husband (I don’t want to kill him today) told me that since I had gone back to full-time employment and was bringing in a real salary, we could afford to have someone come to our house once a month for heavy cleaning, the chores that just don’t get done as often as they should in a two-income household with school-aged children.

After I was able to stop smiling enough to form words with my mouth, I asked if him if this magical person would also paint our daughter’s solar system project. That was the point where he forbade me to speak to this person, even going so far as to say that he would find and hire the housekeeper lest I scare all of the applicants away with weird requests. I thought it was a perfectly logical request. After all, I’d much rather paint your child’s science project than clean your toilets.

Within a month, my husband had hired a lovely, superhuman woman to do the basic essentials. He really didn’t do that much, other than ask his brother’s wife who cleans their house, then ask for her phone number. When he got the phone number from his sister-in-law, she cautioned us, “If you need to tell her anything, you’ll have to call her daughter. The housekeeper doesn’t speak any English.”

At that point he realized he was going to have to repeal the gag order and let me speak to the housekeeper on the phone, because she speaks Spanish and he doesn’t. It’s really cool that he thinks I speak Spanish. I don’t. But he doesn’t need to know that.

I actually can muddle my way through basic conversations in Spanish, but if you say things into a telephone in any foreign language while making sure not to use that American trait of speaking really loudly when talking to someone in a foreign language, you can fool anybody into thinking you are Berlitz’s long lost daughter.

So imagine my surprise when this angel, who had been coming to work for us for a few months, stuck her head out of the bathroom and asked in a lovely, exotic accent, “Excuse me, madam, where are the paper towels?”

She had been pretending not to speak English, and the only logical reason I could think of for letting people believe you don’t speak their language is because you don’t like them, not even a tiny bit. Therefore, since she speaks to me she must like me. I can’t wait to tell my sister-in-law.

I can only think of one time when I had to pull a horrible fast one on people because I found myself in an equally horrible situation. I had gone to the video store (back in the days of video stores) and was thrilled to see that this store had an entire room devoted to animal documentaries. As a science teacher, I was proud of our little town and it’s progressive video store. Unfortunately, when I began to feel a little queasy from looking at the covers, I stepped back and found that the giant foam letters above the doorway to this section of the store did not spell out, “NATURE,” like I thought they did. The sign said, “MATURE.”

I pretended to be blind for the rest of that store visit as wide-eyed people watched me emerge from that room. I cannot be expected to explain why a blind person is renting a movie, or why she quickly got into a car and drove away without so much as Lassie telling her which way to go.

We all have our coping mechanisms, and whether we use them to remove ourselves from embarrassing situations or pretend that we don’t know our employer wants us to iron the shower curtains, they can prevent ugly arguments and death-inducing humiliation. The eensy-weensy deception is made acceptable by the greater good it can do, since dying of mortification in the porno section of the movie store and having my body removed while still clutching a tattered copy of Debbie Does Everybody She’s Ever Met will bring shame upon the family for generations. And if that happens, I think my housekeeper might talk about me behind my back.