Classic Archives – Page 2 of 2

Column Classic: Love Boat

June 29, 2025

By Lisa Scottoline

I’m getting ready to launch THE UNRAVELING OF JULIA on book tour, so I’ll be running Classic Columns for a month.

Details about my signings are on my website, and I hope you’ll come see me on the road! Thanks so much for the love and support! I’m grateful for each and every one of you!

It’s everybody’s favorite time of year again.

My birthday!

That’s how I feel about my birthday, and that’s how I feel about yours, too.

I celebrate your birthday in my head, so I hope you’re celebrating mine your head.

It’s cheaper that way.

Also we don’t get drunk.

Well, maybe I do.

But this birthday felt different to me, in a good way.

I feel super happy just to be alive.

Let’s pause a moment.

I know that sounds kind of Splenda, but it’s really true. And the fact is, absolutely nothing has changed from last year.

In fact that’s exactly what is making me happy.

It really is a good thing to be grateful sometimes that you’re still living.

I get constant reminders of this, and I had one just this weekend, with Francesca. We were scheduled to give a speech about our collections of funny stories like these, the newest of which is out this July 11, entitled I NEED A LIFEGUARD EVERYWHERE BUT THE POOL.

Actually I need a lifeguard at the pool, too.

But that’s another story.

Literally.

Anyway we were supposed to speak at the American Library Association conference in Chicago, and we were both excited because we love librarians.

Hug your librarian the next time you see him or her.

They don’t get enough hugs.

Nobody does.

See what I mean?

Splenda!

Anyway, when I go on a business trip, I fly out, do my gig, and fly right back. I don’t do anything other than the gig, because it’s business.

But Francesca had a different idea. “Mom, I’ve never been to Chicago,” she said. “Why don’t we go sightseeing and leave later that night?”

I rolled my eyes. Inwardly.

Don’t roll your eyes outwardly if you’re a mother.

You’ll get in a lot of trouble.

But I said yes, and Francesca went online, researching the things you could do in Chicago, which I heard about with an inward eyeroll.

Because I didn’t think you were supposed to have fun on a business trip.

And before I knew it, we were in Chicago, we did our gig, talked about our book, and gave a lot of hugs, then we woke up the next day, ready for tourist fun in the sun.

What did we do?

We saw the cool bean statue at Millennium Park.

Cool beans!

And we went to the gorgeous Buckingham Fountain, which is next to a body of water they say is a lake but anybody from Philly would call an ocean.

But the best thing we did was take a boat ride with a billion other tourists down the Chicago River, with a volunteer telling us the architectural history of the skyscrapers.

Inward eyeroll?

Same here, but I was wrong.

It was awesome.

Because this amazing volunteer knew everything about architecture and gave us almost two hours of her time simply because she loves architecture and her city.

And because we learned everything about the brilliant architects and engineers who imagined and then built a slew of incredible buildings, each of them a tribute to human ingenuity and hard work.

And even because people on the bank waved to our boat as we floated by, and Francesca and I waved back, even though we had no idea who they were, or they us.

In fact, we waved at people on the riverbanks the whole damn boat trip, and people on the riverbanks waved back, and that made Francesca and I tear up, unaccountably.

Okay, accountably, since we’re Italian-American.

We cry all the time.

That’s how you know we’re happy.

The boat trip was a reminder of the simple truth that we’re all just human beings, floating down some river, waving at each other as we go by.

And when I thought of the architects, the engineers, the volunteers, and the librarians, I felt awed by all of us, just normal people, filled with so much vision and heart, following whichever endeavor we choose, our passion or our job and sometimes both. With just ourselves, we build communities, cities, and even countries.

Like this one.

And by the end of the day, I remembered I was happy to be alive.

You probably already know this lesson, but in my life, I need to teach it to myself from time to time.

Which is to go slower.

Enjoy yourself.

Feel the sun on your face.

Wave.

And do really touristy things, because there’s a reason so many people like to do the same things, wherever they go.

Because people are basically the same, everywhere you go.

We’re all tourists in this life, aren’t we?

None of us is from here.

And none of us is staying.

And so my biggest birthday present was that I got another year on my trip.

I pray that will be your present, too.

Happy birthday to us.

And of course, to America.

Classic Column: Love Bites

July 1, 2025June 22, 2025

by Francesca Serritella

Bust out the citronella candles, it’s mosquito season! Here’s a Classic Column about feeling favored by the summer pest and what these bloodsuckers might have to teach us about attraction. Tell me, do mosquitos like you, or love you?

Mosquitos love me.

I’ve always believed I get an inordinate number of mosquito bites, but I never said it out loud. Everyone feels this way. Brandish a bottle of OFF! at any summer barbeque, and five people will proclaim that mosquitos love them with equal parts self-pity and pride. It’s almost a humble-brag, as if mosquitos are real aesthetes, the blood-sucking playboys of the insect world.

The subtext is: “There’s just something about my exposed skin that attracts all species, whatta hassle!”

Then I recently came across an article explaining mosquitos actually do have a “type:” they’re most attracted to humans with the blood type O.

My blood type.

I wasn’t imagining it, it wasn’t some messed up version of vanity, it was science!

Click to read the full column on Francesca’s Website

Column Classic: Greased Lightning

June 15, 2025

By Lisa Scottoline

I’m a big fan of combinations, like soup-and-sandwich. Peanut butter-and-jelly. Spaghetti-and-meatballs.

You may detect a pattern.

Carbohydrates are the leitmotif.

Or maybe the heavy-motif.

One combination I never thought of is jeans-and-moisturizer. Lucky for women, marketing has thought of that for us!

You may have read the news story which reported that Wrangler is selling a line of jeans that embeds microcapsules of moisturizer in the fabric, which evidently explode on impact with your thighs and moisturize them.

I think this is an awesome idea. I often fantasize about things that would explode on impact with my thighs, such as Bradley Cooper.

It gives new meaning to the term thunder thighs.

The line of jeans is called Denim Spa, which is quite a combination, right there. Denim and Spa are two words I have never experienced together.

Like love-and-marriage.

But to stay on point, Wrangler markets three types of moisturizer jeans. One comes embedded with Aloe Vera and another with Olive Oil, but choosing between the two is a no-brainer for me. I wouldn’t pick Aloe Vera, because she sounds like someone I went to high school with and I don’t share jeans.

I’d leave the aloe alone.

Instead I’d pick the olive oil. If I added balsamic, those jeans would be delicious.

But only extra virgins can wear them.

Count me out.

Come to think of it, if I were going to infuse jeans with food, I would go with Cinnabons.

Extra frosting is more fun than extra virgin.

The moisturizer in the jeans lasts up to fifteen days, but Wrangler also offers a “reload spray” that you can squirt your pants with. I’m not sure I’d buy the spray. It would be cheaper to pour olive oil on my pants, like a salad. I’d dress them properly, before I got dressed.

But the third type of moisturizer jeans is my favorite, and it’s called Smooth Legs.

I need Smooth Legs. I have only Scaly Legs and Hairy Legs, or a combination of the two, which is Scary Legs.

The amazing thing about the Smooth Legs jeans is that they not only moisturize your legs, they fight cellulite.

Wow!

According to the website, the way they do this is by a “special formula” embedded in the jeans, which contains “caffeine, retinol, and algae extract.”

Which contains mayonnaise.

Why fight jeans that fight cellulite?

I wouldn’t. I’d be scared. They can “reload.” I wouldn’t buy them without a background check.

If you ask me, fighting cellulite is a lot to ask from a pair of pants, much less clothing in general, and you’ve got to hand it to Wrangler, which charges a mere $150 for a pair of these hard-working jeans. That’s only $75 per leg or approximately $.03 per cellulite dimple, if you have 2,928,474,747 million dimples, like me.

In fact, I just got another 4,928,749, in the time you took to read that last sentence.

In my experience, cellulite comes only in packs of 4,928,749.

I wouldn’t mind having a pair of pants that fought cellulite for me, which would be like having a lawyer for my butt.

This is because I don’t spend any time fighting my cellulite. On the contrary, my cellulite and I have an arrangement. My cellulite agrees to stay on the back of my legs, thighs, and tushie, and I agree not to look at myself from behind.

This turns out to be easy. Because I always move forward and never look back.

Metaphor not included.

In truth, I’ve come to accept and enjoy my cellulite. I can amuse myself by playing connect the dots on my thighs or finding constellations on my butt. For example, my left rump sports not only the Big and Little Dippers, but also The Serving Spoon, The Soup Ladle, and The Cake Knife.

The best thing about the moisturizer jeans is that all that grease must make them easier to get on. But being menopausal, I might need more lubrication.

Like motor oil.

Come to think of it, I won’t be buying the moisturizer dungarees.

They’re not worth dung.

Column Classic: Upgrading the Macaroni Necklace

May 31, 2025

by Francesca Serritella

My mom’s birthday is a month away, and I’m wracking my brain about what to get her—but really, it’s my favorite thing to obsess over. Here’s a Classic Column, which might be new to you as it never ran in the Inquirer, about birthday shopping for my favorite person.

When it comes to giving a gift to your mother, kids get a pass for a long time. But when your mother has a milestone birthday like sixty, a macaroni necklace will not do.

It was time for me to get my mother a grown-up gift.

This is not to say that I haven’t gotten her nice things in the past, but this year I wanted it to be really special. Maybe because I know that my mom is single, I wanted to get her a gift as nice as a husband would get.

Not one of her husbands—a really good husband.

I got in my head that it had to be jewelry.

I’d never bought a piece of fine jewelry before. First, I studied. For months leading up to her birthday, every moment of procrastination was spent searching the websites of jewelers and department stores for every item within my budget.

Since I couldn’t afford ninety percent of their inventory, this took less time than you might think.

After obsessively zeroing in on a few favorite options, I decided to make a trip to Cartier. Embarrassingly, I’d dressed up for the occasion. I wore a shirtdress that I thought said, “I use ‘summer’ as a verb.”

Click to read the full column on Francesca’s Website

Column Classic: Mommy’s Day Out

May 10, 2025

by Francesca Serritella

The last time my mom came to visit, I lost her.

It was like that movie Baby’s Day Out, except with my parent. I turned my back for one second, and the little rascal got away from me.

I imagined her crawling along an I-beam at some high-rise construction site.

But she’s afraid of heights, so more likely she’d be in Times Square, telling The Naked Cowboy he isn’t dressed warmly enough.

It started with tickets to see the new Larry David play. My mom checked that she had the tickets for the third or fourth time.

“It says, ‘late arrivals will not be seated,’” she read, for my benefit. My mom is early to everything. We left with an hour to spare.

And yet, we found ourselves in a cab crawling up Sixth Avenue for a half-hour with fifteen blocks to go. I checked our route on my smartphone; the driving estimate to get to the theater was fifteen minutes, the walking was only ten.

“I think we should get out,” I said.

Click to read the full column on Francesca’s Website

Column Classic: The Mothership

May 4, 2025

By Lisa Scottoline

I’m a terrible negotiator. I’m too emotional, and I can’t pretend I don’t want something I really want.

Like George Clooney.

But today we’re talking cars, and this is the tale of my first attempt at negotiating.

To begin, I have an older car that I take great care of, and it’s aged better than I have, sailing past 100,000 miles without estrogen replacement.

But around 102,000 miles, things started to go wrong, and flaxseed wasn’t helping. I knew I’d be driving long distances on book tour, and I started to worry. I called up my genius assistant Laura to ask her advice, as I do before I make any important decision, like what to eat for lunch.

I asked her, “Laura, do you think I need a new car?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“But it’s paid off, and I love it.” And I do. It’s a big white sedan called The Mothership.

“I know, but you have to be safe. What if it breaks down on tour?”

“That won’t happen.”

“Except it has. Twice.”

An excellent point. One time, The Mothership died on the way to a bookstore in Connecticut, requiring the bookseller to pick me up at a truck-stop on 1-95. I bet that never happened to James Patterson.

So I needed a new car, and since I love my dealership, I went there. I thought they loved me, too, which they did, except when it came to the bottom line. They gave me a good deal on a new SUV, but a rock-bottom price on trading in The Mothership.

I asked, “How can you do that to her? I mean, me?”

I told you I get too emotional.

And I added, “Plus you’re supposed to love me.”

But they don’t. They run a business, and it’s not the love business. However, it’s my secret philosophy that all business is the love business, so I got angry. They had taken care of The Mothership for the past ten years, at top dollar, and it was worth so much more.

Guess what I did.

I walked out.

I took my business elsewhere. That very day, I called up another dealership, who said, come on over, we love you, too. In fact, we love you so much that we’ll give you a better deal on your trade-in. And they did, after inspecting The Mothership and calling her “the cleanest 100,000-mile car they had ever seen,” which we are.

I mean, it is.

But just when I was about to say yes, my old dealership called and told me that they still loved me. I told them I was already rebounding with my new dealership, but they said they’d top the offer on The Mothership, and after much back-and-forth, I went back to my old dealership, like ex sex.

But long story short, the day came when I was supposed to pick up my new SUV, and I felt unaccountably sad. I took final pictures of The Mothership. I stalled leaving the house. On the drive to the dealer, I called daughter Francesca and asked her, “Wanna say good-bye to the car?”

“Mom? You don’t sound happy.”

“I’m not. I love this car.”

“Aww, it’s okay. It’s probably not the car, anyway. It’s that you have such great memories in the car.”

I considered this for a minute. “No, it’s the car.”

By the time I reached the dealership, I was crying full-bore, snot included.

My sales guy came over, and when he saw me, his smile faded. “What’s the matter?”

“I love my car. I don’t want to give it up.”

“So keep it,” he said, which was the first time it even occurred to me. I know it sounds dumb, but it simply never entered my mind. I’d never bought a car without trading one in.

“But what about the money?”

“We’re only offering you a fraction of what the car’s worth. If I were you, I’d keep it.”

“But I’m only one person. Why do I need two cars?”

“They’re two different cars. The old one’s a sedan, and the new one’s an SUV.”

I wiped my eyes. “You mean, like shoes? This is the dressy pair?”

He looked nonplussed. “Uh, right.”

“Really?” My heart leapt with happiness. I decided to keep The Mothership. It’s strappy sandals on wheels, if you follow.

Thus ended my first attempt at hardball negotiations, which backfired. Having bargained for the best price on a trade-in, I couldn’t bring myself to trade anything in.

Because I love it.

It sits in my garage, aging happily.

Soon we’ll both be antique.

Priceless.

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