I’ve spent a good chunk of my life focused on my belly. I’ve looked at it from the front, fully bare in the mirror, and then quickly switched my body to look at it from the side. And then the front again. Followed by how it looked in clothing from the front. And side. And not in a good way. I’d be happy with it the mornings after I refrained from eating late the night before, or when I was doing a cleanse, or had been throwing up the entirety of my insides from a stomach bug (insanity, no?). I’d be terrified of it when I had just consumed a 5-course meal and was wearing a form-fitting shirt that earlier that day (pre-breakfast) had seemed to look sexy. And then, on the eve of my 30th, I decided I was done.

Pick up lines. Not surprisingly, a quick scan on Google brings up a plethora of sites counting down the best (and worst) ever uttered. You’ll find ‘Lines That Are Good’, which has over 1300 lines broken down to how many attempts were “made,” and how often they were successful. A classic example: “Use index finger to call someone over then say, ‘I made you come with one finger, imagine what I could do with my whole hand’”…uh, yeah. There’s also ‘Pickup artists unite,’ which is apparently where pickup lines go to die (a long, slow, horrible death). Thank God this one was buried: “Hey do you have any Irish in you?” [blank stare] “You want some?”