People who love it when you open the door for themand people who refuse to let you do it, they want to be the door-opener, and you have a little fight about it.

You think Modigliani painted nipples too small or you think Emily Carr painted trees too big.

Mangoes aren’t worth the hairs in your teeth or they are.

Terror of disorder keeps you up at night or terror of order does.

You have a way with animals or squirrels smell your fear and attack.

You’d like to be cremated because you believe in ethereal reincarnation rather than bodily resurrection or you’d like to be cremated just to be sure you’re really dead when they put you down there.

You’re not a group person or you go to political rallies and you’re the first to shout ‘Shame!’ during the speeches.

You go to rallies because you care about the issues or you go to pick up girls.

You eat the dark meat because you prefer it or you eat the dark meat because other people want the white meat.

You think the only way to respond to a poem is to write another poem or you think the only way to respond to a poem is to run the other way.

To you, beating the system means making fake passports or beating the system means breaking the stems off the broccoli in Zehrs.

You once rescued a duck or you once bagged a buck.

Your mother put peanut butter in the gutter of your celery or she filled it with Cheez Whiz.

You are torn between the Green Party and the NDP or you are torn between the Alliance and the Christian Heritage Party. Either way, you can say both are pretty good on the gay issue.

You flex your back or you flick your Bic.

You’d like a cat in a basket or you’d like a bat in a casket.

You think you’re too flat in the bazooms or too fat in the caboose.

Are you eyeing my cup of java or fucking up my vagina?

Howard Hughes ate no oranges and Allen Ginsberg ate them whole, including rind, pith and seeds.

You believe in fate and are paralyzed by the thought of your own powerlessness or you don’t believe in fate and are paralyzed by indecision.

You think they don’t pick up the phone because they’re out of town or you think they don’t pick up because they’re screening and they hate you.

You need to smarten up or you need to dumb down.

You are always a bridesmaid never a bride or you are always a bride and don’t have bridesmaids because you pissed off all your friends by marrying their husbands.

People think you are a good egg or a bad seed.

A free spirit or a freeloader.

You subscribe to Gourmet magazine or you don’t want fruit in soup.

You get Gloria Steinem and Gertrude Stein mixed up or you get the Bangles and the Go-Go’s mixed up.

Or Orson Welles, H. G. Wells and George Orwell.

You see an ad for a Ford SUV claiming their new folding back seat, the result of sophisticated problem-solving, ‘literally lets you have your cake and eat it too’ and you think literally!? well, they’ve just undermined their argument with an unsophisticated grammatical flaw and you think of calling the number at the bottom of the page – a little word to the wise – but of course you would never do such a thing, or you wouldn’t do such a thing except for once when you impulsively called the Real-Fruit Gummies people to tell them you got a bag with no green gummies in it, telling yourself they’ll want to know about flaws in production and secretly speculating that theymight send you a free bag, maybe even a crate, maybe a lifetime supply of green ones, but the eighteen-year-old RealFruit Gummies customer service representative on the other end just said ‘OoooooKay’ like you were a complete nincompoop and now you think Why not? I’ve already wasted ten minutes thinking about this, why not call Ford? So you call and explain to the eighteen-year-old kid whose first word is ‘OoooooKay’ that ‘literally’ means not figuratively and that the ad is telling us there’s cake in the truck that we’re having and eating, but she’s not really cluing in, not really grasping the urgency of the situation, and at the end of each of your sentences you hear your own voice in her ears and know that’s all she has to go on, she doesn’t know how attractive and sporty and well-rounded you are and you can tell she is wondering if this is a prank call or you are a pervert or, worse – as your voice gets both thinner and more shrill, if that’s possible – someone who needs to get out more.

You need to get out more or you need to get in more.

You need to branch out or you need to put down roots.

You think a pap smear involves the Vatican somehow or you have an apron that says Bar-B-Cutie on it and you wear it.

When you see a flag at half-mast you worry another former prime minister has died or you worry another Ramone has died.

You prefer the smell of chai, lavender bushes and line-dried laundry or basketballs, Magic Markers and puddles of gasoline.

You’d rather have to eat too many mini marshmallows or too much kelp.

You’ve fallen for a line or you’ve fallen for a sentence.

You are irritable or iterable.

The figurative sway of language being uncommonly effective on you, you can’t eat blood oranges while you can eat candy-apple red nail polish.

Or you live in Puce.

Your idea of self-discipline is to abstain from sex or your idea of self-discipline is to call yourself a naughty girl and take yourself to bed.

You think Ian Hanomansing was once husky or you think he will be husky.

You think Ian Hanomansing is the next Peter Mansbridge or you think Peter Mansbridge is the next Queen Mum.

You’d rather carve a war monument or you’d rather carve a loon.

Artillary or fritillary.

If you could turn back time, you would lock your bike or you would warn your students never to open an essay by quoting Cher.

You’d rather be thought of as dumb and actually be smart or you’d rather be thought of as smart and actually be dumb.

If you knew you’d be absolutely alone for two months, you’d never get out of the bathtub or you’d never get into the bathtub.

You talk loudly in airport lineups or you are Canadian.

You used to think honeycomb was man-made or you used to think Mt.

Rushmore was a natural phenomenon.

You are in tiptop shape or you are a teapot shape.

You chose or you were born that way.

No pulp or extra pulp.

A breeze blows around you or a breeze blows through you.

You’ve all but given up on the perennial pur...