Illustration by Olivia de Recat
Emotional Preparedness Board
The holidays are soon! Pack a collapsible serving board in your carry-on, and when you and your significant other arrive at your currently divorcing parents’ home, feign a work emergency. Lock yourself in your childhood bedroom. Use the stolen time to lay the board flat on the nightstand, and carefully arrange with the following items: one weed pen, several single-serve Cheez-It packs you pinched from the flight, three different forms of birth control, and a single premixed martini hidden in a travel shampoo bottle. Don’t look at yourself like that; you deserve this board.
Ouija Butter Board
Grease up your Ouija board with a wedge of fine French butter—Ina would use salted, but use what you have—and commune with the dead. Watch as the toast point that you’ve dragooned into a planchette glides seamlessly across the alphabet to reveal the name of your future lover, Blaurg9xeh.
This Should Be Fine Board
People coming over? Don’t have artisanal meats? Don’t have a serving board? Not even really sure who the people are? Add little piles of every snack in your pantry and fridge to a plank of plywood, including a ramekin of leftover cocktail sauce and six or seven cornichons you purchased in 2014. Glare at your hyper-social roommate as you carefully stream a thin line of Sriracha across one edge of the wood and arrange a row of Cool Ranch Doritos above it to look like docked sailboats. As the pièce de résistance, revive a molding, puckered Cutie clementine by soaking it in water; if it doesn’t work, tell people it’s an Anissa Kermiche sculpture. When they ask who that is, ask who they are. No, really. Who are they? And where is Mr. Bean?!?
Illustration by Olivia de Recat
No One Remembered Your Birthday Board
Frost it and move on, sweetie!
Aspirational Haircut Board
Head to your nearest Staples and print high-res photos of Jennifer Aniston from every decade. Use a hammer and nail to affix them to the back of a thick wooden cutting board, with your picture in the center. Carry it with you, absolutely housing several portions of Jen’s viral TikTok salad until someone offers to give you The Rachel.
The World Is Burning Board
Mete out the appropriate amounts of your SSRIs, melatonin, and a pair of AirPods across whatever clean board you can find. Next, set a scent diffuser you probably should not have splurged on in the center. Play “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston as you attempt to meditate for the first time, ultimately losing focus every several minutes as you receive breaking news alerts from CNN on your phone. Fuck it, clear off the stuff from the board, and smear on a block of butter, lemon zest, flakey salt. Go at it with the crustiest sourdough you can find.
