THE MEANING OF FRIENDSHIP

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Hi there you. Yes, you.

You are reading personal information in a public space. About your friend.

Your friend is someone's niece... someone's daughter... someone's granddaughter... someone's secret crush.

For you to have read information about your friend and threatened your friend to spread rumors about her is not only completely uncool. It's evidence that you are not a very good friend.

I found this poem for you and I hope you can read and understand it. It's about the value of a friend.

Sometimes you only understand the value of a friend after you have lost her. I hope that doesn't happen to you.

Either way, you have taught me something very important: that you are not trustworthy. And so this space will no longer contain information that you can use to hurt anyone else.

A BEST FRIEND
A best friend is always there,whether you need advice,or a pep talk, or even a shoulder to cry on.
A best friend listens with her heart and is always honest with you, even though the truth may not be what you want to hear.
A best friend knows all your secrets, understands your fears, shares your dreams.
A best friend never stops believing in you, even if you give upon yourself.
You are that kind of friend to me.
And no matter what happens, you always will be.
You are my best friend....my forever friend.

By: Renee Duvall

O'REILLY IS DEAD...

Sunday, February 22, 2009

You guys all know this song, right:

O'Reilly is dead and his brother don't know it.
His brother is dead and O'Reilly don't know it.
They both are dead and lying in bed,
And neither one knows that the other is dead.

I used to think - how comforting for them actually. Until today.

While I was wrestling with some purchases for Sarah (the world's pickiest preteen), Don had done all the shopping and was ready to leave Target. I told him - why don't you just go back and load the car, and go somewhere else with Becca while we finish? I took his cell phone and he was to retrieve my cell phone from the car - then we could communicate at will.

Problem was, I was the only one with the car keys. But I didn't know that. I wandered around for hours - trying to call Don and then getting progressively more pissed off because he was ignoring me - then getting worried and wondering what had become of he and Becca.

Meanwhile his cell phone was ringing, but from numbers I didn't recognize. I figured his friends or workmates were trying to get ahold of him, so I let the calls ring through to voice mail. Of course they were Don - trying to call me from other phones because he couldn't get to my cell phone locked in the car.

Eventually, Don and Becca walked home three miles and Sarah and I found the car and drove home. And we each thought we were going to have to call 911 to reporting the other missing!

I don't really know what the moral of this story is. Perhaps it's that cell phones have made us a bit lazy. 20 years ago, parties splitting up would have agreed on a meeting place and time. Perhaps in our house, we ought to go back to that.

TRAUMA FLASHBACK #1

OK so the first major childhood memory that I was reliving in my spare time (in between wondering if Don and Becca were abducted by aliens, and arguing with Sarah): my first bra fitting.

My mom decided that I needed a bra. I'm not sure how old I was - probably she'll comment on this post (in the process of denying the whole thing) and tell us all. Anyway, do you think she saw this as an opportunity to bond with me? Or at least to leave me in a state of high self esteem? Oh no. She was thinking that the most important thing was to have me measured right.

My mom was rather obsessed with measurement. She tested each of us kids 3 different times for IQ during her PhD study but she never told us how we scored. She also liked to take us to Toby's Stride Rite because Toby really knew how to measure feet. Well, my grandfather was a shoe guy too, so maybe the measuring thing got drummed into hear head in her own past trauma, I don't know.

Anyway, she was thinking that she was not trustworthy to put a tape measure around me and haul me over to JC Penny's in peace, so she took me to a place called Margaret's Corset Shop.

Oh yeah. Margaret's does a brisk business - in fact, it's still there on Maryland in St. Louis.

Margaret's is not really the Victoria's Secret of St. Louis. To my childlike mind - it was like a part of a scary movie. Margaret's had a specialty in mastectomy supply. Yup. The mannequins all looked like this:

And corset isn't Margaret's middle name for nothin'. It made me wonder: oh my God, what the HELL IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO ME??? If I wasn't terrified of maturing before then, I sure was after getting a load of the merch at Margaret's.

suck it in, baby.

My mother did not even bother to warn me so I walked into the freaky woman body part situation completely cold.

The little bell on the door rang. And out crept a small woman. She hobbled over to us - I swear she was no taller than I was at the time - and my mom told her we were there to get measured for a proper brassiere.

So she led me to a dressing room and pulled the curtain shut. I took off my shirt and she took out her measuring tape. And she had THE COLDEST AND GNARLIEST HANDS KNOWN TO ALL MANKIND. And then said, "oh, you're developing nicely, dear."

Really. And I still grew up kind of ok. One of the bras from that trip was white with a little pink flower in the middle. I liked that one. Hey what can I say - such is the nature of a flashback.

TRAUMA FLASHBACK #2

As if that were not enough, I had to wear orthopedic shoes as a kid and my dad used to take me to some cobbler's shop down in the middle of nowhere, and the guy was sort of toad-like and on top of that, had oral cancer or something so he used to talk and breathe through a stoma. Here is a picture of a trach tube because any pictures I could find that even resembled this guy's stoma were just so soul-harming.

Anyway, my father did not even bother to warn me so I walked into the stoma cobbler situation completely cold. The whole experience was startling as a kid. As if it were not bad enough to have to wear blue suede reinforced steel saddle shoes.

That, coupled with the whole Margaret's Corset Shop experience, pretty much sealed my fate as a supernerd.

Sarah should kiss my (feet, ass, ring) for taking her to Target, I tell ya.