The Crew, No Umlaut
Here's a good idea!
Take a highly social and very active boy and shove him in a room with his very active friends that he has not seen all summer. Let them go crazy for a couple of hours. Pick him up and feed him frosted cookies. Then invite one of his friends over to pass the rainy afternoon. Attempt to rearrange the house while the children excrete their joyous mania all over the house in little piles of paper and cracker crumbs.
It was actually a good day, even though it was difficult to wind down at the end there. But during my reorganizing today I ran across some memorabilia that reminded me of my many groups of childhood friends. Letters from Sara including a facetious adventure series we were writing together entitled, "The Search for a Good Looking Man Named Charles", pictures of people whose names cannot escape the darker corners of my memory, poems, scripts, newspaper clippings, and odd things items addressed and sent through the post office. They probably wouldn't put up with that crap anymore, but it was fun while it lasted.
I found pictures of the silliest (and probably most sober) Gala evening ever. Oh, Gala was LIKE prom, but don't call it prom. Arts High School kids shun the prom and would never participate in something so blatantly bourgeois! My friend Raya and I had gotten a hotel room and we invited KEN to party with us- stone cold sober. At least I was. Of course, no one would have known considering my punch drunk behavior. If I remember correctly, KEN was mistaken for a woman in the hotel lobby (it was the hair) and Raya and I were busy trying to produce photographic evidence to prove the crookedness of the lamp. I don't remember much else about the evening. There was something about Little Debbie snack cakes and some chatter in the room. I remember laughing and that there was breakfast at Perkins the next morning. All in all, it was all pretty innocent. Maybe that's because I couldn't really get a date. I think I am the only girl in the western hemisphere who could be so hot, hang out with so many guys and not get laid. I'm not really complaining. I had tons of fun. I really did. It's just interesting to think about now that I'm on the other side of 30.
I've known a lot of interesting people in my lifetime. I'm pleased to see that my son is off to a pretty good start himself. He's from Brooklyn. I just think that's funny. He can hang with the loud, crazy boys and also enjoy the company of silly girls. He is just as much at home playing ponies as he is at playing pirates. His friends are sweet and they love him. They make each other presents, give each other hugs and wait patiently and quietly with each other when it is needed. When I look at the people in my life that I could count as friends and then at the kids that keep my boy company at school I cannot be convinced that there is anything inherently evil about human beings. Most of us are pretty fucking nice when we can be. Sure, we all have our moments (some more than others) but, by and large, I really like people.
It's the Chex Mix that should be thrown out the window. Dude, I've brushed my teeth twice and I can still taste it. That just ain't right.
Take a highly social and very active boy and shove him in a room with his very active friends that he has not seen all summer. Let them go crazy for a couple of hours. Pick him up and feed him frosted cookies. Then invite one of his friends over to pass the rainy afternoon. Attempt to rearrange the house while the children excrete their joyous mania all over the house in little piles of paper and cracker crumbs.
It was actually a good day, even though it was difficult to wind down at the end there. But during my reorganizing today I ran across some memorabilia that reminded me of my many groups of childhood friends. Letters from Sara including a facetious adventure series we were writing together entitled, "The Search for a Good Looking Man Named Charles", pictures of people whose names cannot escape the darker corners of my memory, poems, scripts, newspaper clippings, and odd things items addressed and sent through the post office. They probably wouldn't put up with that crap anymore, but it was fun while it lasted.
I found pictures of the silliest (and probably most sober) Gala evening ever. Oh, Gala was LIKE prom, but don't call it prom. Arts High School kids shun the prom and would never participate in something so blatantly bourgeois! My friend Raya and I had gotten a hotel room and we invited KEN to party with us- stone cold sober. At least I was. Of course, no one would have known considering my punch drunk behavior. If I remember correctly, KEN was mistaken for a woman in the hotel lobby (it was the hair) and Raya and I were busy trying to produce photographic evidence to prove the crookedness of the lamp. I don't remember much else about the evening. There was something about Little Debbie snack cakes and some chatter in the room. I remember laughing and that there was breakfast at Perkins the next morning. All in all, it was all pretty innocent. Maybe that's because I couldn't really get a date. I think I am the only girl in the western hemisphere who could be so hot, hang out with so many guys and not get laid. I'm not really complaining. I had tons of fun. I really did. It's just interesting to think about now that I'm on the other side of 30.
I've known a lot of interesting people in my lifetime. I'm pleased to see that my son is off to a pretty good start himself. He's from Brooklyn. I just think that's funny. He can hang with the loud, crazy boys and also enjoy the company of silly girls. He is just as much at home playing ponies as he is at playing pirates. His friends are sweet and they love him. They make each other presents, give each other hugs and wait patiently and quietly with each other when it is needed. When I look at the people in my life that I could count as friends and then at the kids that keep my boy company at school I cannot be convinced that there is anything inherently evil about human beings. Most of us are pretty fucking nice when we can be. Sure, we all have our moments (some more than others) but, by and large, I really like people.
It's the Chex Mix that should be thrown out the window. Dude, I've brushed my teeth twice and I can still taste it. That just ain't right.
posted by Bree O'Connor at 12:30 AM
4 Comments:
I think I can flesh out this night a little bit.
I was sober, too. I had drunk a lot during middle school and had had some pretty rough nights and days after because of it. So I was staunchly anti-alcohol and anti-drugs until college.
So, yeah, I was there dateless because, see, I had a date that I'd been dating for 14 months or so. Then we broke up, partially because it was over and partially because I was killer attracted to another girl. I remember rushing down the stairs from one level of the dorm post-breakup to ask girl #2 to the prom. She briefly accepted, but then rejected, and spent most of gala avoiding me.
So after her rejection I decided to take Little Debbie to the prom. See, all my friends and I looooved a box of Little Debbie snack cakes after a night of concert-going. So we always picked up a 99 cent box of 12 after seeing, say, White Zombie at Mirage. And, since it had a girl's name, and since we could hardly talk to breathing girls, it became a natural thing to refer to our affection for the cakes as love for Little Debbie.
So she was my date. I was so happy, too, because she was marked down to 89 cents and the cash register rang it up as 79 cents. Every other date cost $10, including girl #2 and girl #1. Suckaz.
Oh, and your theater teacher, who shall go nameless here, made some snide remark about the guy who took girl #1. Which was cool.
The snack cakes were a hit, but were upstaged by the cardboard cutout of a girl that JS brought.
So, yeah, then I was invited to a hotel room with two beautiful girls to spend the night. You may be "the only girl in the western hemisphere who could be so hot, hang out with so many guys and not get laid," but I think that has a lot to do with you choosing to invite back to your hotel room the only guy in the western hemisphere who could get invited to the hotel room of two total babes on prom night and not make any kind of a move on either or them.
Still, though, I like to think of it as the night I got rejected by two girls to take as individual dates and wound up in a hotel room with two other girls. If you leave out the innocence, it makes for a great story.
And yeah, some guy from behind asked the group of us a question like, where's the bathroom or something, and he referred to us as "ladies." It was definitely the hair.
Oh, and you told me where your hotel was (Kelly Inn?), and I kind of knew where that was, but I didn't know how to get from point a to point b. my whole strategy at that age in the Cities was to drive in a straight line and eventually you'd hit a freeway due to the 494/694 loop. So I did that and you followed me (you told me later) because you figured that since I was from the Cities that I must know the way. You bailed on me, though, and arrived before me.
I barely remember a lamp thing and have no recollection at all of Perkins.
Wait, what was this post about again?
Yeah, I remember the crass jokes about Little Debbie and cream. That was fun. I have photographic proof of the trip to Perkins.
If you want, you can make that story totally filthy when you tell it to your pals. You deserve that much. And you can take that permission retroactively should you need to. Just let me know the story so when I write my fake memoirs...
Shut up, you whiners. Neither one of you sexy bitches asked me to Gala and I am the surest sure thing in town. You were definitely not trying to get laid.
I went to Gala solo that year, intending to fuck shit up with Isak, only to discover he had a date. I spent the night smoking, drinking Jim Beam and sulking behind a potted plant. Then I went out and got laid.
Well, if you would have acknowledged my existence outside of French class then maybe we could have had something...something beautiful...we could have unlocked the secret of gerbils together.
You first.
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