Are today’s kids as tied to their jeans as I was when I was younger? It’s not even a matter of finding the perfect pair with just the right rise, and tight enough to fit nice, without being so tight that they obstruct your breathing. There’s more to it than that. There’s the whole breaking them in thing, where they become so soft they are like a second skin.
When you run your hands down the legs they feel like silk.
I have such a pair. They are faded evenly and by some sartorial miracle, they feel silky soft without the thinning or fraying in the seams. It’s amazing.
They do have a little problem, though. The left pocket has a gigantic hole. It’s pretty deceptive, too, because if I put my hand in the pocket I don’t feel it, but just let me put a set of keys in there and they’re toast.
Too bad I can’t seem to remember that detail…
All I wanted was a gallon of milk. I ran into the grocery store and slipped my phone into my pocket. The left one. The next thing I knew, I was standing in produce, in front of the security cameras, jiggling my left leg while I watched my phone travel down the length of my leg like the unfortunate rat being digested by a boa constrictor.
I guess I gave a show to the security personnel. You know I was super cool about it. I mean, I can be very subtle while standing in front of the honeydew shaking my leg. It was the bend and snap when I had to retrieve it that gave me away.
I was always the chick that got dirty, had skinned knees, and was one of the guys. It served me well in elementary school when all I ever did was roam the fields behind our home and play hide and seek, or cowboys and Indians, or kickball – to the dismay of our parents who could never keep us off the grass. As it happens, there was no loss there—that neighborhood has since been demolished and replaced with a strip mall that, ironically, houses a very fine Cuban restaurant. But I digress.
It wasn’t really until Mother Nature decided to endow me with the attributes of a full grown woman (at age 14) that the relationships started to shift a little. I was a Tomboy, no doubt about it. I played all the pick-up games with the guys. I could smoke the locals in a swim heat (the backstroke, and the important leg in the freestyle relay), smash them at ping-pong, and inflict some serious damage on the basketball court.
That’s when I realized that if I charged the key, the guys would move out of my way. They wouldn’t touch me. No one would touch me. Ha! I could do anything – and have a lovely little lay-up waiting for me. I was slow to realize that my now slight build, at barely 5’8”, was no match for the six-footers who were getting taller by the day. I was dangerous, not because of my height, but because I was a girl.
They stopped playing with me. Or I stopped playing with them. Does it matter? Eventually we all moved to a different playground, anyway.
When I was older I did the whole study abroad thing and even backpacked through Europe – an adventure I remember fondly. I will share one picture. One. Let’s just say that the past is comfortable just where it is.
Anyway, we were a motley crew and had a blast absorbing as much of everything as possible. A really grand adventure that among other things, revealed to me that I hadn’t changed very much from the sandlot days. Most of the girls spent their days complaining about not having showers, having to walk, eating on the run, and heaven forbid, sleeping in sketchy places. While I admit that I am too old now to want to sleep in sketchy places, I’m still ok with making do with whatever else roughing it entails.
It was their loss. I saw things and did things like accidentally stumbling into Cezanne’s workshop (closed to the public but we unintentionally entered through a back entrance) because a group of us decided to try a short cut while the girls were getting their hair done. (I put my hair up in a ponytail and opted for the adventure). I also trespassed on Picasso’s summer cottage (it was a villa, who am I kidding?) and picked wildflowers on his property.
Oh. And I slept in a house of ill-repute. But that’s for another blog.
That’s relevant because at the end of the summer, in the dog days of August when there was an oppressive heat wave in Italy, I found myself in Rome with this same motley crew. All the girls piled into one room, and all the guys ended up next door. In the late afternoon, we all went on the balcony to watch the sunset, sip on room temperature water, and make plans for the evening. We had a magnificent view of the top of St. Peter’s Basilica, and excellent location for partying that night. There was talk of going to a couple of discos, dinner in a piazza, the possibilities were endless.
And then my roommate piped up. She was the Ugly American, always poised to gripe about having to endure a hardship, and given to ordering ketchup on everything. She also thought she was Maggie McNamara, and was INSANELY insisting that I could be Dorothy Maguire and we should live out Three Coins in a Fountain. Her plans for the evening included seeking the Fountain of Trevi.
We vetoed that. Immediately.
But not before the boys in the group had to listen to the entire plot of the movie and her romantic notion of having us all go throw away our money. We were poor college students, remember? That’s about when a little animosity toward her started to arise, unbeknownst to the girls. You see, Maggie, put out by the heat and clearly losing her mind, decides to tell us all that it is too hot to sleep in pajamas and that it’s a good thing the balcony has some crazy spikey barrier to keep the boys away, because she intended to sleep au natural that evening.
What an idiot. She then proceeded to assign sleeping arrangements to all of us, because there were two double beds and a cot, and her delicate frame could not be subjected to the cot. In a hurry to end the conversation and get on with our evening, I said I would sleep on the cot, she could have the bed furthest from the balcony, and couldn’t we get dressed for dinner…all in the presence of the guys.
Later that night, back from a magnificent evening, ready to crash and prepare for a full on adventure in Rome, Maggie started sighing from her corner of the room. Although my cot was a little lumpy, there was a breeze that cropped up randomly. None of it was making it to Maggie. More sighs and lamentations of heat exhaustion. Fed up with not being able to sleep, I offered her my cot. Please don’t think I was being altruistic – I wanted her to shut the hell up.
That was an unfortunate switch for Maggie. You see, the guys were planning a little practical joke on me. They were going to cover me in shaving cream, having risked sure death by scaling the barrier on the balcony.
Only, it wasn’t me they covered. Instead, they found a very naked Maggie lying in the cot. It was too dark for them to see that it wasn’t me and they were about to make a mortal mistake. Fools that they were, they decorated Maggie’s body with shaving cream and jumped back over the barrier to safety.
We were awakened by hysterical screaming.
When I realized it was shaving cream and nothing had been disturbed, I started laughing. It was clear to me exactly what happened but Maggie would hear none of it. She grabbed a bathrobe and started banging on the guys’ door, waking everyone up on the floor and barreling into their room accusing them of all kinds of assault. I couldn’t stop laughing. The more distressed she became, the more I laughed. The more confused the guys became, the more I laughed.
The next morning at breakfast I was the one who was ostracized. Maggie was sure I had set her up. The guys thought I had set them up.
Had lunch with a dear old friend. A four-hour lunch. I’ll confess that we drank a number of margaritas. We were busy talking and didn’t want the check or the annoying waiter, so we’d wave him over to get us a couple of more. Which led to a couple of more. And a couple more. …Perhaps it’s not prudent to actually reveal how many we consumed. 🙂
It was like old-times in college, and by that I mean that it was like nary a year had passed after we finished the pleasantries and caught up with where we were with the husbands, the kids, work, you know. Then suddenly, we were just jabbering away.
The meal itself was forgettable. Mexican nouvelle cuisine. It was different. Not bad, just…different. It was nothing like the ridiculous greasy portions at our old stomping ground, El Torito, but the ambiance was good, the margaritas exceptional, and the company, of course, unparalleled.
I don’t enjoy days like that enough — I just don’t make the time for a restorative afternoon for myself, with someone I like, doing something I enjoy (this isn’t helping my reputation as a lush, is it?).
Don’t read something sad or pathetic into this — that’s not where I’m going with my thoughts. I have plenty that keeps me busy, and in spite of the griping and busy-ness of it, I enjoy what I do, the friends I have, and the random escapes with the hubs to watch movies IN THE THEATER! (this is significant if you know John can’t stand going to the movies and being surrounded by teenagers with their cell-phones).
It made me think about why we find such comfort in reconnecting with people from our past — people we still feel close to because they were such an important part of our lives, but circumstances, distance, heck — life — has happened and created distance. A distance, by the way, that we’re content with but is so easily bridged. With a call. A conversation. A message on Facebook.
And yes. A margarita. 🙂
Those friendships age like a good wine — maturing and gaining strength, and perhaps we are drawn to them when we’re older, not so much to re-live wild days, but reminisce and feel the bonds of that relationship. It validates, not so much who we were, but who we have become because the roots of that are certainly set in those relationships.
We were just two middle-aged broads holding the menus at arm’s length and fumbling around for the reading glasses. It was a good laugh.
