Wrapped in Nostalgia, Sprinkled with Time

I had a very fun weekend. Still feeling it this Monday. No meltdowns or anything. I'm starting to believe this exorcism just may have stuck. Let's hope. Because a heavy heart makes my ass look big. Or something.

But something else highly amusing happened upon checking my email from this weekend (my laptop has gone wonky and I can't get internet for some reason).

I have known my friends Kristen and Amy since the beginning of time. The beginning of time, of course, being 2nd grade. And while time and geography have separated us, these girls are defacto sisters of mine and always will be. And though they be my defacto sisters, I have real sisters and they do, too. The funny thing when we were kids was that Kristen and Amy were the same age, and they had younger sisters that were the same age and close friends: Lauren and Laura, respectively.

We used to hole ourselves up in Amy's room and play. We'd be all sorts of ridiculous. The two teachers we treated mercilessly were Mrs. Leiker, the counselor, and Coach Stuessel, the uh, coach. Mrs. Leiker was easy, "Leiker?!?! We hate her!" Not to mention, children are quite possibly the most astute bullshit-caller-outers in the world; somehow we sensed the hypocrisy of her telling us not to smoke, but her office reeking of the shit. We liked creating shows. Somewhere there are entire cassettes of us doing our "Radio Show." One section had gossip, where we made up ridiculous stories about our classmates, another section where we had a "call in" and pesky kindergartners would call in trying to be our friends. And we're all, "We're in 5th grade! We're awesome! And you're not!"

That section was based on Amy's little sister. Laura, in retrospect, reminds me a bit of myself. The baby of the family, all she wanted was to join in with the big girls. I used to beg my older sisters just to let me sit in their rooms while they played.

"I won't even say anything! I just want to watch!"

My sister Amy (my real one) would indulge me often because I was an adorable child with the acerbic wit of a 30 year old. Plus, it's nice to be adored. And me being the baby, I looked up to my older sisters and wanted to be just like them. [Sidenote--all coolness of both sisters, and myself as well, is null and void upon puberty--fend for yourselves, ladies--we have entered the Angst Zone where no one is welcome]. Abby, being much closer to me in age was much more territorial of her friends. But I'd beg all the same.

And so would little Laura. And in the Great Sister Chain of Being, we would lock the door and be all, "NO! We're too cool!" [or something like that]

So Laura had to resort to other methods of hanging with us, since asking wasn't getting her anywhere. Yes, small little thing she was resorted to trickery and deceit to attain her goals. Good girl. Valuable Life Lesson #1. And while she will always win points for creativity, she needed more reasonable scenarios.

Her favorite was the old, "I have your laundry" trick.

And this was my favorite example of it:

[soft knock at the door]

"Yeah?"

"It's Mom. I have your laundry. I need to give it to you."

[us feeling like geniuses because clearly this was Laura and not Amy's mom]

"Just leave it at the door, Mom."

"But I need to put it away."

"You don't have to Mom."

"Yes, I DO."

"Just leave it."

[little pitter patters away from the door. We celebrate our vanquish of the 5 year old.]

10 minutes or so pass.

[soft little knock at the door. Our eyes roll in coolness]

"Yeah?"

"Amy, it's Coach Stuessel. I have your underwear and I need to give it to you."

[death by laughter]

First of all, the voice is clearly a 5 year olds. Second, Coach Stuessel was a 40-something bald man with a pot belly the size of Angelina Jolie's bump. Third, why on Earth would Coach Stuessel have Amy's underwear? That clearly would have to violate some sort of school code.

I think Laura knew the gig was up. The little feet pitter patter away from the door again and do not try again for the rest of the evening.

For the entirety of my epic friendships with Miss Amy and Miss Kristen, this one story to this day gets brought up ever-so-randomly and we can all still chuckle and guffaw and chortle at the sheer chutzpah it took to fabricate such a story just to be welcomed into Amy's Room Inner Sanctum of Awesome Big Girls.

It's kind of sad now that I write it. Man, we are evil to our siblings, aren't we? She just wanted to sit with us. But I guess in the Hierarchy of Growing Up, you have to take your licks. But being the baby of the family, as was Laura and Lauren, we never got to inflict this on anyone else. Well, I guess I got to with Laura. So maybe Laura and Lauren got to with some of their friends' little siblings. I like to think it all works out karmically in the end.

This is a very long-winded way of saying that I checked my email and Laura had written on my Facebook wall. Hmm...I haven't spoken to Laura since...well, I really have no idea. I really don't. Stupid booze and drugs ruining my brain. But anyhoo, the message was this:

"Carrrrrie...This is Coach Stuessel. I have your underwear!"

I just about died laughing. I just about died from Nostalgia. I immediately write Amy and Kristen, still laughing. And still in wonder that Laura is a lovely young woman. It's so hard to imagine. Harder to imagine your own and your friends' aging. Harder than your siblings. Probably because your friends' siblings you have smaller interactions with, and so to a certain extent, they will always be frozen in the time frame that you knew them.

Laura is quite lovely these days. But I don't care how grown up she gets, how mature, married, pregnant, a mom, a grandma, the President of the United States: She will always be that little kindergartner in my head, knocking on the door pretending to be our gym coach, just wanting to play with her big sister.

[Sigh]