Twas Brillig

Welcome, gentle readers, to our second installment of Flashback Friday!!!

Today’s flashback was inspired by my mother- and father-in-law last night (who we are living with, remember?). Hubby and I went on a walk together, leaving my in-laws home with our sleeping kids. When we got home, we found them both on the phone. They were talking long-distance to their best friends, Spud and Cheryl. From what I understand, the four of them have been bestest buds for years and years. There was much heartbreak when Spud and Cheryl retired and moved to the northwest, but good thing they’ve all got good long-distance phone coverage, right? I thought it was so cute, to watch these 60-year-olds wandering around, each on their own cordless phone, talking to and giggling with their best buddies.

It reminded me of my own best friend, and how years from now I can picture this exact scene with us.

And so today’s Flashback Friday is dedicated to Kate*. You know her better as Walking Kateastrophe.

(*You could also consider it this way: If I’m going down, she’s going down with me.)

Kate and I met in high school. I was a senior and she was a sophomore (which was a little weird, because the people I latched on to had always been older than me). Somehow, despite lots of catfighting around us, we became bestest buds.

The unfortunate part here is that all the really incriminating pictures of her (and, I suppose, of me too) are in her possession, not mine. But! I DO have the date dance pictures.

And an explanation of date dances in our little community is given at Kate’s site, which I am hereby stealing, because I’m too lazy to write the darn thing myself:

You’ll need some background . . . on the planet I grew up in, date dances were much more than just the dance. We had to ask and answer each other in creative ways and we had day activities with our group. So let’s just say that if you didn’t like your date? You were in for a bad, bad day. With all of his or her friends. And it could possibly go on for 15 hours or so, because most people also planned something for AFTER the dance. Oh, and it was INCREDIBLY rude to say no. The first person who asked you was the person you went with. Those were the rules.

And so, I present you with exhibit number one.

(Kate is on the back row with the “red” hair. I’m in the front, sitting daintily upon my date.) What you need to know here is that in preparation for this magnificent date, all three of us girls dyed our hair red–sharing the SAME CHEAP BOTTLE FROM THE GROCERY STORE. Kate’s hair went good and red, the other girl’s hair had a reddish hew, and my black hair remained, well, black. I know. Shocker. And yet, I was early in my hair dying days and I was actually a bit surprised by this. Also interesting to note is that while my date was BY FAR the hottest, he was also about a whole foot shorter than me. Which is, I suppose, why I’m sitting upon him. (And YES my eyebrows were huge, and YES our fashion was freaky, and YES the hair is weird, and YES I’m sure you’ll come up with plenty of other unpleasant things to say…) (Oh, and NO I DON’T know what was up with Kate’s date’s pants. And I really, really, really don’t WANT to know…)

Let us now enter exhibit two:

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Kate is on the front row here (and no, I have NO idea what the crap she’s wearing…. you’ll have to take that up with her) and her date was a total and complete psycho. Seriously. He was completely nuts. And obsessed with Kate. And, well, CRAZY. You can tell by the weary expression on her face that this had been a very, very long day already. All she wanted was to go home.

And I am on the back row in the far right corner. DO YOU SEE MY DATE?? Does he remind you of someone? Someone named SATAN??? And, unfortunately, Satan-boy was thoroughly infatuated with me–something I never understood, but his infatuation almost defined my senior year of high school–and some bits of college too.

The moment we got home from that date, Kate and I called each other and talked on the phone for hours over them and their psychotic-ness, and how there really should have been a loop hole in the date dance rules: If a guy is psychotic, messed up, obsessed with you, or Satan, you should be able to refuse to date him, even if he’s the first person to ask you to the dance. Alas, there was no such rule.

But somehow we survived all the dating madness and moved on to the marriage stuff. Here she is as one of my bride’s maids 6 years ago (and 7 years after we first met). I’m obviously the one in the wedding dress and she’s the blondey (it’s not really a flattering angle for any of us, including Hubby who ALWAYS looks good. But my pic pickin’s are slim, okay?):

(Okay, ladies. We’ve had this discussion and some of you have already learned the hard way that drooling over my husband only leads to pain and misfortune and the shorting-out-of-your-computer. And we ALL know that NO ONE wants to blog with a shorting-out-computer.)

I was at her wedding too, of course, but I was massively and gigantically and so UN-gracefully pregnant with my third baby and so she let me be an “honorary” bride’s maid/matron thing. I pray that there are NO pictures of it…

And nowadays, we live very far away from each other. But we IM and call each other and keep tabs on each other pretty much constantly. And I FULLY expect to still be chatting and giggling with her when I’m sixty-four.