Oh Honestly, Erin

I took Andrea to the Southside today to walk off our Pamela’s breakfast, over which I learned that she is morbidly terrified of old people and begged me to not invite some liver-spotted lone diner to join us at our table. I tried to get her to walk in vomit, because those are the types of things I do to my friends. And yet she still bought me the most amazing Sidney Crosby t-shirt of all time.

We had plans to meet Wendy at the Beehive for coffee at noon, and thank god we got there before she did because I almost had to move some guy’s crutches to sit down, but then I said, “I’ll just let Wendy sit here” and took the seat next to Andrea. When Wendy arrived, she tried to sit down and then realized the legs of her chair were entwined with crutches and had to reposition them against the wall, which caused the owner of the auxiliary legs to whip his head around and glare at her.

Meanwhile, Andrea was being aurally raped by the  man and woman behind us who were telling each other about their respective spouses and how unhappy they were. Between them, the Crutch Guy and yesterday’s Eat n Park breakfast buffet disappointment*, I think she was on the verge of writing off Pittsburgh for good.

(*Andrea said she only got the buffet because Henry got the buffet, so she figured it must be OK. “Yeah, but I can eat crappy food,” Henry retorted. He hates taking the blame for anything, which must make life stressful for him when you figure everything is his fault.

Anyway, if that were the case, I suppose we can expect Andrea to start wearing non-descript t-shirts and stuffing her pockets with individually-wrapped prunes as well.)

I kept trying to see what Crutch Guy was doing on the computer. Probably some sort of workman’s comp fraud.

HE WALKED TO THE COUNTER WITHOUT HIS CRUTCHES. WHAT A FUCKING FAKE. He left before we did, but not without giving each one of us a scrutinizing once-over. And then he barely put any weight on the crutches as he walked out. I was so appalled by this and kept saying so, but Andrea and Wendy continued to talk over me because he was old news by then.

Then we followed Wendy out to her part of town because she wanted to take us to a haunted cemetery called Hankey Church in Plum. We ditched my car along the way and rode with her (which was like a dream come true for Andrea because it meant a reprieve from the constant loop of Dance Gavin Dance in my car), but before we got there, I totally started to have a whiny, low blood-sugar meltdown and said, “I either need an apple or a cookie, like now.”

“Well, you can’t eat an unsliced apple, so I guess we need to get you a cookie,” Andrea deduced, because she has been reading up on the Keeping Erin Alive and Tempered handbook. Wendy pulled over at the first grocery store we came upon and Andrea bought me a Snickerdoodle and a Reese’s Pieces cookie. Then she bought two lame thumbprints for herself and Wendy.

At the checkout, the middle-aged cashier asked, “Oh, did you just get out of school?”

Andrea was completely perplexed by this, and as we walked to the car Wendy kept trying to assure her it was because she looks so young and she should be happy, but by this point I was going into apoplectic shock and they mostly sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher; all I could think about was eating the fuck out of one or all cookies.

“I guess because adults don’t come in and just buy four cookies,” Andrea laughed. “I should have bought a pregnancy test, too.” And then there was even more convivial chitchat between those two and why the fuck was no one handing me a goddamn cookie?

I finally got my cookies. I ate both of them so fast that I can’t even remember if I liked them. But I felt instantly better.

Hankey Church is a tiny cemetery semi-enclosed by a white picket fence, but not the kind that makes you dream of planting petunias and playing catch with your freckled kid, mostly because there are old, slanted tombstones beyond it, but also because who dreams of having a freckled kid?

Various supernatural websites  claim there has been reported activity there. “Weightlessness and loss of balance” was listed on one site as being common experiences in the vicinity, and Andrea did actually fall immediately after getting out of Wendy’s car. Oh my god, it was fucking outstanding; the slowest descent I have ever seen in real life.

In fact, it was so stupid how she went down that I actually for a second thought it was a staged pratfall, that she felt bad for hating so terribly on Jonny Craig and all of his ginger brethren, that she was all, “Hey, look at me, ginger gods! Lucille Ball shoutout!”

But then I realized that she had stepped into a slight divet in the ground and I started laughing. Just stood there laughing while she was in this sad, pathetically infantile crawl position on the damp grass.

She was fine, you guys. Don’t worry. Totally not as bad as when she bit it on roller skates the last time she was here.

Her head’s chipped like mine.

I didn’t really feel any weird sensations while we were there, but the creaking noises the trees were making was seriously disturbing me. It sounded like all of these invisible doors were opening down the hill from the cemetery and I whimpered a little.

One source says this headstone is the center for all of the paranormal activity, but my totally accurate EVP iphone app was not picking anything up.

Another source says it’s the vacant lot across from the cemetery, which was once the site of the Hankey Church, which burnt to the ground after the pastor was hanged from a tree out front.

Yet another source says, “There was never a church there, you dumbshits, and that cemetery is a peaceful place with the occasional BJ and date rape.”

However, when Wendy and I were still poking around the cemetery (we found two CD-Rs labeled as some strange Baptist sermons, tucked in a tree),  Andrea was sitting on a large rock across the street. Her back was toward the vacant field and she said she felt legitimately creeped out sitting there, like something was behind her but she was afraid to turn around.

She probably took a lot of amazing spirits back to her hotel room. And they’re probably still laughing about when she fell in a half-inch hole in the ground.

In either case, my Toms were fucked after trudging around that sodden field.

Driving away from the cemetery, I said, “Hey Andrea, remember when you fell and I didn’t help you up?”

“You’re a dick,” she mumbled from the backseat, quietly masterminding a plan to make me a special batch of acid-based eyeshadow.