Jul 242010
 

One of the awesome things about my friend Lisa is that she calls me every time something reminds her of me. This has been especially meaningful  since she’s been living in Colorado for the past few years and I don’t get to see her very often. Even if it’s just a song I like that’s playing in the supermarket, she’ll call and sing it on my voice mail.

Today’s phone call was because she saw someone that reminded her of me.

“I was in Whole Foods,” she began. “This lady was walking past me and I was like, ‘Erin Kelly!'”

I’m sitting in my car, having just left the cemetery, and imagining my Colorado doppelganger walking past Lisa, looking fantastic with a slew of sycophants in her wake. Hopefully she wasn’t dripping in sweat and sun tan oil with her hair pulled back in a moist bun like I was at that moment.

Lisa went on to extrapolate. “She walked just like you! You know the pouty way you used to walk in high school when you were upset and wanted someone to follow you?”

“Lisa, I still walk like that,” I admitted.

She laughed. “Why am I not surprised?”

I came home from my cemetery run and relayed the phone call to Henry.

“I know that walk quite well,” he mumbled with a frown.

One week and three days until Lisa and her husband Matt move back to Pittsburgh!

Jun 122008
 

Today, Chooch and I went to lunch with Janna and my brother Corey. We walked several blocks to Tom’s Diner, which was fine until the way back when Chooch was too tired to walk so I had to carry him in 179 degree weather and he stunk of sweat and curdled milk. Anyway, at Tom’s, he made a fist and held it out to everyone who walked past, and said, "Punch. Punch." Most people ignored him, but a fat old man wearing a big mother-whompin’ ring made a fist on his way out of the diner and shouted, "Gimme some knuckle, kid" and Chooch had this expression of "Fucking finally!" 

Chooch and I both had grilled cheese and fries, but he was more interested in stealing potato chips and pickles from Janna’s plate.

A woman came in with approximately 18 children (fine, four) and as soon as they sat down behind us, a really old should-be-fucking-dead-by-now man hobbled over with a hunched back and passed out saftey suckers to each one. "I just really love kids," he exclaimed to their mom, and then he went back to his table.

Now, this lewd display of favortism went down behind my back, so I sat there and funneled my disgusted sighs and angry scowls at Janna and Corey. "So what, Chooch doesn’t qualify? Why didn’t that elderly douche balloon give my son a fucking poison treat?" I swear to God it made me so angry that I could feel my adrenaline rushing, blood crashing like cymbals in my ears, and I wanted to approach him in the worst way. Me, approaching an octogenarian over a sucker. And then what? Cause a scene over candy that would wind up dirt-encrusted and dropped on the floor after three licks? I have a really ridiculously skewed sense of entitlement.