What's In a Name?

I have a friend from high school who once forgot her own name.

Yes. Seriously.

During a marching band rehearsal, the choreographer asked her her name, and she said "Shaquetta". He looked at her and say "No, your real name."

She gave him a blank stare, and had to think for a minute to remember her real name.

I'm afraid my children will be in a similar situation at some point.

I almost never call my children by their real names. With Zoe, her nickname is derived from her name. We've always referred to her as Zo-Zo, and that morphed into Bo-Bo. Not too random of a thought process. At least, not for ME.

Zephy on the other hand. Oh poor Zephy. Not only do people rarely spell her name correctly (Her medical records have been for Zehina T. Longlastname, and are now for some kid named Zepina T. Longlastname) but I rarely call her anything other than Bean.


Maybe I'll get their real names tattooed on their arms. It'll make sure they'll have a permanent cheat sheet to that terribly difficult question of "What's your name?"

Day 9: Embarrassing High School Moments...

Okay, so,  I kind of feel like all 4 years of high school were one big embarrassing moment. I can't really come up with one specific thing where I feel like I wanted to just crawl into a corner and hug myself.

I can think of two specific times where I remember thinking "Oh my crap, this is not okay..."

1) When auditioning for drum major senior year, I counted the tempo in 4/4 time, and didn't realize it was supposed to be 3/4 time until two bars later, and then I got so flustered, I made the room of 75 musicians playing The Star Spangled Banner mess up. And that's a hard song to mess up, because everyone knows it, and it's hard to lose your place.

Needless to say, I was NOT made drum major.

and

B) (Again, a band related incident.) Although I did NOT make drum major, I was named band captain, which meant I was a part of the group that would represent the band and accept whatever award we happened to win. At the time, I had waist length, super straight, incredibly big hair. When I would put my hat on for competitions, it took some pretty amazing feats to get all of the hair tucked into the hat. At one particular competition, I had put my hair into two messy buns, directly on top of my head. No one could see them, so it wasn't a hairdo I would normally sport in public.

Except, no one reminded me to take them down when it was time to go on stage. So I stood in front of a few hundred people with a hair 'do very similar to this...

I really hope all the real photographic evidence has been destroyed.

Day 18: Alles zum Gut Geburtstag!

My favorite birthday was my 20th.

Not the actual day. I don't think we really celebrated my birthday birthday.

My Tamara and my Amanda and I got tickets to see the Rangers play Detroit, in Detroit since we were only 4 hours away. The original plan was to see the game, stay in Detroit overnight, and then go run around Ontario for a day or two, mostly because we COULD. Plans changed though, as they usually do, and we decided downtown Detroit was NOT the place for 3 young white girls, armed only with small cans of pepper spray.

This lead us to do what is CLEARLY the most rational thing ever. We drove into Canada, got a hotel room, and drove BACK to Detroit for the game. This was the first time I ever left the country. A trip of 5 minutes.

The weekend was awesome. Somewhere, there is video taped footage of me ranting about FRIES at the TACO BELL. No thank you Canada, I would not like fries with my chalupa. That makes absolutely ZERO sense to me. (Although, now that I think about it, having a taco as your side item doesn't make much sense either.) Tamara rants about the Taco Bell having gorditas but not chalupas. Or something. On the video I also scream and yell about hearing that stupid "Complicated" song 975 times in one day.

We encountered a guy on the street who, as he passed, informed us he was from Norway. Tam and I legally ordered alcohol during dinner, and took a breathalyzer test that was in the restaurant lobby. (Only time I've ever done that.) We stopped at a Tim Horton's, which was wonderful. At some outlet shops we discovered, I bought a pair of red adidas pants that I still have to this day. We also attempted to purchase venus fly traps, but weren't allowed because you can't import plants to the US.

The BEST part however, is that our first morning in Canada, we awoke to a newpaper outside the door with the headline "Mad Cow Disease Strikes Canada!" What a GREAT way to start a vacation!

On the way home, Tamara's Jeep broke down, and we (and by we, I mean, Amanda and I) pushed it about a half a mile to the interstate exit. I don't remember where we broke down at, but I do know that we ended up in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and to this day we call it "Yippity Skippity, Michigan", because really? No extra vowel between the Y and the P? Come on now. How can you take that seriously?

I came home to some pretty intense drama, but I also came back with stories that can start out, "Remember that time we left the country for five minutes?" And that my friends, is priceless.

Not Jewish Either...

I just became friends with my friend's momma via Facebook. Which is weird, and yet completely normal at the same time. I'm really wondering if my generation isn't going to have even MORE therapy bills because of Facebook. (I discovered many moths ago that a distant relative was a fan of "rough sex". I did not ever need to know that.) Anyway! When I saw this particular name come up in my email, I was reminded of one of our first conversations.

Some guy that I was "talking to" (I am still not really sure what this term means) told her I couldn't date him because he wasn't Catholic. Why this would matter is beyond me. Since I'm not Catholic either.

For the next year or more, every time I saw her, she would do the sign of the cross, and say bless you my child. And every time we would all catch the giggles. I'm fairly sure that it's really not THAT funny. But at the time, it was hilarious.

Hopefully I will be one of those moms when my girls grow up.

Maggot? Is That Yu?

In high school, I had a friend named Mon. No really. His name was the Rastafarian word for "man". His "middle" name is Git. Mon Git Yu. We used to chase him around yelling "Mon get you!" Because we were awesome. And 3 years old. Maggot (as we LOVINGLY reffer(ed) to him) is of course, Chinese. His family owns a Chinese restaurant in my home town. The best part of being friends with someone who not only works at, but whose family owns the place means that occasionally you get free food. Maggot's mommy was the queen of forcing us to eat, even if we weren't hungry. If we were to walk in, we got the line: "Ah, you Mon Git friend. You want some food? Some drank? Some fortune cooookie?" Without fail! Still randomly happens to this day. (Maggot's mommy is adorable. And we've heard only talks to Budha when she is drunk...) Last night, I went to get Chinese food for the Hub's birthday. (He's old now. 26.) I went to our favorite place around here, just outside one of the gates. After I ordered our "usual" (2 orders of cheese wontons, 1 sweet and sour chicken, and 2 orders of General Tso's chicken) the cute little old man behind the couter asked: "You want egg roll? You need egg roll. I make you one for free." And I can't help but think that some how, he must be Maggot's relative! **I enjoyed the egg roll very much. And did not share with my kids. Because I'm mean. And he said *I* needed the egg roll. Not them!**

With Friends Like That...

I started this post so long ago, that I don't remember what Erica and Holly said to me that made me remember this particular day. But they were mean, and so this is the story from my past that shows I'm always friends with the mean girls. (Even if I am the meanest of them all!) Down the street from my dad's house, on the way to my friend Jephie's house, there is a little side country road. One night, while leaving Jephie's house, my friend Tam and I saw a flashing white light that looked to be on top of radio tower. But radio tower lights are RED, so we had NO CLUE what this was. Being ever the nosey people we are we decided to follow the road, and see just what this light was. We drove for about an hour, before I had to be home for curfew. We realized, at that point, we were LOST. No clue where we were. So a quick call to my dad, who worked for the state highway department, for directions (how this man EVER knew exactly what we were talking about is beyond me) got us home. However, we were NOT done with this adventure. A few nights later, we filled Tam's car with the five of us who were really good friends, and took off to find the light. It took us three hours, and we finally found it. In some field, in Walnut Grove, Indiana. I am still not sure if Walnut Grove is on a MAP of Indiana. On the way to the light, we just kept "driving towards it". There was no direction, and by the time we found it, we didn't know which way was which. We didn't even attempt to find out where the thing was. It was literally down a dirt road, in the middle of nowhere, and we were POSITIVE a murderer lived in the shack at the foot of the tower. (We were 16, what did we know!) Trying to find our way back home became the real adventure. No one had a cell phone, and we could only guess as to which way "town" was. We drove around and finally found some houses, randomly at first, and then it was almost like a couple little neighborhoods. Looking for a house that had people awake at 1130 at night, on a Sunday I believe it was, became the next mission. The first house we arrived at, had a bunch of dogs milling around, none that looked "harmful". Christy and I were the ones sent to the door. We didn't make it to the door. We could see in the windows, and there were several animals taxidermied on the wall, and a few dogs chained to a tree that started barking and flipping out. This set the other dogs into a frenzy, and Christy and I couldn't get back to the car fast enough! Once we did though, we found that our "friends" had already locked the doors to the car and were ready to just leave us. This wasn't enough. We then decided to stop at a nice, friendly looking house. Again, Christy and I were sent to the door. This time accompanied by Mehndi. We knocked on the door, and it was never answered. We could see lights and the TV on. A teenage boy popped his head up from the couch, and never answered. What teen boy in his right mind, or his wrong one at that, wouldn't open the door for three real hot chicks? One with huge boobs? Who ignores that????? Stupid hillbillies!!! The third house we stopped at was MUCH more helpful. There was a party going on so drunk people were going to be REAL helpful! The owner of the house came to the door and we had the following conversation with him: Mehndi: Can you tell us where we are? Guy: You're in Tipton. Why? Mehndi: Can you tell us how to get to Shantyville? Guy: Sure! Where are you coming from? Me: (quietly, while not looking directly at him) Shantyville... The guy IMMEDIATELY starts laughing like it's the funniest thing he's heard in a long time. And after calming down a bit, gives us directions on how to get back. Even after all of that, I still had to call my dad and ask him for directions from a gas station. Again, where I thought we were going to be killed. We made it home. And the next day at ...band practice... I got to tell everyone how my "best friends" tried to get me killed. With friends like that, who needs enemies?!