The Most Intense Back Handed Compliment Ever

This evening I had a second fitting for my bridesmaid's dress for Trigg's wedding. I had to go back this second time because the seamstress didn't like what my brand new strapless bra was doing to my boobs. So I gave in and decided to wear my super uncomfortable one that actually puts the girls where they should be instead of the comfy one that smooched them into a bad place.

As she was repining the dress she said to me "your boobs look much better this week." She meant nothing negative about it, but it reminded me of this story:

The Most Intense Back Handed Compliment Ever

As young 20somethings, my circle of friends and I really enjoyed going out dancing. A few times a year, for special occasions, we would get dressed up to the nines, drive into New York City and go clubbing at the ultimate of all dance establishments, Webster Hall.

One such special occasion came around for my friend's birthday. Her mother's billionaire boyfriend (I might be exaggerating, but he was clearly at least a millionaire) rented us a stocked limo. We got dressed up in a our club outfits and were ready to go.

We were happily dancing the night away in one of the second floor rooms when a random woman approached me. I couldn't hear what she was telling me over the loud music so I pulled her into the stairwell to gain a little insight. And while I was sloppy drunk by that point, I can remember every single moment of that conversation.

Random Woman: Are you a model?

Me: No, sorry, I think you have me confused with someone else.

RM: Would you like to be a model.

Me: Um...what?

RM: You should really be a plus size model.

Me: excuse me? A what? plus size?

RM: You have such beautiful thick legs.

Me: choke...are you kidding me with this?!

RM: No seriously, they are beautiful thick legs.

Me: I need you to stop saying that.

RM: Take my card, call me on Monday, I want you to come down for a casting.

And I do believe that was the day I stopped wearing pink plaid catholic school girl shorty skirts, well out of the house at least.





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Baggage Claim

The people we are today is due to experiences in our past. You can't make it to your mid twenties without gathering some form of baggage, unless you lived in a cave, and then I suppose that too would become your baggage. I've had my fair share of terrible experiences, but then again I've had some great ones as well. Perhaps I am ultimately a pessimist because I can easily see how the negative situations in my life have shaped me more than the positives ones. I look at it more like the good is the foundation of my life and the poor instances are like the mountains of my topographical map, the points that stand out.

I've had boyfriends stop loving me. I've had family be disappointed in me. I've had friends turn against me. I've buried people I've loved. And none of this makes me special. We have all pretty much experienced similar problems in life, the only thing that makes us different is the way we have reacted to our circumstances and allowed them to shape the personalities of our current selves.

After college I was congregated around a circle of friends I never truly felt that I fit in with. They were all generally irresponsible and lived life in a moderate dream world. They had no plans, no goals, no real direction in life. At the time I saw none of this. I knew that I, for a very unknown reason, wasn't as tight with any of the rest of the clique as they were with each other. It was like I just could not break in completely, no matter how hard I tried.

When I was on the cusp of turning 25 the girls grew more distant and even more petty in their own conquests in life. I thought things might be turning around when one of them set me up with their coworker. We got together once. He asked me a lot about my friends, and since I don't lie, I told him the truth. I told him that M was going to leave her newlywed husband. K was damaged from her father's multiple wives and families running concurrently. I told him that L had gotten herpes from her dumbass boyfriend who thought he had jock itch. None of these things were secrets. All of these girls' friends knew these things. I saw nothing wrong with this, when you first meet someone you talk about things you have in common, hence, my friends, his coworker etc.

The next morning I got a phone call from my friends screaming at me for saying the things I had said, how they were inappropriate, how dare I say things. I had been set up.

A few screaming phone calls over the next couple of days, and I haven't heard from them since. Almost five years have passed and my life hasn't ever been better.

I took the fallout of my post-college friends as a sincere sign. I did not deserve this. My friends have always been my world. Friends are supposed to be confidants against bosses, family, bad boyfriends, and other stresses of life, not an addition to those tensions. Friends always had come first in my life and I had been nothing but loyal to them.

Today, the loyalty to my friends still exists. Don't talk smack about my friends, you'll regret it. But I've also matured in my concept of friendship and I've learned to walk away when a relationship with a friend becomes toxic or one sided. Ultimately it comes down to attempting to keep my life as stress free as possible. Friends should be there to help relieve the drama, not create it. I've taken this piece of baggage in my life to create some attitudes towards other people. Some people might take my viewpoints as unforgiving, but I don't think it could be any more genuine.



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Back in the Day

Trigg and I had a great weekend even though she was unfortunately only in New York for less than 48 hours. The main highlight of her trip was a drive over to campus to visit our old stomping grounds. While there are two new dorms and a shiny new athletic building everything else was pretty much the same. I suppose some things never change.

We also had a great time reminiscing about good times, laughing over old photo albums and reading through a three page list of memories we had written just before graduation. My personal favorite memories of the three years we lived together were:

10. Drunken Mario Kart

9. Watching Empire Records at least ten thousand times

8. Hiking back through campus on the way home from the bar in a tank top and 25 degree weather, repeatedly.

7. The night I wanted to do a Power Hour and failed miserably within 17 minutes and Trigg kicked my ass.

6. All combined memories of the porch; smoking on the porch, water balloon fights on the porch, Fat Paul playing the guitar doing "Storytellers" on the porch.

5. The one and only time we got Michelle drunk and we all went for a walk out in the Tripping Fields. She dropped her hat and hurled all over it. She went back for that hat the next day.

4. Building snowmen on the Scudder Lawn

3. Getting mooned by random boys on Rt. 9.

2. Singing "Pour Some Sugar on Me" karaoke at P&G's

1. Trigg's 21st birthday when she pushed me up a pile of gravel, Josh kept yelling at me because I was kicking the board in the radio station and I broke my fingernail off well below the quick on Dorcas' desk drawer. (We were very drunk)

Of course there were bad memories too, like phone calls before noon which always brought bad news like heart attacks and suicide attempts. There were fights of course, because you can't live with one other person in a 15 x 15 room for three years without the occasional bristle, but luckily, the good times highly outweigh the bad.

I guess everyone has memories like these, times when you meet people who will change your life forever. But these are mine, and I'll smile forever thinking back.

Aerials

Trigg arrived this weekend and because of an ice storm hitting the north east her plane was delayed for three hours. I live about two hours from JFK where she was flying in and when I hit the road the webernets said the plane was only about a half hour late, but as time passed it turned into three hours. But my three hours in the airport were moderately entertaining:

• I learned that you should never ever be hungry in the airport. The only vegetarian sandwich they had at the stand in baggage claim was a falafel sandwich, for $9. And it was disgusting so I only ate about 3 bites.
• I ran into my bff from middle school. We randomly run into each other about once every other year, in always random places. But how bizarre at JFK. It was great to see her, I really need to put effort into keeping in touch with her.
• I do not think that it is appropriate to play handball in Arrivals. When I first witnessed this I assumed it was two kids, but no it was a kid and his dad. Way to go dad, teaching your kid some great morals. They played for at least an hour. And they lost the ball about five times. Nothing like being annoying. But alas, I couldn't stop watching them.
• What do you do when city dogs pee on the sidewalk? Obvs you pick up the poop, but what about the pee? I don't really want to walk through a dog pee spot.