My sister and I used to live together, somewhere in our early-30s. It was a damn good time; and when our sons were away on the weekends, as sometimes happened, we’d use the quiet time to get loud.
Shots of vodka and Rollerblades. Do you have any idea how well these things go together? A drunk on skates has no fear and no compunction against, saying, skating to the grocery store to get smokes.
It’s also how we both learned to spin.
Karen and I are dancers, “happy” drinkers, and we’d crank the music up and dance, leaving the room only to answer the phone or go to the bathroom.
I remember going into the bathroom and coming back to see her head in the fridge. There was an odd “pssssssssssst” sound coming from its interior.
“Whatcha eatin’?”
“Come ‘ere! Come ‘ere! Wanna know something really tasty?” She holds up the Redi-Wip container. “Open your mouth!!”
Ah, why not?! I open my mouth and Karen fills it full of whipped cream.
“Hey, you wanna know something else cool?”
This makes me laugh. If shooting Redi-Wip is cool, what else is cool?!
We sit on the floor in the kitchen and open a cupboard, whereupon she reaches in, all the way to the dark, secret recesses of the back of the cupboard, and pulls out a box of saltine crackers and one of those cans of pre-made fudge frosting.
“Put this on ‘ere. Try it.”
Well hot damn, if fudge frosting isn’t good on a cracker!
“Whatcha eatin’” became a joke. We would call each other at work, leaving whispered messages on voice mail: Whatcha eatin’? We would yell at each other through the bathroom door: Hey! Whatcha eatin’?
One day, I am downstairs cleaning the litter box. Exhausted from a day of work and preceding days of cleaning houses, I sat on the floor, hunched over and brain-dead, sifting through the litter box using a large slotted spoon purchased just for such occasions.
Karen walks by me, glances, keeps going – and then stops, backs up to take a second look.
She has a sly grin on her face.
“Hey there, Pearl," she says. "Whatcha eatin’?”
The simplest memories are the best.