Peer Pressure, Ain't It a Bitch?

Well, folks you must all be wondering why we're here. If you're not wondering, then why are YOU here? I  suppose it's a moot point, I'm here and it's nice that you're here.  

Anyway--I'm here because my best friend decided that all the inane stories I tell her on the phone needed to be shared with the general population.  Also, I need a creative outlet. Oh, I could paint I suppose, but I'm a horrid painter.  Or I could take up skeet shooting, but living in a city, that doesn't seem like the best idea.  Don't get me wrong, I have things to do that I love when I'm not working. I read, I bake, I randomly break out into song in my kitchen, but I need something more.  So, here I am.

In honor of my best friend, Christina (you'll be seeing a lot of her name here), I give you the story of New Years Ever 1999.

Winters are cold "as a witches thorax" in Philadelphia, so we are pretty limited in our New Years Eve plans. We can't really slut it up the way they can in warmer climates, not that either of us would (me being a homegrown, American chubby girl and Christina having good taste), so we took Option B.  What's Option B, you ask?  A private party at a family run establishment where everyone knows our names--and yes, they're always glad we came.  

Having been promised a designated driver to get us home safely, Chris and I partook in a few shots courtesy of the bottle of Stoli I'd boosted from my parents' wet bar and the lemon we'd snuck up to her room.  Then, feeling warm and tingly via the lemon drops, we proceeded to the bar. After several more hours of drinks and a ride home (while trying to keep up the pretense that we weren't drunk) from Chris' mother, we decided that it was a good idea to go to bed.

Now, 84% of drunks would fall asleep on the floor, right? Well, not these drunks.  After a few moments of testing which direction the room was spinning in, I was informed that there was a futon mattress in the basement! "If we carry it up here, you can sleep on that!"  

I thought this sounded brilliant!  Don't judge me. I was 18 and had a fifth of Stoli in me. 

As stealthily as possible for two intoxicated teens, we picked our way down two flights of stairs and found the futon.  It really did look comfy and in hindsight, I was probably drunk enough that I could've slept in the basement and not cared, but alas, the plan was in motion and so were we.  

Together, we heaved and hoisted this hunk of dead weight up the basement stairs.  Once there, we pulled and tugged our way to the other stairs, all while trying to stop the giggles and jokes about moving dead bodies.  That was when everything changed! 

For the second leg of the journey, that mattress took on so much extra weight! It was suddenly so heavy and only now, over ten years later do I realize two things...

1. Gone were our liquid muscles

2. Gone too was the adrenaline rush that goes with the booze and giggle fits...

I soon realized something else, though--We had an audience. Yup, Mrs P was home from ferrying the rest of the drunks home and was now watching up try to pull a mattress up her stairs.  We looked at one another and made a pact right there, to try our best to look or at least act sober, and at the time, we thought that we did a pretty damn good job.  Ahh, to be young and ignorant to my own shenanigans again.

Finally, after a lot of work, we made it to the bedroom and into our jammies and bed.  

It's a story that we still tell people and it's one that still amuses us to no end, although we may be biased.

I learned something that night. After six years of friendship I learned that she is truly my person.  In the words of those dopey bitches on Grey's Anatomy, "She's my person. If there was a dead body in my livingroom, she's the person I'd call to help me move it."  Surely, if two 18-year-old kids can move that mattress, we could move a body. Either way--She's my person and that's what got me here.