Yesterday morning my sister and I packed up our two girls, twenty-five children’s movies on DVD, and a plethora of snack items to head out on the vast expanse known as I-10 to travel to Beaumont, Texas.
P had a discussion with some friends while they were pre-fishing for a fishing tournament last weekend. Apparently you have to pre-fish before the actual fishing can occur. It’s like a warm-up or something, although I don’t know that the fish realize they are only being pre-fished as they’re being pulled from the water with a hook in their mouth.
Anyway, the conversation turned to crimes being committed as a result of people constantly posting their whereabouts on Twitter, Facebook, bulletin boards in grocery stores, or ads in Thrifty Nickel, then criminals using that information to know when the house will be empty so they can break in a rob someone blind.
When he got home he told me that I need to be careful about broadcasting our every move. Let me put you on notice that if you are a nefarious criminal who just read that I am in Beaumont, and you’re now devising a plot to break into our home and steal our sweet low-definition 19-inch television set, P is actually still at home and will most definitely be armed with what could be a pink .22 but is probably something with a little more power, such as a purple .38 Special and an enormous garden spider.
(For those of you who were concerned, I would never kill that spider. I don’t envision us cuddling up or becoming gal pals anytime soon, but she is more than welcome to hang out in my yard.)
Other than hearing “Are we at Nanny’s house yet?” approximately 874 times within the first thirty minutes of the drive, the trip was fairly uneventful. However, I have to mention that we stopped at Cracker Barrel in Houston for lunch and, while we were paying our check, this man standing in front of me complimented me on my lovely pedicure and then went on to tell me that I had beautiful feet.
It was possibly the most awkward thirty second encounter I’ve ever had at a Cracker Barrel or, well, anywhere. In hindsight, I guess I could have complimented him back on his super-sporty satin jacket but words failed me at the moment.
Once we arrived in Beaumont we visited for a while, then headed to Casa Ole for dinner because they hold my heart in the palm of their microwaved enchiladas and green sauce. The Mexican food snob in me hates myself for loving it like I do, but I am powerless to resist its mass-produced charms.
After we got home, I was catching up on the news of the day (Fox News, MSNBC, People.com) and was sad to see that John Hughes passed away, yet it seems sadly appropriate that he died on the eve of my twenty-year high school reunion since his movies pretty much defined my teen years. I mean, who didn’t want to be Molly Ringwald and drive around in a Kharman Ghia, wear odd little crocheted vests, and yell “What about prom, Blaine? What about prom?”, or even wish that you could get detention on a Saturday morning?
For the record, I actually did my share of detention time for excessive tardiness, because my car had a mind of its own and couldn’t make it to school until it stopped for a Coke at the Texaco Quik Mart, and it was never that much fun. There was virtually no crawling around in air ducts or therapy sessions where we all bonded and had new found respect for each other.
Anyway, later tonight I’ll see people I haven’t seen in twenty years and we’ll laugh about the good times we had when we were all part of the Allotropic Forms Club, except that I wasn’t actually in the Allotropic Forms Club because they were a little snobbish about the rules stating that you had to actually take AND PASS Physics.
But I’ll have you know that other than some basic coordination issues, I excelled at Dance Team and serving as part of the dance decoration committee for Student Council. People still talk about our “Winter Chalet” Valentine’s dance decorations and, by people, I mean me.
Actually I don’t talk about it because that would be demented and sad, but I still have fond recollections.
And what kind of high school memories do those kids have that were in the Allotropic Forms Club or the Trapezoidal Tendencies Club? Other than the memory of learning things that got them into Harvard and helped them become millionaires by the time they were thirty?
It’s not like any of those things required real skills like making hearts out of doilies or doing high kicks on the 50-yard line.
But maybe John Hughes was right. Maybe somewhere in each one of us we were a brain, an athlete, a basketcase, a princess, and a criminal.
Of course these days I tend to hover more around basketcase/princess territory, but on the upside my feet have obviously never looked better. I’ll make sure to wear sandals this weekend in the hopes my former classmates will notice them instead of the fine lines I’ve developed in the last twenty years.
Twenty years.
In the words of Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
I’d love to hear your favorite quote from a John Hughes movie if you want to share with the group.
Y’all have a great Friday.