I had a friend through most of school from the time I was five on. We attended school together in the first grade, until I moved away to the city next to hers. But our moms helped up stay in touch throughout grade school, and we finally ended up in the same building during middle school, at which point we had drifted a bit. Her household was uber-Christian, to the point of not celebrating Halloween (this is borderline child abuse, if you ask me, the godless communist). This made her turn out pretty sheltered, so by middle school having a conversation with her was like having a conversation with someone a couple of years younger than me.

(As an aside: my household was the opposite of this. One of my earliest memories of being taken to the movies was going to see a Dirty Harry flick. Most of it was boringly violent, and violently boring, but what sticks in my memory is a prostitute giving old Clint a blowjob. I didn’t know any of this at the time. I pieced it together later. I must’ve been about six. Then there was Robocop when I was eight. My poor sister was taken to see the sequel ten years later when she was eight or nine, and it scarred her too. Did I mention that I had horrible nightmares as a child? I am protective of my girls, but…no Halloween…versus dirty-cop blowjobs…I guess what I am trying to say here is, find some balance, people!)

ANYWAYS, my friend was lost to me during middle school, because a fellow orchestra nitwit I went to grade school with latched on to her. So I would see my friend in the halls occasionally, small frame dwarfed by her cello case, thick as thieves with Nitwit (second-chair violin). I was banished to bandland with my Fronch horn, so we didn’t cross paths much.

By freshman year, things changed. My friend had a falling out with Nitwit, and remembered how much fun I was. We made plans to go on the big biology fieldtrip together to the enormous aquarium in Chicago. It was the typical public school outing: permission slip, fee, money for a fast food lunch, and a day of mostly-unbridled freedom. We were both heavily into the Violent Femmes and sat in our bus seats with our heads smashed together, sharing one set of headphones. Gordon Gano’s whine seeped out of the walkman’s earpieces, causing the popular kids who only knew about top-forty music to peep over the seats and give us incredulous looks.

We got bored about halfway there and decided to start taking pokes at the other drivers racing down the Kennedy towards Chicago. We ripped off the heavier cardboard backing from one of my spiral notebooks, and she found a marker in her backpack, and we got to work making a sign.

The sign had two sides. We held the first up to the window and gestured frantically to any driver who was currently keeping pace with our bus. What could these panicked-looking high school girls possibly have to tell them, as we all careened down a four-lane freeway at 60-plus miles an hour? Once we got their attention, we would make certain they read the first side:

We would then point to their back tire and look stricken. We would watch in delight as the driver’s eyes, and sometimes the backseat passenger’s, would turn into three perfect “O’s.” You could see forty-ninety-twelvedy separate thoughts rush through their heads all at once. What? What about their wheel?

We would then flip over the sign so they could read the rest of the message:

This provided hours of entertainment, on several fieldtrips we took together. Sometimes we got a dismissive wave and a laugh, and sometimes we got flipped off. In hindsight, I think we deserved worse. When we wanted some variety, we would alternate with a sign that read “Your keys are in your door!!!” Most people would look.

In Other News

Via Manuel, Postsecret. This site is so sad. This was my secret, but I’m 27 so I beat her by a whole year. Except it’s not a secret anymore. I will tell anyone I meet. I might even stand on my balcony and shout it down to the street tonight, if I eat enough Goo-Goo Clusters first.