My car is full of useless items. If you look in the trunk there are random shoes, jackets, a comforter, a pillow, some towels, discarded (and thankfully, empty) drink cups, books, random papers, and basically anything else you can imagine a college student who lives out of her car during the day would need. Today I was searching through newly washed car (meaning it has rained a little during the past few days and the blanket of filfth that usually masks my windshield was no longer present) at six in the morning, trying to gather a few school books when a familiar looking car pulled up to my house. It was a friend of my mother’s (why she was at my house that early, I have no clue) came up to say hello while she took a glance at my mess. She asked me if I had just gotten back from that trip I had mentioned to her a few weeks earlier (trip???) or if I was getting ready to leave. I should mention that I was not fully awake yet, and my general appearance made this fairly obvious. I was, in fact wearing an old pair of pajama bottoms and a faded old cross country sweatshirt with my hood on, and I was sporting the unwashed “I just woke up and coming out to the car was LITERALLY the first thing I chose to do” look. So yeah, I was looking and feeling pretty good at the moment that she asked me this. It took me a while to even realize why she was asking, but when it finally did register I started laughing pretty hard. Unfortunately, my laugh was not of the nice, light hearted fashion. Instead, I decided to make myself look less strange by breaking into a coughing fit in the middle of my laughter while I tried to explain that I was actually just needing to finish some writing before my class later in the morning, but I do not think that she got the point. My mom came out of the house at this moment, so I thanked the friend for making my day, and she walked away with a confused look of relief on her face.
I wish I could say that this is the only embarassing thing that I have done in front of this family friend, but I have known her since I was four. I was the annoying kid announcing what time it was and how tired I was from the backseat of the car at every instant I found convenient while she and my mom tried to have a very serious conversation in the front seat. I was the kid in her sunday school class who sucked up and thought she was better than everybody because she was best friends with my mom. I was the kid who wanted to be a good host one time when she and her sister came over to “my house” (I was possesive of my parents belongings borrowings) and made them a sandwich out of cilantro (unwashed and attached to the stems), wonder bread, and nothing else. She was the first person that I explained my method of making real spaghetti in the microwave (I was not allowed to use the stove) to. She was also the first person to learn that I would pretend to be sick so that I could stay home, make said spaghetti, watch Ghostwriter, and bake cakes (since ovens are so much safer) while enjoying my solitude. I was introverted even back then at age nine! Additionally, this woman is the one who knows pretty much everything about me having to do with boys, school, puberty (14!!!!! WHY?!? [sorry, inside joke]) because my mom has felt the need to shake these details out of me and share them with this friend (and my Aunt who I believe I will be seeing in a few weeks, yay!) with the purpose of ruining my life. Or because she loved me and knew that 10 years down the line, I would willingly be involved in the dangerous world of computers, would pay rent to have a place on the world wide web, and would need something to write about, something that all of the creepy old men in the world could read.
Just thought that I would share. Do any of you have a family friend like this? One who you love, have known for years, could talk to for hours, but would pretend you did not know if they tried to tell anybody that for fun, you used to swing back and forth on your bedroom door? I know I cannot be alone, on the family friend situation as well as on the swinging door thing.
