Later in the week, on an absolutely awesome afternoon, Cool Girl and I head to the boardwalk.
I’m thinking she needs me to carry her books all the way home for her. But she just wants to sit and talk.
About the future. You know: college, kids, an NFL career, the Boston Marathon.
“I’m also thinking about the Roller Derby,” I say. “After I have a couple of concussions playing football, of course.”
“Of course.”
She rocks her wrist and hits the start button on her stopwatch.
Yeah, we do the five-minute funny-free deal every now and then. It’s a little like truth or dare, only we don’t ask each other stuff like “If you woke up one day and you were invisible, what is the first thing you would do?”
“Okay,” she says. “I have to ask you a serious question.”
“I know. I heard the stopwatch beep.”
“Jamie?”
“I wasn’t being funny. I was just stating the facts.”
“But with a tone. A funny tone.”
“Fine,” I say. “No more tone.”
“Okay. So.” She braces both her hands on her knees. Hesitates. “I’m kind of curious….”
“Okay.”
She hesitates some more.
I get the feeling that this is a tough question for her to ask. Which probably means it’ll be even tougher for me to answer.
“How do you take a whiz?”
“What?”
“Can you, you know, pee?”
“No,” I say sarcastically. “I’ve been holding it in for two years. That’s why I make that sloshing sound. My bladder is one gigantic water balloon. Stand back—I’m about to blow.”
Totally embarrassed, I make a hasty retreat.
I mean, it’s just too weird. “How do you take a whiz?” “Can you pee?” Who asks questions like that?
But once my face goes from code purple to somewhere closer to my normal skin tone, and my ears stop burning, I realize: That’s exactly why I like Cool Girl so much.
She says whatever is on her mind whenever it happens to be there.
With her, there are no soft or squishy words. No special treatment for the kid in the chair.
And absolutely, positively no editing.