Tuesday 10/10
Yesterday, Brady suggested a “walking tour of the mall” to celebrate Columbus Day. The two of us were having breakfast at IHOP when she got this idea, so I responded, quite enthusiastically: “Yes! We’ll get our homecoming dresses!”
“Uh, Deel,” she said, “I’m talking about the, uh, MALL— the reflecting pool, Washington Monument, Jefferson Memorial, those grassy fields in front of the Smithsonian museums?”
“Yes, of course, right you are,” I said, laughing robustly. “But who was it that thought up the idea of calling that place a ‘mall’? I mean, there’s NO shopping anywhere. Except maybe those guys selling watches on the street corners.”
“The word ‘mall’ just means a public walking area,” Brady said.
“Okay, then, very interesting.” I said. “So how about this for an idea: We go do a quickie thing at that mall—like see the Columbus Memorial, say, to celebrate this holiday —and then we hop the Metro to the REAL mall!”
“First, there IS no Columbus Memorial on the Mall,” Brady said. “And second, I have no money, and I’m planning to just find something in my closet that’ll work for the dance.”
“Well, Brady, I don’t know for sure, having never been to a homecoming dance, but I’m thinking that ‘semi-formal attire’ doesn’t usually include clothing with numbers across the chest,” I said (quite cleverly, in my opinion).
“Har-har,” she said (not very cleverly, in my opinion). “But I’m kind of sick of shopping, anyway.”
(Can you believe her level of apathy?)
And then she also added (as if this were what we were talking about), “Speaking of numbers, I’ve been asking my coach if I can change my jersey number. I’m hoping that will help me get just one hit this season.”
“So, no improvement in the baseball department, huh? I’m sorry I haven’t had time to get to your games lately, but I’ve been very busy with my own very demanding sport,” I said. And then, after a pause, I added, “Did those words really come from ME?”
“I definitely need a new number,” she said. “My batting average stinks.”
“Don’t talk about averages. I hate averages,” I said.
Ignoring that (while, understandably, giving me an odd look), she said, “I’m thinking of 42. Is that too big a number?”
“Don’t talk about 42. I hate 42,” I said.
This made her give me an even odder look, since, of course, that had to have sounded pretty random to someone who hasn’t actually been in my head lately.
Looking to change the subject, I rubbed the large purplish-green bruise on my arm and said, “A dress with sleeves might be best for me.”
“Ow. What happened there?” she asked.
“A tight end fell on me,” I said.
“What, are they falling out of the sky?”
“Funny, “ I responded (laughing at the visual on that). “One of our players—a tight end, to be more descriptive—got the idea to start head-butting his best friend, but the guy moved just as he was in mid-butt. So he landed on my arm.”
“What an idiot,” she said. “Who was it, anyway?”
“Adrian. My date for homecoming.”
This made her laugh a little longer than need be. Especially considering SHE had helped me with the selection.
(Fuzzy, foggy, dreamy recollection sequence coming up . . .)
It was Friday night, and I had been getting ready for our all-night, girls-only movie and chocolate-a-thon featuring our 17th viewing (but who’s counting?) of our latest #1 favorite movie, Wayne’s World, when Brady appeared at my door with a football helmet in her arms.
“What are we doing with that?” I asked.
“We’re writing the names of each of your football player admirers on a slip of paper, then dropping them in the helmet, then setting the mood for a selection moment, then picking a name out of the helmet,” she said, very normally (as if that particular thing had been done on Planet Earth before).
“I had been thinking we might discuss the merits of each candidate,” I said. Which got her laughing and basically kept her laughing while we made a pot of chocolate fondue, created a large mound of mouth-sized cubes of angel food cake, and began pigging out on the couch in my basement.
In order to refill our trough and get more fizzy water and do whatever else we needed to do, we paused the movie at the usual spot: in the middle of the scene where Garth and Wayne are lying on their backs waiting for the plane to land. We always try to hit the pause button RIGHT when the plane is DIRECTLY over them, when they’re in mid-AAAAAHHHH!!! (It’s an art to get that just right.)
Later on in the movie, I realized I had forgotten to visit the “little girls’ room” during that break, so I told Brady we had to pause it again so I could go upstairs, but she grabbed the remote and said, “Stairway denied!” Which resulted in a bit of a wrestling match that Brady was winning until I spied my trusty Sharpie pen on the floor nearby. I picked it up, took the top off, and began drawing pictures on her leg.
Brady HATES it when I write on her body, so when she realized I was “getting creative,” she stopped wrestling me and looked at her calf. It was quite cutely decorated with an alien head.
“You think you’re funny, I guess,” she said.
“Yes, I am the Wayne Campbell of our little pair,” I said.
“No, I don’t think so,” Brady said. “I am Wayne.”
“Uh, whose basement are we in when watching this movie?” I asked.
“Yours, but that’s just because my house doesn’t have a basement,” she said.
“Exactly my point,” I said. “And who is the cuter of the two of us—the Robo-babe, the Babe-raham Lincoln—as opposed to the brainier, weird-looking one. Huh?”
“Are you suggesting that I am like Garth?” Brady asked.
“Yes, I am,” I said. “And I think you’re even starting to look a little like him, you know, the way people start to look like their dogs?”
This resulted in another Brady lunge, but I held up my Sharpie, which made her instantly calm down.
(I guess the Colonel is right! The pen IS mightier than the sword!)
And even though I would reach over occasionally and pat Brady on the head and say, “That’s a good little Garthy,” she remained on the couch until the end of the movie—or all three endings, actually. After the last one (the “Mega-Happy Ending”), she leaped up and said:
“It’s . . . the SELECTION MOMENT! And for the right mood, we’ll need an aromatherapy candle.”
“For the guys in that helmet, we’ll need something WAY stronger than that,” I said.
“So why are you considering any of them?” she asked.
“Some are cute,” I said. “In a football sort of way. And, anyway, my best date—VU—is not available.”
“Who?” she asked.
“Vu,” I repeated.
“What does that mean?”
“Doesn’t it mean ‘you’ in Italian?”
“No, I think that’s ‘tu.’”
“Okay, whatever. Now I’ve forgotten the point I was making.”
“You wished you could go with me to the dance,” Brady said. “And I kind of feel the same way, actually.”
“You want to go to the dance with you, too? Or, tu, too?” I asked, trying to be funny, in order to cover up my sudden enthusiasm over this unexpected comment.
“We just aren’t hanging out as much lately, you know?” she said.
“But you do want to go with Giulio, right?” I asked Brady, while my brain tried to channel to her: SAY NO, SAY NO, SAY NO.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “It’s just that I’ve been wondering lately if maybe, you know, Giulio is kind of, uh, the reason I’m not getting any hits this season.”
“Oh, like having a boyfriend is sort of a Superman-and-Kryptonite thing and sucks the energy out of you. Or like a LEECH, or maybe a VAMPIRE. Right?”
“Uh, no. I’m just wondering if Giulio being at games is giving me the bad luck. I don’t know how to tell him, but I wish he’d skip going to just one game, so I can see.”
“When’s the next one?” I asked.
“Wednesday night.”
“Well, okaaay,” I said. “It’ll be a burden, Brady, but I’ll distract your gorgeous, Italian dream machine for the eve. Consider it done, and may the night be a big hit for you.”
“Very punny, and thanks, Delia,” she said. “One thing, though: BEHAVE.”
“Don’t WORRY,” I said. “No matter what random thoughts might enter my mind on matters of Euro-hotties you drag home with you from Mediterranean cruises and then immediately keep for yourself, I wouldn’t act equally greedy and try to steal him or anything.”
“Okay, then,” she said. “Let’s get the homecoming helmet and see who’s date-worthy for you.”
That’s when I picked Adrian. And I told him the news at Saturday morning practice. Which, looking back, probably prompted the whole head-butting incident—obviously a happy, triumphant gesture. Until it went wrong. On my arm.
So—to make a short story really, really, really long—I bowed out of the “walking tour of the Mall,” claiming I needed to spend the afternoon on my couch, icing up my football injury. Which I did, for five minutes, until I was successful at convincing my mother to take me dress shopping.
I found an excellent little black number. It has sleeves, which is good, but the dress doesn’t quite work with the shape-shifter bra—something I’m glad to report. I am SO retiring that thing. I would soon be needing a guy-swatter.