Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Confidential to Courtney because it's her birthday. Also, maybe don't ever let me take you shopping.


So there was a place in time where I wasn’t always the shining, glittery, totally-have-my-life-together being you see before you today. I know, right? The mind reels. But it’s true, and there are a handful of people out there who were with me during the not-so-awesome or glitteryyears. Like the years when I had the rockin’ bangs, the years when I wore sweatshirts that would fit Shaquille O'Neal , and the years that I thought it was totally appropriate to be an adult and own this t-shirt.


Also, there were the years that I used to wear bows in my hair that also doubled as wings.


And one of the people who has been there with me since basically Day One-ish (and also never pointed out that I looked ridiculous, even though it’s kind of totally out of character for her not to do so) is CourtneyAnd in honor of her birthday – or as we like to refer to it, the day she got even younger than last year – I am going to share with you one of my favorite all-time Courtney/Becky memories. There are a lot, as we all know, so it was hard to choose.  But here goes nothing.

A few years ago, Courtney decided that she didn’t believe me when I kept saying “No really, I’m fine!” and instead decided to fly from Michigan to New York a few days before Christmas so that I would have someone to drive back to Michigan with for the holidays.

I know, right? I’m not that nice, for the record. I don’t know where I find these people. However, her visit quickly turned into something that she very overly-dramatically calls “Hey, ‘member that time you tried to kill me in Chinatown?”

Anyway, since we had a few days to kill before the big drive through really interesting Pennsylvania, I decided to take her on a little sight-seeing tour. And by “tour,” I’m pretty sure I took her to, like, the Panera Bread down the street from my apartment, most likely the A&P, and then to Chinatown. You know, because that’s where anyone ever wants to go.

In my defense, she totally wanted to go there!

And she had a very specific purse in mind that she wanted to buy, and I was all like “Oh yeah, I see those everywhere, no problem, we’ll definitely find one.” And then two hours and a McDonald’s pit stop later, she was pretty convinced that I’d actually never been to Chinatown and maybe also didn’t even really live here.

But then it happened: we saw a very similar purse hanging outside of one of the billion storefronts, and so I immediately dove inside to ask the woman if she had the exact one Courtney wanted. And of course she did, but it was in the basement cellar – where all of the really good purses always are, you guys! – and she started going towards the back to retrieve it. And so I followed. Oh, also, the woman helping us didn’t speak any English, and so we were totally guessing that she actually had this purse in the cellar by deciphering all of the really fast hand gestures and words we didn’t understand. I saw no problem with this.

For some reason, though, Courtney was a bit hesitant to follow the totally up-and-up sales clerk into the cellar when she motioned for us to go downstairs with her. It made no sense to me, as the very obvious voice of reason between the two of us, and so I pushed Courtney in front of me towards the cellar stairs:

Me: “Go ahead, Court! Go get your purse! I’ll wait here. ”
Courtney, looking up at me as she got onto the first cellar step towards her death as the woman continued to enthusiastically hand gesture about purses: “I’m going to die in a cellar in Chinatown and you’re just going to stand there?”

And then I just laughed and laughed and laughed………

But whatever, she totally got her purse. Also, Courtney was obviously wrong that there were dead bodies in the purse cellar and that we would end up on the news. Well, not me, because there was no way I was going down there, but Courtney definitely would have been on the news and then maybe we’d be famous for being really, really stupid. Like the Kardashian’s.

Anyway, the moral of the story is this: Courtney is a much better friend than me in that she’s never actually tried to kill me in Chinatown – or anywhere, from what I can tell – and only sometimes tells me when I’m being totally stupid. Like the time I responded to something she said in the affirmative with “True ‘dat” in college and then she slapped me with her eyes and told me to never, ever, ever say that ever again because I was a pasty Irish girl from an upper-middleclass suburb in Michigan who knew how to speak English properly.

Also, Courtney sometimes thinks she’s the boss of me.

Happy birthday, Court!

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