So I went Home over the Holidays

So the past year has been rough on everyone, and I personally lost my mom and Sangfroid and my closest college friend lost his dad.  But when I went home to Charlotte the week before Christmas I thought I was out of the woods.  I was wrong.  When I was growing up in Portland, I spent as much time at my best friend M’s (I will use initials because you are all creepers) house as I did my own.  More, probably.  For a few reasons, it was a good place for me to be sometimes.  And on Christmas Eve, his brother died.  Christmas morning, his dad died.

So I know that everyone was thinking about what a tragedy it was regarding Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, and it was.  But it happened to my friend (and me) first.  So after getting bad weather and missed connections I eventually got home to Maine.  Stayed with my brother.  And even though we all promised when my mother died that we would get together BEFORE someone else died, there we were again.  Wakes, funerals, receptions.  But my friend’s dad had had a good run (his brother is a saint and what happened to him was so unfair I can’t think about it) so while everyone was sad, I think everyone was also a bit lifted up because we got to celebrate his life.  You know?

So I was with my friends for a long time and when you are with your oldest friends and there is beer and anyone might bust out crying at any moment, the best thing to do is tell old stories until you laugh so hard that noise doesn’t come out anymore.  Here are some things that I said or heard:

• I fessed up to them all that I had the site.  They were impressed, which I assume will end when they actually read it.
• We tried to remember who glued M’s butt cheeks together.
• We stepped through how M ended up barricaded in the bathroom at G’s house with the heat lamp on hollering that he was burning to death.  He went in there because I was shooting him with a BB gun!
• We recounted how many people we knew that had passed out naked at M’s house (whose parents were ALWAYS home).  Mind you, there was no reason for these people to BE naked.  They had clothes.  They just took them off for some reason.
• If you look at the picture with the numbers on it above, you will see the scene of the BIG FIGHT after a basketball game.   (1) B was standing on the corner and while he was in the process of saying: “I don’t think anything is going to happen” he was sucker punched and knocked cold.  (2) I beat up one guy then this other guy who was old (they were all old and we were in high school but whatever) punched me in my eye and my goodness I think everyone should get punched really hard in the face at least once (not girls) because it will give them perspective.  (3) G ended up in the middle of the intersection, illuminated by cars since the game had just let out, with no shirt with some old guy whipping his leather jacket around at him for some reason.  Eventually, G just said: “Are you gonna fight?” and the guy closed on him and G ruined him because G is a gorilla.
• B, M and G sneaking back to the remains of a keg party that had been broken up by the cops to retrieve their Genessee Cream Ale beer ball that they then snuck into M’s basement and all laid on the pull out couch and just passed the tap back and forth to each other because they had no cups like ridiculous drunk babies.
• M’s mother asking me if I remembered M and me getting drunk on the back porch and her having to put me to bed and her being all worried because I had to give a speech at school the next day.  We agreed that it was quite amazing that I pulled it off.
• Way more stories of people wearing clothes that were way too small for them than I thought there would be.
• 

  Horrible

  M’s brother S keeping his toenail clippings for a YEAR and putting them in a box and giving me the box on my birthday and when I opened it he hit the bottom of the box so they went all over my face and in my mouth and I almost died and literally gagged three times while I was typing this.

• My revenge by taking a microwave pizza box (remember when they had those silver disc things?) out of the microwave, saying “Hot Box!” and then smacking it on S’s face.  It was hot and it burned him and I was glad.
• I admitted to M’s mother that it was me that broke this thing from her front room and even at her age and with her husband and son just dying she remembered and was shocked that it was me.
• Once M passed out and we put weights all over the edges of his blankets, like, 45 pound plates, and then we woke him up and he thought he was paralyzed.

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head that can make any semblance of sense.  There are a million more and I swear I need to get back again before someone else dies. My god I love those people.