We’ve been friends a really long time which tells you
a lot about the lengths I’ll go to when it comes to loyalty. I mean, I pray for
her, of course. Somebody has to. I just wish somebody would pray for me
whenever we get together. I could use it.
Pam is a first-rate prankster and I, apparently, am
her buffoon. For example, she loves to shop, but she is no ordinary shopper. She
never buys anything herself. Instead, as we roam around Home Goods together, she
drops bizarre items into my cart when I’m not looking. She hopes I won’t
notice, not even when we reach the register, and that I’ll actually pay for those
things and take them home, eventually realizing her contributions were awesome
and that what I most wanted in all the world was an anatomically correct cookie
cutter shaped like a man. She thinks I was dropped on my head as a baby, too.
And she still owes me five bucks for that disgusting baking implement I never
meant to buy.
Once, as we drove to Hobby Lobby, aka Pam’s Promised
Land, we stopped to pick up a couple of drinks at Starbucks, which is Nirvana
for me. She was ahead of me in the drive-thru and when I reached the window,
the somewhat nervous acting barista told me my drink had been paid for by the person in the car ahead of me.
“Oh, that’s so nice,” I replied. “That’s my friend,
Pam.”
The barista didn’t smile or nod. She just kept her
eyes on me as she handed over the beverage straight-armed and then quickly
closed her window. Well, maybe she’s a new hire at Nirvana, I thought. We can’t
all be extroverts. I met up with Pam in the Hobby Lobby parking lot and thanked
her for paying for my drink.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “I told the barista to be
careful when you drove up because you’d just been released from a mental
facility.”
I still haven’t returned to that Starbucks.
It’s taken me years, but I finally figured out that
the best way to avoid being humiliated in public was to stop shopping with
Pamela. It’s not that hard to do since she lives a few hours south of me, yet
still, somehow, I was slow to settle on this solution. I think it finally came
to me in her favorite craft store, Michael’s, one afternoon. Pam calls me “Red”
because I used to pay good money for that hair color which has now gone gray, and
I call her “Smalls” because The Sandlot is one of my favorite movies
with its plethora of sarcasm. Since Pam has given me ample opportunity to actually
lose my mind, I often remind her, “You’re killing me, Smalls.”
We got separated in Michael’s that afternoon, which was a blessing because that meant the only items in my cart were things I had placed there. I didn’t know where she was and that’s how I wanted it. It was not how she wanted it. Suddenly, over the intercom, a woman’s voice broadcast throughout the entire store, “Red, your party is waiting for you at the checkout counter.” Like I was a toddler and had lost my mother. Or like my name is actually "Red."
I abandoned my cart and fled the store, followed
closely by Smalls who had no idea what was wrong with her idea.
Reminiscing here about this relationship, I’m starting
to get a little itchy, the way you do when you hear the drone of a mosquito flying
around your head. Those pesky things don’t hang around because they think you’re
fun. It’s a warning that their talent requires a victim.
There’s more. Like the annual Christmas competition we’ve
held for the last twenty years to see who can transform last year’s homemade
monstrosity into something entirely new and potentially clever while remaining decidedly
cheap. Pam is the queen of craftiness in more ways than one and her imagination
knows no bounds. But it should. There are laws.
It all began with a massive Christmas ornament I gave
her. A gilded frame with a lovely photo of me which I’d turned into a necklace.
She wore it in a Starbucks while I stood beside her, frightening yet another barista.
The next Christmas she replaced my photo with hers and made it the centerpiece
of something best left forgotten. It was the last time one of her Christmas
gifts to me even resembled what I’d created the year before. I have proof. There’s
an album on my phone of every disturbing present ever received from her. I
titled it, “Pam’s Brain.” It’s dark in there.
One year she gave me a Styrofoam hand with a bouquet
of poinsettias glued to its painted fingernails, heavily glittered along the
base with my name attached in bright pink foam letters. I pulled it out of a
Christmas bag while we were seated inside Starbucks. Immediately I was
surrounded by a couple of random customers who “ooh”ed and “ahh”ed over it,
asking Pam where she’d found it and gushing insanely about its inherent beauty.
I was speechless, suspicious that the whole thing was a Tik Tok set-up. When
they left, Pam admitted she’d begged them to behave like that while I’d gone
off to the restroom. The con artists. They should be ashamed. I hope they got
coal in their stockings that year.
A couple of Christmases later, after dismembering my
classy rendition of a bird nest where the repurposed sparrow was nestled inside
a pair of gifted yellow rubber gloves à la Pam, she created a terrifying
caricature that I can only assume was a self-portrait of her inner soul. She used
a short, white pedestal for the body with another Styrofoam head glued on top (made
up like a super model), the familiar yellow rubber gloves hanging off the side for arms, little
rubber baby doll feet, a teeny tiny black hat atop stringy golden strands of
hair, and the everlasting bird propped on its shoulder. When I brought it home,
it scared my dog. I rescued the bird and threw the rest of the Wednesday Adams
wannabe in the trash.
See what I mean? Dark. Very very dark.
The next time she returned the bird to me, she glued
it onto a six-foot wicker giraffe equipped with a sign that read, “The Blue Door,”
a guide to the casita I live in on my daughter’s property which Amazon drivers can
never locate. This gift at first seemed thoughtful. She wanted me to place that long-necked planter in my front yard
to help with my deliveries. She said. What I think she really wanted was for my
neighbors to believe that I escaped from a mental facility. Her motivation remains a point of contention between us, especially since she became attached to it and named the giraffe Gertrude. I stuck Gertrude in the rear of my garage for the next year where it still drove me to
distraction. I gave it back to her the following Christmas in a much-reduced
form. I cut off its head and mounted it on a wooden plaque. Her husband is an
avid hunter and their home is filled with proof of the deceased. Now she has a
head of her own, which is good because I think hers is defective.
By now, you may be thinking I’m being too hard on Pam.
She’s just got a good sense of humor, you say. She picks on me because she
loves me. I’m too sensitive. Laugh a little, Eula – life is too short. Well, today is
my birthday and a few days ago I received a birthday card from Pam. I thought she was so thoughtful to remember
and make sure it arrived here on time. Birthdays are a little harder now that
Rob isn’t here to celebrate, too, but friends and family come alongside me. Despite her strange love language, Pam remains a loyal friend to me and her card sat in queue with a couple of others waiting to be
opened this morning. I texted her that it had arrived and thanked her for her
thoughtfulness. She told me I was welcome.
I should have known.
This morning, also Mother’s Day this year, I treated
myself to a Dunkin’ Donut breakfast and iced coffee, brought it home and sat
down in my recliner to enjoy while I watched tv. Afterward, I picked up the
birthday cards I’d received and began to read them. There was a flowery version
from a longtime Toastmaster friend. And a butterfly decorated birthday wish from another sweet friend who lives nearby. And Pam’s. I slid open her envelope and was instantly glitter bombed. Metallic, pink glitter in every size from normal to microscopic
exploded from the envelope’s interior, covering my blouse, my hands, my freshly
vacuumed floor. Overhead, the ceiling fan joined in the celebration, blowing
pink stardust all over the side table and down my jeans. I never even pulled
the card out. All of this was just peripheral damage.
I took the card outside—carefully—and stood barefoot
on the sidewalk to shake it out, brushing off more sparkles which, on this
breezy morning, blew back in my face and decorated my toes. Afterward, the
outside of my house matched the inside. I think this is revenge for killing Gertrude, the Blue Door giraffe. Now my house is pink.
I returned to the kitchen and ran water over the card
so I could at least read what Pam had written. It was sweet and full of confidence that she'd chosen the right color of glitter. It’s still drying on the counter
beside my kitchen sink which is now pink and sparkly, too. And then I sent a
photo of my blouse to Pam and thanked her for the birthday glitter which, I told
her, went well with my outfit.
“You’re welcome!” she wrote back. “Happy Mother’s Day!
Did it get into any food or drink? That was my goal.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
Last year, Pam and her husband moved half an hour
south of where they used to live. You would think the extra distance would give
me peace of mind. Not so. Not until DOGE makes good on their promise to eliminate the United States Postal Service and protect innocent bystanders like me from
devoted friends like Pam.
If only I’d known earlier what’s behind her
fascination with low tech terrorism and disturbing Christmas presents. I think I've figured it out.
I think she's an operative for the Taliban.
