Made for Mischief

PART I: Currently Playing : Muse

I always get a little nervous when my best friend since First Grade and I set out on a trip together.  We’ll call her Carmen Sandiego, or just Carmen for the sake of ease. Carmen and I have a long history of inadvertently causing trouble.  It’s not that we set out to find it.  Trouble it appears, sets out to find us.

THE BACKSTORY

St. Paul, MN: 1984
Our friendship begins at The Convent of the Visitation School.  Two little nuns in the making…or so our parents hoped.  The fact that we are soul sisters is apparent to both of us the moment we lay eyes on one other at the tender age of 6.  Our connection becomes more evident when we realize we were born 4 days apart.

Carmen and I are inseparable.  The kind of best friends who drive everyone else around them, crazy.  We have necklaces.  Carmen’s half reads BE FRI.  Mine, appropriately, ST ENDS.  I draw pictures of us on swings.  We insist doing everything together, including starring as kola-kola birds in the school play, The Elephant’s Child.  Our sole role is to hide behind a wall and pop up on cue, making crazy kola-kola bird noises.  All we can usually muster, is an uncontrollable fit of the giggles.  Needless to say, our classmates have to suffer through several long rehearsals.

Apple Valley, MN: 1987
Carmen and I take a leisurely afternoon bike ride in the suburbs.  We’re 9 years old.  On our way home from getting movies and candy at the local Mr. Movies, high on sugar, Carmen gets pulled over, yes folks, pulled over on her pink, banana-seat bike complete with streamers blowing in the breeze from her handles and cut-off straws on the spokes.  By an actual cop.  In an actual cop car.  Why was she pulled over?  No, not for looking like a jackass.  Not for riding without a helmet.  But for riding her bike on the wrong side of the street.  I’ll never forget the feeling of helplessness, standing on the other side of the road, watching Carmen cry as the cop wrote her bike ticket.

Cross Lake, MN: 1993
Carmen, having driven a boat since she could hold a bottle (of milk that is) has never so much as scratched one in her tender 15 years.  One day, she took me troll-la-laaing on a lake cruise and as we set out from the dock, her father gave us one disclaimer: “I just had the boat refinished.  Whatever you do—do not scratch the boat.” I think you can see where this is headed.

As we take a dip in the crystal clean waters of the Whitefish Chain, the clouds turn dark and in true Midwestern fashion, a storm rolls in—complete with thunder and lightning. 

So we quickly finish shampooing our hair (don’t ask) and head home.  As we dock the boat, we suddenly get slammed into the lift.  Carmen swears it was rogue wave. 

The scratch is of course, right next where you insert the gas pump.  So in other words, impossible to conceal.  By the time her dad gets home, we have come up with too many hilarious alternatives to the story and all we can do when he walks in the door is burst out laughing.  Initially he  thinks we’re kidding because we can’t keep a straight face.  Needless to say Carmen has to give up quite a few allowances that summer.  

Iowa State Univerity, Iowa: 1994
We go to visit Carmen’s sister during Veishea, also known as Greek Week.  We stay in the sorority house and our itinerary includes fraternity party after fraternity party after fraternity party.  It’s my first time meeting Carmen’s then boyfriend (current husband), a handsome Italian-Irish lad, who at the time as a spry young man, exhibits some behaviors only I feel I’m allowed to have for Carmen: primarily jealousy and possessiveness. This is the moment “Bear”, as we’ll call him, realizes he will always have to share the love of his life with another woman.  Me.  Needless to say we don’t get along.

St. Cloud, MN: 1996
We head to St. Cloud State University, where Bear attends college.  When we arrive, he is already a little miffed at us for many reasons that he has every right to be miffed about.  The usual.  Us just being us. 

Me being the epic dumbass that I am, didn’t realize I needed an ID to stay in the dorm.  Unable to check in, we are forced to go rent a hotel room.  Bear loves me at this point.  But it keeps getting better.

We take some bus to a rugby party. Cut to: us returning to the hotel room around 3am.  Bear’s friend, Shmuck gets stopped by security for no particular reason as we’re walking through the hall to our room.  Mind you, we really aren’t doing anything.  No noise, nothing.  The guard just stops Shmucky and strip-searches him in the middle of the hall.  Pulling out his Altoids container, he opens it to find not Altoids, but a joint.  One. Single. Joint. 

Shmucky is taken in to custody.  Now, poor Bear is stuck with us and his poor friend is spending the night in jail all because I forgot my ID.  This is also the night, Bear learns of my peculiar habit of waking up in the wee hours of the morning to loudly guzzle a can of Coke in 4 gulps and two breaths.  That skill remains to this day.  I like Coke.  What can I say?  It puts me right to sleep.

PRESENT DAY

Somewhere in between LA and Vegas: April 2011
This is not the first time Carmen and I have done this drive.  In fact, we’ve driven most the country together at one point or another. 

My beloved bosom buddy, Carmen, who has been in LA for a year a half for acupuncture grad school, is returning home to Minnesota for many reasons.  The biggest one being Bear, who obviously misses his wife and is unable to join her out West due to his current graduate studies and business.

The last time we did this drive, it is I who am moving from LA back to Minnesota.  We barely make it past Vegas alive. 

Somewhere in between LA and Vegas:  November 1999
We’re 20.  We’re also, idiots.  It all starts with a Greek restaurant….