Shitty Karma

I had lunch today with my oldest and dearest friend Allison. We met at a restaurant in my hometown so my mom and I could ogle her brand-new baby. After laughing over the trials and tribulations of motherhood and giving overdue hugs and "I love yous," I began to reminisce. I started to think of how far we've come as adults and the lessons we've learned together since our middle school years. I then realized the most important lesson we (or more so, I) learned very early in our friendship: that sneaky bitch, karma.

It was the summer before our freshmen year of high school. We already had our first-day-of-high-school-outfits picked out and had already hashed and rehashed our plans for the upcoming year. We called dibs on boys for each and every dance, figured our best route from locker to locker between classes and made a game plan for how to get out of riding the school bus during our last pre-driver's license year. To put it bluntly, we were bored. Summer had lost it's luster and we were itching for something more exciting to do than sit around her room calling boys who we heard hit puberty during the last couple of months. We came up with a plan.

As you may already have gathered from my blog, I grew up in a small town, and Alli's house epitomized small town. She grew up on a dairy farm. We both spent many summer nights milking cows and this was where the idea for our summer entertainment blossomed.

One day before my mom dropped me off at her house, I ransacked my mom's closet for old purses while Alli did the same to her mom's castoffs. My mom wondered what was going on but was easily convinced that we were having a rummage sale and I needed to turn a quick profit.

So, upon getting to Alli's house I raced inside, said a quick "hello" to her mom and then dumped my loot on Alli's bed along with her collection. We were ready. So, we stuffed a garbage bag full of fringed, stonewashed and studded bags and started down her winding driveway.

Halfway through our trip we stopped by the cow pen. We whipped open the bag of bags and grabbed a shovel, precariously filling each satchel with manure and then gently putting them back in the garbage bag and heading back down the drive.

Now, Alli lived on a country highway with very deep, grassy ditches. So we would place a purse in the middle of the road and climb in the ditch and wait. We wouldn't wait long, maybe five eager minutes, suddenly having to pee and dying to see what would happen. Oh, and were we ever brilliant. Nearly 95% of passerby came to a screeching halt and grabbed the bag. Most of which, would take off like they just won a hillbilly lottery only to be severely dismayed about a hundred feet down the road. They would each do the same thing, scream "You *@#%*#(@*# kids!!!!!!" and squeal away. Meanwhile, Alli and I would squeal with laughter in the ditch, rolling in the weeds doubled over with glee.

Some would get so furious we would get scared for a quick second, sure were were busted. But, they would just fling the purses in the woods in a fury and we would just pick up and start over again after they tore away. This went on for hours, and maybe even days if I remember correctly. Each stop becoming more hilarious than the next. We were Laverne and Shirley, Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and Sundance...we were unstoppable.

Well, like all good heists, this one had to come to an end. And for me, the end came the day before my freshmen year. I woke up to quite the kick in the ass: I was covered head-to-toe in poison ivy sores. Even my eyelids were weighed down with the pus-filled itch-factories. My mom took me to the hospital where I was put on steroids and lathered with creams.

Needless to say, I missed my first day of high school and wasn't exactly the cat's meow later that week when I returned with my bottle of calamine lotion and a case of what, I'm sure, everyone deduced was scabies.

And if any of my readers were or know someone who fell for my childhood shenanigan, know this, he who laughs last, laughs loudest.