friday night conversations

Rose: "So, basically, I have to get a second job and the first 800 dollars I make is going to my parents."

Rose and I have been friends since before I can remember. She says she was out shoveling snow with her dad in their new neighborhood, and I was across the street at my house doing the same thing with my pops. She came over, asked if I wanted to be her friend, and the rest was history. We have the relationship that only close girlfriends can share, one that is strengthened by the fact that it took root in the early stages of our life when we were completely innocent.Those were the days before we knew that broken hearts physically hurt or that life is full of amazingly diffcult decisions. Before we found out that people die, that the world stretches far beyond the boundaries of our old neighborhood, and that love is not in fact all we need.

When we lived together, our little house that was shared with the other point in our triangle of codependancy (shout out to bestie numero dos Mini-J) became a homey little den of emotions and general irresponsibility. Por ejemplo (is that real Spanish? is it??), there was the year neither of us had the money to renew the tags on our cars, so we just...didn't. This non-payment led to problems, namely, we lived on an extemely busy street and with only one driveway spot one of us ended up parked on that street everyday, which of course led to multiple parking tickets. There were also the numerous arguments and deep, irritated sighs about who got to park in the driveway ("but I got three tickets last week and I don't have ANY MONEYYYY"). As you have probably surmised, the parking tickets didn't so much get paid as forgotten about under car seats with lost diet coke bottles and used as decoys that we put back on our windshield to avoid further ticketing.

This would be why Rose now owes her parents a cool 800 bucks. I guess she never went ahead and paid any? of those tickets, got a big 'ol boot on her car, and had to shell out nearly a grand to get it removed. Let that be a lesson to all of us irresponsible car owners. Naturally, after she told me about getting a second job as some sort of homeless youth counselor I asked what that would entail. "Oh, they give me a van. So I am going to drive around in a van all day and try to convince kids to get in it." The previous statement is humorous for a number of reasons, but mainly because it was spoken without a trace of joking. "So you're keeping the refugee after-school program, too?" I asked. "Yup. The one where I walk around the halls looking for black kids and then trying to get them to talk to me."

I couldn't make this stuff up. Well, actually...I certainly could. But that would be so stupid.