Jenny was a nurse I worked with for a time in my late twenties. She was a skinny, pretty blonde girl, same age as me and we shared the same unique brand of humor. We had a pretty perfect friendship as far as friendships go. We had a lot of adult sleepovers and early on she adapted our weekends to my social anxiety filled life by taking up crafting. We would spend hours loom knitting scarves and watching “It’s always sunny in Philadelphia.” The interesting thing, was that our slumber parties generally took place at her parents house. The reason? Jenny was engaged to and shared a house with Adam, a NYS Trooper, with absofuckinglutly NO sense of humor. This guy wore business socks, because he always meant business. Despite spending some weeknights and every weekend joined at the hip for a few months, I had yet to meet Adam. My only encounters had been via cellphone and both times they were purty bad.
My first Adam cellphone encounter started as such. Jenny had given me a sticker to put on my car so that if I got pulled over, I wouldn’t get a ticket. The only draw being, in order to use my magic sticker, if I was stopped, I’d have to give the officer who stopped me the name of the person connected with the sticker…..annnnnnnd then they’d call them. That’s just what happened when Jenny and I were in my car and I was doing 80 mph racing some friends to a movie première. Yeah. I’m kind of a big deal hair toss. Needless to say, Adam wasn’t impressed with that initial contact via angry ticket ready cop.
The second Adam contact made, was equally as bad. Jamie and I decided to take a 6 hour car trip to and from Brooklyn so that I could adopt a cat and she could adopt a puppy. Both of which were out there in the same 20 mile vicinity. NO BIG DEAL, right? Wrong. Because she decided to tell Adam about the trip when we were already over half way there. He freaked out and demanded to know who she was with. Jen mid fight, thrusts the phone at me so that I will confirm her alibi. He spent the following 10 minutes accusing me of being a dude, before I dropped the phone back into Jenny’s lap and stared out the window. Single glistening tear cascaded down my cheek as I wondered if I do in fact have the voice of a man. I don’t. It’s very lady like. I have the voice of a Goddamned angel. When I talk glittery unicorn vaginas descend from my tonsils and deliver my words on a bed of pink roses. Fucking Farva.
Ok. So those are the two calls, but when, you ask, did Adam and I actually meet? This is my fave. Jenny wanted the meet and greet to go well with me being her lady and Adam being her man, so she arranged a whole adorbs barbecue thing at her house. The attendees would be herself , myself (we both dig me) ,her parents (who LOVED me) her dogs (who ADORED me) and Adam (whom would ideally learn to tolerate me, given enough burgers and time.) Adam and the Jenster shared a small house down a winding country road on a hillside. It was a relaxing drive out and very picturesque upon arrival. The one and only thing that Jenny hadn’t planned for was where everyone would park. There would be her car, Adams car, Adams trooper mobile, her parents car and then mine, being the last to arrive. Everyone had managed to shimmy into the medium-sized driveway leaving me with no place to turn into. As I looked around I thought “I’ll just pull onto the lawn, as it’s the country and it isn’t a perfectly manicured situation that Jen will freak about. Totally fine.” The ground was dry and flat and I could see everyone thru the front window in the living room as I pulled onto the grass.
So, remember how I said the ground was flat? Yeah. I lied about that. The thing about these windy picturesquey looking roads is that a lot of times they have drainage ditches on either side to keep things happy and dry, but when the weeds grow to the same length as the mildly unkempt lawns it could give off the appearance of being a level ground. No sooner had I turned the front wheels than I was suddenly peering out my windshield at nothing but dirt. My headlights were tipped into a sea of rock and the ass of my vehicle was reaching for the sky. It happened soooo fast that I just sat there for a moment stunned. I was ok, no injuries outside of bruised pride and I’m sure all kinds of future costly repairs.
When I opened the door to climb out it slammed open, hello gravity, giving me a little plank to climb onto. I lowered my feet onto the jutty pointy rocks and I popped my head up to peak over the edge of the ditch. I could still see the front window, but amazingly, not a single person had turned around. Honestly I didn’t make much of a sound when I fell down the rabbit hole, it was just bumper meet dirt and rock, thuddy sound married with an expensive sounding crunchy metal noise. I didn’t have a charged cellular phone, as I suck pretty hard at adulting, so without anyone taking notice of my heinous miscalculation I was forced to pull myself out. I grabbed at weeds and dirt, digging my flip-flops into the rocky sides to push myself up. Once out, with my bloody feet, and dirty everything, I approached the door.
I’m smiling to myself right meow because I’m remembering Jenny, 2 seconds before I knocked on the door, turned towards the window and caught a glimpse of me. The look of bemused horror on her face was so so good. Naturally, Adam opened the door, I smiled at him as I felt little dirt clods raining down from my hair onto my eyelashes and cheeks.
Me (with a big forced toothy smile) HI!!
Adam (furrowed brow) what….the……FUCK!!!!
Ahhhhhh, my first impression. Nailed it. Adam shoved past me and slow jogged across the lawn. He looked angrily at my cars trunk (the only visible piece) and snarled at me over his shoulder. Now, Jenny and her parents were gathered behind me, laughing and snapping pics as they took turns patting my back and brushing dirt and grass from my body.
A fair amount of hostile side eye from Adam was received as he pulled some rope from the trooper SUV. He fastened each end to either vehicle and attempted to pull the car out on his own, snapping the rope twice and only succeeding in angering him further. I stood there, cold, shivering and surrounded by whispery giggles as I quietly examined my mangled big toe. Adam yelled at Jenny about her idiotic friend who couldn’t drive for shit, but she just laughed and laughed, so he yelled some more.
I quietly mentioned to Jenny’s mom that I had triple A and she kindly relayed that information along to Adam for me, as I didn’t feel like he was really receptive to my input in that moment. He called the service and we were all relieved to find that their was a team in the area. The father-son duo showed up minutes later, first getting out to look at me, look back at my poor tipped golden Malibu, back at me and then turning around to conceal their laughter. But I heard them chortling, and the son snapped a quick pic before jumping into the hole to assess the situation.
After some time, it was decided the car being completely vertical and having an uneven resting spot on some rocks would make it nearly impossible to pull out. They came up with a sketchy looking blue print of how they would build a plank underneath the car (with stones and some wood from the truck) then they’d tip the part of the front of my car that was not touching anything onto it, lean the belly of the car back onto the ditches inside, and THEN they could yank it out, trunk first. Not really feeling very involved in the car saving process I was pretty worried I’d be riding ye olde bus, sooner than later. Much to my delight, after only a few failed attempts and scraped up mechanics, the car was out with only some mild bruising. Unfortunately Adam was called into Troop work, and so he was unable to join us for the bar be que.
That’s ok I thought, because I felt like he got a pretty good idea of who I am and what I bring to the table.
Pretty polar 