Best Friends: Common Sense Not Required

*Disclaimer* PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS BLOG CONTAINS THINGS THAT IF YOU HAVE NO SENSE OF HUMOR OR ARE EASILY OFFENDED, YOU SHOULD NOT READ!



As most of you who know me know, my best childhood friend is Julianna Cole.

 We have always, and when I say always, I mean the past 22 years, been best friends and we probably always will be.  It's a funny thing though because we are complete opposites.  Granted, we do have a lot of the same taste in music (for the most part; she likes rap and I like oldies and alternative stuff), but we are very different girls.  She is slender, skinny, but very active and athletic. Me, well, I'm curvy and lazy. HAH! She has always had long, thick, beautiful curly hair. Mine was curly as well, but I have cut it through the years, which has straightened it out quite a bit. She was raised with, shall we say PRIVELIGES. I was blessed, but she has been very well off her whole life.  I have been working since I was 17. She hasn't really ever had a real job before.  

But the point of this blog is not to note our differences, it is to note that we are both very smart girls.  But sometimes, we lack MUCH common sense. 

Let's start with the Tanning Bed incident, shall we?

Picture if you will, me, driving in my little red ranger on a beautiful sunny spring day. I'm about 17, listening to the radio, jamming out, when I get a phone call from my dear friend, Miss Julianna.  The conversation goes as follows:

Julianna: Lia, hey I had a question and I wanted to ask you because you're the only one who won't laugh at me....

Lia: Oh Lord, here we go.
(She was always asking me the funniest things. Why she thought I wouldn't laugh at her, I had no idea. But I couldn't wait to hear what she had to say)

Julianna: haha, yea. So, I've started going to the bed recently. I've gone about 3 or 4 times now and everytime I leave, I notice that my back is really really tan, but I'm getting nothing on my front.

Lia: (trying to hold back laughs, only imagining what's coming next) Yes....

Julianna: Yea, and so I got out of the tanning bed today and I had to lean on the bed to put my clothes back on....

Lia: Uh huh....

Julianna: ....and well, the top of it, it moved!

There was a long silence because at this point because first of all, I'm silently cracking up, and second of all I'm trying to figure out what the hell she means by "the top" of it. Then I figure out, to my dismay, she has to be talking about the LID!

Lia: yes....it does that....? What's your question?

Julianna: Well, am I supposed to lower it down over me while I'm tanning?

Oh. My. God. Yea, I couldn't hold the laughter in too much at this point. But, I still tried through laughter to say....

Lia: Yes, hun.  When you lay in it, the bulbs you're laying on get your back, and the top of it gets your front.

Julianna: Okay. THANK YOU! I LOVE YOU!

Lia: Yup, anytime. Love you too.

*click*

Lia: HOWLING WITH LAUGHTER!!!!!! LOUDLY!!!!


To this day, I don't and never will let her live that down.


Proceeding to exhibit B.

I guess I should have started with this first since it happened first....but I couldn't wait to tell of the tanning bed =P (Can't you tell I LOVE my best friend?)

This incident has to do with MY stupidity.  We're about 14 years old at Camp Caswell with our church youth groups.  We were at that age where Mother Nature just started her regular visits.  Now, my mother wasn't comfortable with me using tampons at such a young age, and neither was I. I didn't understand why women wore them.  But I soon found out that they were a whole lot more comfortable than I thought.

Our churches were very close in location to one another in town.  So, since we were going to the same camp on the same week, we decided to follow each other down.  It was about 8 hours away from home....it was on the coast of NC, near Wilmington, right on the beach.  It was July 2003, very hot outside and it was definitely BIKINI season. 

Because Mother Nature had paid me a visit on my vacation, I wasn't quite sure how I was going to go swimming.  How do you swim in a pad? Had I been brave enough to wear a tampon, I could most certainly go.  But again, how do women STAND to wear tampons?  It was totally beyond my belief.

I went to her church's cabin to meet up with the girls of her youth group so we could all put our bathing suits on and go.  Well, except me of course.  The conversation went something like this.

Kim: (Julianna's mom) Lia, sweetie, why aren't you going swimming?

Lia: O, well, I just started my period, so I can't. It's okay though. I can just lay out. 

Kim: What do you mean you can't? Why don't you wear a tampon?

Lia: They're just uncomfortable

Kim: Really?  Why? Are you putting them in far enough?

Well, by this time I'm blushing.  This was just taboo for me to talk to my mom about, much less my best friends mother, and all the other mothers there.

Lia: Um, I think if I put it in further it may hurt.

Kim: (Looking puzzled) Are you putting it in right?

Lia: Well, I think so.

Julianna: here (handing me a tampon) Go put it in, and then walk out and tell us how it feels.

Lia: well, okay then.

I go into the bathroom and put the thing in.  God, this was so embarrassing.  Why were they doing this to me? After being in there for a while, reading the instructions, following them (or so I thought) I walked out, wobbling, with something sticking out from between my legs. Yup. It looked like I had grown a penis.

All the ladies just stared at me like cows looking at a new gate.  I was humiliated.  Why were they staring? And why didn't any of them look like I did?  Where were their fake penises? 

Then it occurred to me that I had to be doing something wrong.  Julianna's laughter confirmed it.


Julianna: NO WONDER IT'S UNCOMFORTABLE!

Lia: What are you talking about?

Kim: Lia, (laughing hysterically), honey you're supposed to push the cotton UP....you're not supposed to leave the applicator in there....

Lia: The cotton? What cotton?

By this time, every girl in that cabin was cracking up at me, the moms included.

Julianna: There's a cotton thing inside the applicator, Lia. You never noticed that?

Lia: No, not really.....

So, needless to say, I had a tampon lesson that day, right there in the cabin.  From that day forward, tampons have been one of my best friends. =)


Fast forward about 6 or 7 years. We were 19 years old. I had moved to Orlando, FL and started working at Walt Disneyworld.  Had just moved into my first apartment and who was my first guest? Julianna of course.  Her mom gave me a 100 dollar gift card to Wal Mart as a house-warming present, and food for the week Julianna would be staying there.  So, among food, and a few other knick knacks, we got some cheap salt and pepper shakers and the cooresponding ingredients. For some odd reason, perhaps the excitement of having my first place, my own kitched utensils and appliances, and getting to do things MY way for the first time ever, I couldn't wait to go home and start using those salt and pepper shakers. 

We ended up getting ground pepper, which, for that particular pepper shaker was the wrong kind.  But, I figured, hey, pepper is pepper.  So what if it's messy when it comes out? We got the right salt, but putting it into the shaker was an adventure indeed.

Picture if you will, two 19 year old girls, standing in the kitchen, yapping away.  Me, opening my new appliances and getting the salt and pepper ready to put in them.  Nothing could possibly go wrong with this, right?

I turn the salt shaker upside down to apply the salt, because the hole was on the bottom, and I couldn't apply the salt from the top, right?  Right.  So, I start pouring the salt in.  Again, Julianna and I are talking away.  At one point, I look down at the salt shaker to see the progress it's making in filling up.  It's not filling up at all.  As I look down farther I see my mistake, but not before I saw a HUGE pile of salt hanging out on my counter. 

I look at Julianna. She looks back at me. And the laughter begins.  I guess I should have closed the holes, or put my hand UNDER the holes....but I just didn't think about it I guess....

This was after we had cleaned most of it up.......

So, yes....Julianna and I are best friends.  We are very different. But when it comes to common sense, we are just about the same; but I wouldn't change it for the world.....=)