It rubs the lotion on its skin

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It had been 25 years since I'd seen my friend Sherry. I was anxious to see her and meet her family. They came over Friday night for a BBQ and sleepover. I was so excited I could barely get anything done. I just wanted to wait at the door like an excited puppy with a full bladder.

When they arrived I couldn't hug them hard enough. Lane 2 and the girls scurried off together like long lost friends, sisters even. They played Rockband, listened to The Jonas Brothers and had a dance party, while Lane 1 sat in on the grownup talk in the dinning room.

I wanted to avoid talking too much about the good old days because Sherry's partner Jessie and my old man would have felt out of the loop. The few old school days we did talk about were two memories, I shared one and she shared the other.

I remember she and I did a lot of walking back in the day. I would walk from my house to hers (nearly a mile) and we would walk together to Harlem Ave. (another two miles into Chicago) where we would go to the dollar movie theater. We'd share a giant soda and popcorn, some times we would have candy too. We would watch a movie and then sneak out of the theater and into another for a second, sometimes a third movie.

We wore oversized hairdos and legwarmers, I'm not gonna lie, we were pretty fucking cool.

And she remembers the two of us stealing her mom's vodka and mixing it with orange juice... and drinking it... on our way to school... in 7th grade!

My son had a look on his face that said, "A - I am disappointed in you, mother. B - 7th frickin' grade?! C - My mom did what?! And furthermore, this is why she keeps us on such short leashes!"

He didn't say a word but I read him well. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't thinking all of the same things.

In my head, trying to avoid the fact that I was a teenage drunken fag hag, I mentally recited a couple of lines of The Breakfast Club, "What's your poison? ...Ok, forget I asked." "Vodka." "Vodka? When do you drink vodka?" "Whenever." "How much?" "Tons."

Who knew I'd turn out to be a basket case? (Shut up!)

By the time the subject changed, we were laughing and joking about everything under the sun. Jessie told Sherry to tell us what happened to them that morning before coming over. Sherry laughed and said, "No, you tell 'em."

Together they shared a story about how having their gallbladders removed has caused them to use the bathroom very soon after eating. Mr. Lane looked at me slyly, as if to ask, "Do I really want to hear this story?"

"We were in the bathroom in the stall next to each other. But Sherry didn't know that next to me, on the other side, there was another woman, also taking a shit."

We all started laughing because who doesn't like bathroom humor?

"So anyhow, the lady next to me starts 'pffft,' like an empty ketchup bottle, 'thhhppppptttt, pphhphphffft.' And Sherry said, 'Where'd you get lotion? I didn't know you had lotion in there.' Quietly, I'm trying to tell her it wasn't lotion, but I was laughing so hard covering my mouth."

Sherry chimed in, "I'm the one who always carries lotion with me, so I was like how'd she get lotion?"

"And then the lady rips one again, 'pphhphphffft, ppppllllllllpppphhhhh' and it's gross, liquidy. I'm trying to hide my face in my shirt and not laugh out loud. Then Sherry says, 'Awww, you know, when I get like that...' I started dying. I wanted to text her and tell her it wasn't me, but I just flushed, washed my hands and got out of there."

By then, we were in tears laughing so hard.

Sherry said, "And after she left, I still hear, 'ppppllllllllpppphhhhh' so I was like, fuck someone else is in here. Oh man! It was someone else the whole time! Why didn't she tell me?"

"I couldn't hold it in anymore, I had to get out of there and when Sherry came out we just laughed our asses off."

Can you even imagine what that woman was thinking? I know I would have trouble not reacting if some stranger tried talking me through an explosive bathroom moment as if they were a labor coach in the delivery room.

For the rest of the night and into the wee-hours of the morning, we talked about anything and everything. Periodically making raspberries, "'thhhppppptttt, ppppllllllllpffphhhhh" at each other. Good times.

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