Unless You Want a Piece of This, Keep on Driving

There are several things in life that I carefully guard: my marriage to Joe, bottled beverages (it's a backwash thing), and my relationship with my best friend of nearly ten years. It isn't that I try and keep Jessica from having other friendships. It's quite the opposite. Apart from attending the same church, we each have our own circles of friends without much cross-over, and apart from our ongoing g-chat conversations, the daily happenings of our lives are mostly independent, and look very different. Regardless of our differences, we enjoy our rich history, traveling and eating together, laughing, talking about boys, and processing life's struggles together. There aren't many secrets we keep from each other, and if we make it to 85 and are living as old maids, we'll likely get houses side-by-side because we've done the roommate thing before and would probably both agree separate living quarters would be healthier. However, given genetics, I'm likely currently training Joe for his replacement bride at ripe age of 75.

For most of our friendship Jessica and I have been fairly intentional about celebrating birthdays with a lunch or dinner. Over the past couple years, that tradition has been thrown a wrench here and there, but yesterday we made up for it with a day trip to Wilmington for lunch at The Riverboat Landing, formerly known as Ron's Riverboat Landing or just "Captain Ron's" in my book. We've been to Wilmington several times over the decade, and hadn't visited it together in four years. We'd somehow managed to make it through our mid-twenties without realizing that so much life was passing and we were struggling to recount our travels over the years - what year we did San Fran and what year we did DC.

The entire trip was just humorous to me even from the drive down. There is something about I40 on the way to the beach that breeds funny conversation and inevitably awkward drive-byes. At one point, the car in front of us began to merge into another car in the right lane. The right driver veered towards the edge before the left driver noticed it and then over corrected the vehicle. As we passed the car on the right, I gave the driver a sympathetic shoulder shrug as if to say, "I have no idea what she was doing," which greatly flattered the driver and his three other passengers who all appeared to be young high school males with shaggy hair. We passed the other careless driver, who had finally safely merged over to the right lane, and saw she was a young brunette overly engaged in a phone conversation. We then got in the right lane as well, having cleared all the crazies.

Then it happened - the dreaded leapfrog check-out drive-by, where we were passed by a car full of high schoolers wanting to give us a second look. Jessica was oblivious to the whole thing as I sassily said, "Okay you are 17 going 18 and I am 29 going on 30. Unless you want a piece of THIS (waving my hand dramatically around my pregnant belly), then I suggest you keep on driving!" Jessica paused in shock thinking I was sassing her about her driving and simultaneously insulting her for not having children and a spouse before erupting in laughter upon realizing I was talking to the other car.

After a time of shrimp and grits and shopping, we were walking back to the car and this 22ish male came huffing up the sidewalk behind us. I instinctively clutched my bag and turned on my stone-cold face and whipped around to look at him while keeping up my original pace. He slurrily stammered, "Uhhh, my little brother and I were, uhhhhh, wondering if you two ladies would care to join us at the whiskey bar." Jessica kindly rejected the offer to which he replied, "Awwwwww man, you're breaking my heart!" Once out of ear shot we once again busted out laughing. Whiskey bar? Seriously? You must understand - my belly is large. We were doing absolutely nothing to attract attention. Most likely we were both waddling from bellies full of shrimp and grits. Additionally, all afternoon I'd been commenting on how much older we seemed than the green-clad kids who were there to celebrate St. Patty's weekend.

But looking back on the trip, this was just par for the course for my times with Jessica. She's quite good looking and I can always count on random propositions while with her, no matter how uninvited they may be. In the end, it's all fodder for conversation and laughter on our next trip.