Moose in the Kitchen

After a day that alternately fascinated me (exhibit A: sitting in the California Supreme Court chambers and learning about the dueling habits of the first justices in 1850) and sapped my will to live (exhibit B: a lesson on the three branches of government), I was told to hie myself downtown. So hie myself I did, having no clear idea where I was going, or even fully comprehending that it was St. Patrick’s Day. Until I stopped walking toward the ball park (whoops) and started walking downtown. Only to find an alarming number of tipsy people and a green be-hatted cover band performing something that sounded suspiciously like Vanilla Ice.

I took one look at the sea of inebriated 20-somethings swaying to the music and the rhythm of the Bud Light sloshing in their plastic glasses and thought, “I am way too old for this shit.” Convinced I was going to regret my decision to venture forth after a long day of legislative pop quizzes, I started plowing my way through the crowd. The line into the bar – not to buy a drink at the bar, but just to get through the DOOR of the bar – wrapped around the building. I sighed and waited in the shuffling crowd.

In some twist of fate – or maybe a St. Patrick’s Day miracle – Laura walked through the very door I was staring at, handed me a beer, and suddenly I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather be doing with my evening.

Laura is one of my very best friends from college and, until last night, I hadn’t seen her since the summer of 2001. We’re almost a decade older and she’s had a baby girl, but we picked up again like barely a week had passed.

We walked out into the crowd, where the last of the sun was shining between the tops of the brick buildings, and started dancing. “Is this how the kids are doing it these days?” I yelled, raising my arms and performing some gyration, impressive only in that I managed not to spill my beer with the force of my twitching. Judging by the looks from the two girls behind us, that is most certainly NOT how the kids are doing it these days. Or any days ever in the history of human locomotion.

Laura threw up her arms and pulled the same move, twisting like a baboon in a bar fight.

College in New York was one hell of an experience – and not because it was comfortable. Manhattan, with its panhandlers and incomprehensible subway lines, was daunting for a just-turned 18-year-old who’d never lived anywhere but the suburbs. Together we plowed our way through museums and slices of pizza and last minute papers. Laura helped make college feel like home, and I like to think I did the same for her.

At school, Laura introduced me to Prairie Home Companion and fried zucchini. About three hours ago, her younger sister introduced me to jello shots. The kind that stain your teeth green. Thirty years old and I only now understand the ceremony of a jello shot. I didn’t take one, but watched the proceedings like there was going to be an exam. Because YOU NEVER KNOW. St. Peter may have been a party boy – and I’d hate to be left standing on the other side of the pearly gates just because I didn’t know what to do with vodka and gelatin.

Laura lifted her cup to the sky and yelled “To babies!” I raised mine with everyone else and then yanked it down so fast the beer sloshed out. “I’m going to jinx myself if I toast to something like that before toasting to, I don’t know, finding a man.” After all the talk of birth control and unwed mothers and epidurals (Laura and her friends are midwives and nurses), the implications of such jinxing was vaguely terrifying. “THAT WOULD BE VERY BAD,” I added as they rolled their eyes at me.

But according to Laura, I’m covered. Waiting at the bus stop last night, she informed me she has some super-master-juju that lands good husbands for her friends. If you’d seen what the woman can do with zucchini and a frying pan, you’d believe too. She instructed me to go home and make a list of what I wanted in said man and she’d wave her magic juju wand for me. A few minutes later she said, “When you’re a mother, you’ll have a blend of Zen-like common sense and slightly insane twitchiness.” She lifted her shoulder to her cheek like a strung-out junkie with a tic in demonstration.

“Well, that’s pretty much how I live my life,” I replied. “So, yeah. It follows.”

We understand each other. Few things are better than that – especially when you realize you still understand each other, ten years later.