Page 49 - You can't Make This Shit Up!

Like a fine wine...
January 10, 2018
“As in the case of wines that improve with age, the oldest friendships ought to be the most delightful.” - Cicero
I just returned from a weekend in San Jose with my best friend Jen. I have been best friends with Jen since sophomore year of high school. She is “my person”. Jen, Amy, Becky, Kim, and Marisa, were the very first friends I made when I moved to California.
Becky “Bubbah” and Amy “HP McBee” are the yings to Jen and my yangs. We have shared so many memories in the past 31 years it is near impossible to pick my favorite.
When I moved from Long Island I was 15 and starting my sophomore year of high school. My parents 20+ year marriage imploded and I ended up moving to Saratoga California. Saratoga is a city in Santa Clara County, directly west of San Jose, in the San Francisco Bay area. It is also known as Silicon
valley. Picture lots of trees and big beautiful homes. It’s where my mom and I landed just two days before school started. My mom’s oldest sister, my Aunt Lorraine had a home there, and she was relocated to Japan with my Uncle, so mom and I moved into the master bedroom of their house. (My Uncle’s two boys were also living in the house, which is in and of itself a blog for another time.)
I had never really left Long Island at that point in my life. I did visit California once when I was 7, and the only thing I remembered was getting stung by a wasp. So everything was unknown and new. I also had NO idea I had an accent!!! And it was the 80’s, 1986 to be exact, so you can only imagine my culture shock. Valley girl was a real thing back then. People had a curious way of speaking. Instead of saying “she said” or “he said”, it was “she’s all” and “he’s all”. I thought I was being made fun of. I couldn’t believe anyone really spoke like this. And coming from Long Island, I didn’t only talk different, I dressed different too! I couldn’t believe that 1. The high school was all outdoors, and 2. how small the lockers were (where did everyone put their huge winter coats? duh) and 3. In this very affluent new town kids were wearing jeans with holes in the knees and flip-flops to school!!! Shocker!
There were more strange things. Lunch. In New York you had to schedule a lunch period within your day schedule. In california everyone had lunch, at the same time. And you could leave campus and go to fast food, or your house, or anyone’s house! Sometimes we even had a band that would play in the quad to entertain us during lunch. This was mind-blowing stuff for me.
I first met Becky in PE. She had HUGE bangs, and a perm, and freckles. She was EVERYTHING!! We were paired up to do a lip synch to “Respect” by Aretha Franklin. She introduced me to Jen and Amy, and the twins... Marisa and Kim. We were the 6 pack from then on. Ridiculous goofy girls who smoked clove cigarettes, and drank beer on the weekends from kegs. We were hardly “wild”. An exciting night may or may not include driving around listening to Genesis or Richard Marx, and ordering a “single slice of american cheese” at the drive thru at Carl’s Jr.
We all navigated high school together. One of the funniest and most retold stories of high school is when we walked directly through a HUGE track meet. This story pretty much sums up how clueless we all were.