If Crazy calls, tell her I went out for cigarettes

Have you ever conjured anyone up? I think I did. And I don't even believe in this, but I knew this guy who did and he was pretty convincing about it...

When I was growing up, my parents had this friend named Stephanie. She was a little kookie, even for the 70's. She was about 6 years younger than my mom, but acted significantly younger because she was chronically single. (A year or so ago we could have also called that "my life") She met Mom while Mom was working for the government and somehow they stayed friends even after Mom's surgery and everyone else fell off the planet.

Stephanie had this fabulous apartment in Hague Towers in Norfolk and I used to just LOVE to go and visit her there. She was just so interesting to me and she considered ME interesting. I was like the daughter she couldn't have, so she just got to be friends with me. She eventually married this horrid man named Fred (are there good men named Fred?) and I became a teenager, so our little friendship pretty much faded. The last time I saw her was when I graduated from high school and she came to the graduation party that my parents threw and was going on and on about this wonderful man that she had met who was extremely wealthy. And this was around the time that she drifted away from Mom and Dad or vice versa -- who knows?

Well, recently I was in Norfolk (with Scott's best friend actually, on a "football widow date") and we drove by the Hague Towers and for some reason it summoned up the memory of Stephanie. I wondered whatever happened to her and why the fallout with my parents and so forth. It was just briefly, but apparently enough to send the cosmic message.

When she called, it almost wasn't even surprising. She gave me her maiden name and asked me if I remembered her and I assured her that I did. It was unbelievable -- she just started going on and on and ON about all the good times we had had together and how she has been thinking about my mother and wanting to get in touch with her and how she called last year and Dad never returned her call. (Which isn't surprising.) I caught her up with the family news (this is what you do when you're older, apparently -- trot out the dead and the living to re-examine whenever you see someone you haven't seen in a while... What happened to so & so? Dead. Divorced. Missing. Whatever.) She's still married to the Jewish guy that she apparently got right with Jesus because he goes with her to the First Baptist Church in Norfolk every Sunday, Heather -- "you should go, Heather. We'll go this Sunday. And then I'll take you to lunch, just like I always did." Okay, Crazy.

It's just unbelievable to me how people pop into your life after years and years away (I mean, she's been gone so long she didn't know that Grandma had died and Grandma died in 2000, and then talking about "I loved her", puh-lease) and then try to act like they've never been gone. She told me all about her crazy life -- their house is so big she usually puts up 18 Christmas trees. EIGHTEEN, do you hear me? That's a small forest, that's not Christmas. She has 7 cats and they all have 2 names. She has never gotten a gray hair yet and she's 54. That pissed me off, since I'm only 30 and I've got 'em. She offered to throw me a wedding shower. Can you imagine?

C-razy! I emailed my mom and let her know that Crazy was trying to get in touch with her and if she didn't want to see her, well I would probably have to change my phone number. She was kind of scary, the only reason I'm not too concerned about her stalking me or something is because she doesn't know how to use their computer so she wouldn't know how to mapquest my address.

Thought I would share, because it was a bizarre thing. Next time -- stories from the Atkins Diet Warfront.

love you!
HP