Quirky friends...

Everyone has one friend that is a little different. Not "rides the short bus" different, but odd. Quirky. For most of my friends, I have a sneaking suspicion that *I* am their quirky friend. I certainly have my eccentricities, and that doesn't bother me a bit.

However, like I said, everyone, even a person that's a "little out there" has at least one friend that's a little weirder than themselves. My quirky friend would be Melissa. I have known her...I don't know...maybe 7-8 years now, and she never ceases to surprise me with her antics.

Driving with her has always been an experience. One of the first times I rode with her, she was giving me a ride to the dealership to pick up my car. Looking inside any of Melissa's vehicles, you are surprised *she* even has a place to sit. She loves to shop, and is always finding interesting things. Only she doesn't unload them with any regularity. Her backseats are filled (RIGHT NOW) with Christmas decorations she bought the day after Christmas, in addition to light fixtures (garage sale), dishes (flea market), tiki lights, shoes, a Dutch Oven, bags of concrete, some kind of camel poop that she swears is good for her flowers, and only God knows what else.

I recall this one time, she was driving a Lincoln Town Car. Mike (her very soon to be husband) bought it for her from the previous owner who was...maybe 97 years old. This elderly woman liked to drive around with her 3lb excitable Yorkie...that had a bladder problem. I sat down in the passenger side, and before we made it out of the front gates at work, I could feel my butt growing damp. Hmmm...I sure hope it's water since I am wearing light colored khaki pants. *sigh*

We get to the dealership, I get out of the car...and turned around and asked her if my butt looked wet. She lies about as well as I do. Her eyes looked upwards, her eyebrows went cockeyed, her lips pursed. If she had dog ears, they would have been flattened back against her skull. Yet, she still said, "I don't see anything". LIAR. Well, my butt feels a little damp-ish...is it noticeable? "No, no...you can hardly see it. I am sure that it is just tea or something." Hmmm.

I walk in, pay for my car repair, turn to leave and the kid at the cash register says, "m'am, I think you sat in something." (grrrr...I knew it!).

Another day, we were going out to lunch and she insisted on driving. I hadn't ridden with her in awhile, but she had a new truck by this time. No previous geriatric owners with pet bladder problems, that I was aware of. So, there we are...she is irritated because her kids, despite the fact that they are mostly grown adults, have called her 327 times, needing something, since 9AM. She is talking on her cell phone, smoking a cigarette, with a large cup of tea between her legs and trying to drive with her knee. I won't lie...I felt a little nervous...because we needed to make a sharp right turn. I offered to get the wheel, but she was busy yelling at one of the little heathens and didn't hear me. She mostly made the turn...we totally jumped the curb in front of the gas station, but she hung on to her tea, cell phone and cigarette. That's talent right there. She then told whichever child that she had to get off the phone because she needed to concentrate. No, no. The roads are pretty straight from here on out...you should just keep talking.

She also has a thing about leaving her keys inside her vehicles. Of course, the automatic locks don't help a bit in this situation. I have literally begged her to make a spare set of keys, but noooooo...that would be too easy. One day, we were having lunch at McAllisters. Upon leaving, she realizes that she has, once again, locked the keys in her truck. She told me "no worries, I have it handled this time". Oh good...you finally made a spare key and put it in one of magnetic boxes?

She looked at me like I was crazy.

Out of the bed of her truck, she pulls out a 6 foot painters pole. She had left the windows cracked just enough (even though it was raining) to stick the ridiculously long pole through and hit the unlock button.

Huh. Clever. You know a spare key is much more compact.


I won't LOSE a painters pole, now will I? Beats the umbrella we used last time, remember? Or the coat hanger the time before. And we didn't even break the window this time.

You do make a compelling argument, I'll give you that.

Eating out with her is always fun, as well. I am not saying she is demanding, she will be the first to tell you that she just wants things how she wants them and why settle for less? I have seen her send sandwiches back for being tainted by a tomato, or something else on there that she found unappealing, rather than just taking off the "offendee". I keep telling her that every time she sends it back they are making her a "special turkey club". She just doesn't believe me.

Other foods have been sent back because she saw someone else's plate at another table, changed her mind and wanted what they had; and she will keep a waiter or waitress on the run asking them for additional packets of sweet n low. What they don't know is that if you opened up her purse, at least 5,000 packets of the stuff would spill out. Those are "spares"...for later.

She always gets most everything to-go, especially her tea. One time, they told her they didn't have any to-go cups, she suggested they look anyway. lol...They put her tea in what looked to me to be a specimen cup (probably from some guy that had to report to his parole officer that day) and sent her back with that. She was pissed because it didn't have a lid, but she still drank out of it anyway.

At any rate, she is hilarious...and will give you the shirt off her back. Or which ever one she may have stashed in her backseat.