Chewing on Dashboards...The Crazy Things We Did As Kids...

I touched on a pretty sensitive subject, bullying last time, so today, I'm going to make things a little more light and fun.

I said in my last blog that there is life after bullying, but I have to say, my youth wasn't all bad. It really wasn't.

One of the few friends I had back then was a young lady named Carrie. We met when I was a freshman and she was a junior and despite our rather auspicious beginnings (Again, a story for another time folks...) we discovered we were actually two peas in a pod. It helped, of course, that our birthdays were only two years and two days apart (Hers is on Jan. 19th and mine is the 22nd.)

From the day we met, we were inseparable and she has remained more like a sister to me in the 30 years we've known each other than anything else.

And we've had good times and bad. We've fought with one another, we've loved, and we've done some of the craziest shit together...

Which is what I'm going to talk about today.

Carrie, being two years ahead of me, graduated when I was 17. She, like I would eventually, promptly left our small-town in the rearview mirror for parts unknown. I didn't hear from her for a while, something that hurt me greatly at the time, until finally she pulled her head out of her butt and called.

I found out she'd been living in South Carolina and she asked me to come visit.

So, I did. I convinced my parents (Sorry Mom, Dad!) to let me "borrow the truck" (For those of you from the South, you know what this means!) and off I went for a nice long weekend with my best friend...

A close picture of Sonny - He didn't have the lift kit, though I wish he had!



Four days later and bored with the "locals", we decided - late one night and after drinking pretty heavily - to take off and SEE THE WORLD!

Now, understand, I in NO WAY advocate drinking and driving, but the world was different back then. (Circa 1986!)

So, off we go. We hit the road with grand plans in mind and headed south...to...Atlanta! (Don't judge, that was The World to small town girls like us!)

As we drove, approx. 2 a.m. or so, we talked about our dreams and our hopes.

We'd get jobs in HotLanta! We'd make all sorts of fast cash and fly away somewhere to live off said cash with no worries.

We'd meet the love of our lives in HotLanta! Maybe he'd be a Rock Star, or a Doctor, or a Lawyer, but he'd definitely be cute and make lots of money to supplement our own incomes and he'd sweep us off our feet and we'd jet-set around the world, meeting foreign dignitaries and presidents and celebrities. It didn't matter as long as he got us OUT of small-town U.S.A.!

We giggled - we were more than a little drunk when we started this grand adventure - we chortled, we guffawed until our faces and sides ached!

About an hour into this grand scheme to change our lives, I noted that Carrie had gone silent. I was getting just a little sleepy, so I looked across the bench seat to find my partner in crime leaning forward.

At first I thought she'd just fallen asleep and was resting her head against the dash. But then I noticed her jaw was moving and her eyes were open.

This was the conversation that followed:

Me: Hey? You ok over there?

Her: (drunken unintelligible mumbling)

Me: What?

She pulled back from the dashboard and wiped her chin.

Her: Yeah, I'm fine. Just hungry.

Me: Were you CHEWING on the dashboard?

She nodded in the shadows.

Her: No! But I am hungry. Can we stop somewhere and eat?

Needless to say, this caused another fit of giggling and I had to pull off to the side of the road because I was laughing so hard.

Now, here's the funny part. To the day my parents sold poor Sonny (circa 2005), he had teeth marks in his dashboard and every time I saw them, I laughed!

And to this day, I've never, ever, let my poor friend live down the fact that she got so drunk one time, she tried to EAT MY TRUCK!

I'm just glad the things we did back then were pre-Interwebs and Cell Phone Cameras folks! Because the folly of MY youth would be the stuff of viral video's today on YouTube, trust me!

I do love hearing from you, so spill the thing YOU did back in the day that would have given you millions of hits on YouTube today!

Thanks, as always, for stopping by.

Until next time.

Margaret Taylor