Stories I haven't told my parents: The Marisa Edition

 

This is Marisa.  She is one of my bestest and oldest friends in the whole world.  We have been friends for about 36 years. 

We met one summer when we were put into the same group of ragtag kids at a YMCA Day Camp held at the local park.  Neither of us wanted to be there.  We hated camp, but we instantly bonded when we called our counselor (glorified babysitter for the few days a week we went to this camp?) dumb for trying to convince us that the watermelon we were supposed to be snacking on was actually a long-forgotten dinosaur egg.  We weren't buying it and we definitely weren't eating the watermelon.  And who in their right mind would want to eat a dinosaur egg? Seriously.

ANYWHO... our friendship began!!  Our parents very quickly got the two of us together for playdates and involved in as many activities as they possibly could so we could hang out together.  My Mom began giving Marisa piano lessons.  Marisa's parents suggested I join the children's choir with Marisa at their local church.  After choir practice, we took recorder lessons (that's right, no plastic, crappy recorder for us! Our parents bought us nice wooden recorders that we didn't appreciate one bit -yes, I still have mine).  

Twice a week we would see each other in ballet and jazz class.  Our teacher, Mrs. Norris, would constantly have to separate us, even putting sewing tape over our mouths because even while we were doing our plies and other ballet-related things, we would be giggling or talking non-stop. 
 Weekends were for sleepovers and running around in the woods behind our houses.  

When my parents got divorced and I moved to Indiana, I would constantly get in trouble for calling Marisa and talking to her long distance.  We did the whole penpal thing as well, but we weren't very good at it.  Both of us were undiagnosed ADHD, so keeping consistent was difficult.  I would come home to Kentucky during the summers and most of my school breaks and every single moment we could spare, we spent together.  During the summers we could be found either at the pool, playing Nintendo or making our own videos of us jumping on the bed and singing horribly out of key.  

One summer, we were walking home from the pool, I think we were around the age of 14 (it was before either of us had a car or the ability to drive one) we encountered a six-pack of unopened Bud-Light that had been baking in the sun for at least a few hours and a little more than half a pack of wilted Marlboro cigarettes.  

We had stumbled upon a treasure!  

Marisa and I have always been able to communicate with each other through just a glance.  We have also always had the ability to push each other in directions that we knew weren't always the best.  The beer, the cigarettes... A plan was beginning to form.  It was not a good plan, but it was a plan and we just needed the balls to make it happen. 

We grabbed our treasure, which we had decided must have slid off the top of a passing car, conveniently landing in the ditch we were walking next to (finders keepers), and quickly got back to Marisa's house, searching for a place to stash our trove.  Our plan was that we would stay up playing Nintendo until her parents went to bed, and we would wait an hour or so after that, to make sure they were asleep (our parents were older and tended to go to bed earlier as opposed to later) before we would execute our plan. 

Around midnight we made our way back downstairs to the game room, stifling giggles the whole way.  The plan was, if we were caught in the house, we would just say that we wanted a snack, and said snack had to be left in the game room to lend credible deniability to the "plan."  There was no plan for if we got caught outside of the house because we weren't going to get caught.  Well, we hoped we didn't get caught.  

Once in the game room, we slowly cranked the window open, trying not to make any noise.  Marisa popped the screen out of the window and just like that, FREEDOM! We grabbed our stash and hightailed it down the driveway, ducking behind trees and dropping to the ground if we saw car headlights.  When we were a decent way away from the house (we were incredibly nervous about the smell of cigarette smoke wafting back towards the house).  Finally, we decided we were a good distance away, and Marisa handed me a beer.  I cracked it open while she lit one of the limp cigarettes.  

I took a swig.  

Marisa took a drag on the cigarette and proceeded to cough for what seemed like forever.   We traded.  I took a drag, coughed more than I ever have in my life, she took a gulp of warm beer.   

Now, I don't know about Marisa, but that day I decided that beer and cigarettes were not for me.  Did I think I looked cool, a 14 year old me, holding a beer and cigarette in the middle of a hot July night?  Oh, I'm sure I thought I was the shit.  I am absolutely POSITIVE that we thought we were the shit.  We couldn't drive, but that didn't matter because we had warm beer and limp cigarettes that made us cough like crazy.

We stood there for a few minutes, not really knowing what to do.  We didn't finish the beer or cigarettes.  I don't remember what we did with them, but I'm fairly sure we just left them on the ground, close to where we found them, hoping that whoever found them next had better luck than we had and headed back to the house. 

Before we climbed back through the window, we performed a generous sniff test of each others' clothes.  Did we smell like cigarettes? Did our breath smell like beer?  We decided that the best course of action would be to instantly take a shower and brush our teeth the minute we got back to Marisa's room.  As quietly as we could manage, especially for two teenage girls who felt like they had just gotten away with the most awesome adventure ever, we made it upstairs and began operation clean up.  

We brushed our teeth and just as Marisa was getting ready to jump into the shower, there was a knock on her bedroom door.  "Marisa? Is everything okay?"  It was Marisa's Mom.  Even though she sounded half asleep, fear ran through us.  We looked at each other, wide-eyed.  Were we caught?

Marisa, very quickly thinking on her feet, said something that I cannot remember, but it saved us from having to deal with her Mom face to face.  I have no idea why her Mom didn't come in the room, but for whatever reason she simply told us that we needed to get some sleep and she headed back to her own room.  I wonder if her Mom looked at her watch and decided that it just wasn't worth the effort.   She probably knew we were up to something, but whatever it was had already transpired, and were already cleaning up after ourselves, so no need to get a parental unit involved.  

Marisa and I broke down in giggles, amazed that we had survived and gotten away with sneaking out for a beer and smoke.  

There isn't a summer growing up that Marisa and I didn't spend together.  We drifted apart in college, the process started in late high school when we both had our own friend groups in our respective areas of the world.   I had heard stories about her getting married, my former step-mom running into her at the local post office, and I heard when her Dad had passed away.  Fast forward to several years ago when we found each other on Facebook.   We were separated by time and space, but we picked up almost exactly where we left off.    A few years ago when I moved to Florida, we discovered that I would be no more than 10 minutes away from each other - a happy accident we discovered when I was registering my kids for school and she said "Wait, that's where my kids go to school..."  

We were reunited in person finally in August 2019.  We have had the joy of watching our two youngest kiddos bond as well.   While everything has changed, nothing has changed between Marisa and I.  We still love going on adventures together and love being able to support each other.   I feel blessed and lucky to have such a great friend.   I have been blessed and lucky to call her a friend for 36 years and yesterday was her birthday.  I feel like I am the one that got the best present ever.  

I love you, my dear friend.  I can't wait to celebrate many many more birthdays with you.