Finding New Friends Can Be A Mixed Bag of Rotten Fruit, Yet Highly Entertaining

My TV tells me BEYONCE is partnering with HAMBURGER HELPER

to solve hunger in America.

Life just gets better & better as people keep doing stupid shit.

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We attempted to make new friends recently.  I belong to a few Yahoo groups for homeschoolers and a woman with a 12-year old put out several messages that she was looking for friends for her daughter, who at varying times was either (1) shy or (2) outgoing or (3) lonely or (4) wonderful beyond belief.  I should have known better, oh it was so clear right from the get go. 

Finally we met, against my daughter’s best judgment.  She’s got plenty of friends and doesn’t care to run humanitarian aid missions at her own expense.  However, I always think there’s something wonderful out there waiting for me, just around the bend.  To make it less painful for Rachel, we went to the Cheesecake Factory.  Her arm can always be bent if enough sugary goodness is heaped upon her.

First of all, the woman had posted pictures of her daughter with various famous people, one of whom I mistakenly thought was who I would be meeting.  I was a little intimidated cause the woman was really, really petite and attractive.  (This mother has connections from working PR in NYC.  The photographed chick was actually a woman who plays in a televised soap opera.)  So instead of a beautifully tiny woman I meet a large chick I would have assumed was a transvestite if her daughter wasn’t calling her “Mommy” every few minutes. 

To be fair, the lady has all kinds of health problems and has recently been taken by ambulance to the hospital no less than 3 times in the last 6 weeks.  This may be why her eyesight misses the make-up line which makes it appear she attaches her head to her body every morning with snap-on tools.

Also, her hair.  I mean there are issues.  But it’s not all her fault, I mean I hate my hair, too.  Yet I find it amazing that she would post on Facebook that she’d used a new hair dye which caused her to be “Staying in bed with my head oozing and bleeding” after an allergic reaction.  My gag reflex was activated by that statement and we didn’t see them for a while.

Juxtapose this information with the fact that she supposedly used to be Jon Bon Jovi’s assistant and was engaged to a dude in a famous band that included Brett Michaels, whom she took to the hospital on more than one occasion because he let his diabetes get out of wack. 

So how could I help myself?  We met a couple more times because, in all honesty, the woman is fascinating.  She tells me every detail, which is really what I love.  Our girls worked out at a gym together while we sat in the waiting area.  During conversation she revealed more than I have ever known about a single human being in my life.  It was ALL interesting in a freakish carnival kind of way.  (Yes, I realize I am a cruel bitch.  I’ve accepted it and moved on.)

(I mean, I am in no way saying that I am normal or beautiful or sane.  When we went to the mall together I talked my daughter into having her eyebrows shaped in the middle of the mall by an Indian woman with a string.  As she cried and turned red I got in her face and said, “COME ON!  YOU CAN DO THIS!  YOUR FATHER SERVED IN VIET NAM, FER HEAVEN’S SAKES!”)

This woman’s husband had a work accident and has been in chronic pain for 10 years.  His depression was getting on her nerves, so she checked him into a psychiatric clinic, where they gave him an overdose of electric shock treatments (10 in 20 days).  He now has no memory and shakes with a kind of palsy.  While we were waiting for the girls, he called.  This is what I hear from her end of the conversation with this man who caters to her every whim and cleans up her puke and dog shit:

“You fell?  Do you think it’s broken?  Can you walk on it?  Do you think you need to go to the hospital?  Do you think you could drive yourself?  You’re bleeding?  DON’T TELL ME LATER THAT YOU WANT TO GO TO THE ER WHEN I NEED TO GET MY SLEEP!  Okay, just go lie down.  I’m sure you’ll feel better soon.”  (She did not choose to go home and check on him, did not call for an update, and then forgot to get him a take-out meal at dinner.  As soon as we did finally arrive, he came out of the garage to show her his bloody hand.)

Her daughter is 12 and growing out of her DD bras.  She is also growing hair on her back.  They’re going for some type of adrenal work-up to see if she might have congenital issues passed down from Mom.  Although she refuses to meet up in groups with other children, so she might make from friends, she was willing to dress up in a hoochie outfit at Hot Topic and stand in the doorway waving at boys.  She was able to stand up in the middle of a restaurant and walk up to the manager, saying “We’ve been here 30 minutes and don’t have our appetizers yet!”

She’s a relatively attractive little girl who makes me laugh because she is so incredibly inappropriate in ways that tickle me.  Like when we went out to eat at this really cool restaurant where people cook the food at the table for you and others sit really close.  She had just learned the word c*cks*cker and kept repeating, louder and louder each time.  She got a spot on her shirt and mom tried to clean it up at the table, proceeding to put a hole in her shirt right over the girl’s n*pple area.  I mean, you can’t make this sh*t up.  They were cackling with laughter and people were staring at us, I’m sure trying to decide why this transvestite was traveling with a 12-year old.

Mom was admitted to the hospital after her sister upset her on Mother’s Day by saying, over and over, “YOU’RE THE BIGGEST MOTHERFUCKER I’VE EVER KNOWN!”  It was so upsetting to my new friend that she passed out on the floor.  Her sister stepped over her to obtain some items she’d left behind in the kitchen, then went home.  My new friend somehow drove 30 minutes home, lay in bed “vomiting profusely everywhere!  Charlie had to clean it up, cause I don’t touch that stuff!”  Then they called an ambulance.

They have 3 tiny dogs they dote over, but neither female cleans up dog poop, only Daddy.  She convinced her mother-in-law to buy her a $3,500 new washer/dryer combo by guilting her over the recent hospitalization.  They just bought a new JAGUAR and the daughter posted pics on Facebook.

Here’s the glitch!  We were going to go to a mall with them today, then NYC to the wax museum on Monday.  I thought it would be a kick.  But then she increased her stalking behavior.  The woman and her daughter call us over and over and over again.  We do not answer.  It seems to entice them to call more.  Then they read our info on Facebook, see that we’re doing other things, and leave crazy messages like “RACHEL, I HAVE TRIED CALLING YOUR MOM BUT GET NO ANSWER!  PLEASE HAVE HER CALL ME!”

I have oppositional defiance disorder, undiagnosed other than by my extremely intelligent friend Roxanne.  It has answered many questions for me about my own behavior.  If you push me to a wall, I will spit on you.  I will climb between your legs to get away, breaking your kneecaps with a hammer in the process.  I do NOT like being told what I have to do.  Five days before the trip to NYC was going to happen she began leaving me messages about how we HAD to order specific tickets ON-LINE, how we HAD to talk about what train we would take from what station.

People, I do not plan ahead.  When I plan ahead I have a quirk in my head that immediately goes, “Oops, changed my mind.  Fuck that.  What was I thinking?  I don’t want to!”  I must trick myself into doing things by not thinking about them before I jump up from my recliner and run to the car, revving the engine and flying down the driveway!  I cannot have a transvestite mom calling me, writing me, messaging me, bossing me around.  I cannot have her crazy freaking daughter — who twice now has gotten us to her home under the pretense of going to see a movie, then upon arrival said, “I don’t really want to see a movie!” in a whiny voice — who has extremely bad chunky highlights — running my life.  I don’t CARE that the girl has met both the Jonas Brothers AND the Cheetah Girls.  She’s not the boss of me!

So do I (A) Leave them hanging and just disappear or (B) Tell them someone died or (C) Mention my exposure to Swine Flu and express concern that their lives will be jeopardized if in my presence?

Cause, you know, doing things in a mature and civilized manner is kind of out of my realm of possible behavior.