Tuesday - Dandelions Are Forever

[ninanevermore]

Today on my drive into work, I was thinking about how some people are like how the friendships you want to keep are like African violets; unless they get the right amount of sun and water, they tend to wither. The friendships you want to end, however, are like dandelions; once they have invaded the lawn of your life, you just can't seem to kill them, and they have a way of popping up again when you least expect them.

Take my old friend Patty, for example. She'd a dandelion of a gal, for sure.

"Oh! Mygod!" Jeff called me up on the phone last week, and that is how he started the conversation.

I asked what the matter was.

"Oh! Mygod!" he said again.

I suggested he take a deep breath. He seemed to be freaking out.

"I went by the Cricket in Pinehurst to pay Mom's phone bill today," he began. My mother-in-law's Sprint phone would not work in the nursing home she is in (ours won't work in there, either), so we bought a pre-paid phone for her so she can keep in touch with people. "I walk in, and the girl behind the counter has her back to me and she's talking on the phone, right? And I'm just looking at her back and thinking, something about this girl is familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

"So she's waiving at me, to let me know she's just going to be a minute, and I get a good look at her face, and it's Patty!"

I gasped. "Patty actually has a job? When did that happen?"

"I don't know," he said. "I was as surprised about that as I was to see her."

I asked if she recognized him.

"I don't think so. I had my sunglasses on and my hat on. I just started backing up and said I needed to go back out to my truck, because I'd forgotten something, and that I'd be right back. She was still gesturing that it was just going to be a minute, and I was walking backwards and tripping over myself trying to get the hell out of there before she realized who I was. Then I got in the truck and pealed out of the parking lot. All I need is for her to have Mom's phone number and start leaving calls on her phone like she does on yours. You know what this means, don't you?"

"That the guy who runs the Cricket store doesn't check references?"

"Well, obviously. I mean besides that. It means she's still around, and we could run into her at any time."

"I know she's still around. She still emails me and tries to friend me on MySpace. What are you going to do about paying you mom's phone bill?"

"There's another Cricket store in town, I paid it there. It's just not as convenient."

I thought for a moment. "You can always go back to the one closer to us next month. Knowing Patty, she'll be fired within a week for showing up two hours late or getting in a fight with someone. It's the one thing about her you can kind of depend on."

Indeed, it's the one thing you can always count on for a chronic screw up; as long as they are still drawing breath, they will always be screwing up. God love 'em.


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Comments

[simplecity2htwn.livejournal.com]

It IS possible to get rid of dandelions, but you have to pull them up by the root, dig up all the surrounding soil, replace it with concrete and arsenic and then sell the house and leave no forwarding address.

The true problem is that as soon as you manage to rid yourself of one dandelion, a DIFFERENT ONE pops up in its place.

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

I tolerated this dandelion for years and years. After I became a parent 3.5 years ago, it seemed like a good idea to weed my life of the chronically stoned, unemployed, mooching, self-centered, welfare-system-defrauding dandelion in my life. The dandelion has kids, for one thing, and they are feral (their flower of a mother being to lazy and stoned to actually bother parenting them); the last thing I needed was for my child to grow up thinking he could get away with the stuff that her kids get away with.

My son has provided me adequate motivation to keep my life dandelion free. He is like unto a 37-pound bottle Roundup weed remover, as far as I am concerned.