A friend of mine from way back in the late 1970s and early 80s (we were high school BFF’s) who I have been in and out of touch with over the years emailed me today and wanted to call. I emailed her back with my cell # and we talked for about an hour.

She has been reading my blog and here is what she said:
“I’m so proud of you. This is what you were always meant to do. I always knew you could write, but wow! I’m really impressed with what you’re doing and you should be proud of yourself.”

She asked me not to talk about her on this blog (which I won’t) but she gave me the okay to share a few of our absurd little adventures from way back in the day. We both still laugh about these things.

Anecdote #1: Babushka Landlady, the lawnmower, and the clanking pipes.

In 1978 and 1979 we shared a cheap two bedroom apartment in Queens, NY. We had a crazy landlady, a Russian immigrant woman, squat and always dressed in layers and layers of old world skirts and aprons and homemade knit sweaters. She always wore a babushka with huge brown combat boots.

Babushka Landlady did some nutty things:
–Mowed the lawn at 2 AM on a regular basis. Said it was better for the grass. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, look out my window and see her down there wearing her combat boots, her many skirts flapping, pushing that lawnmower back and forth, scowling and grunting whenever she passed under my window. I could just forget about getting back to sleep on nights she decided to mow the damn grass.

Mowing the lawn at 2 AM. Who does that?

–Babushka Landlady had a “partner”–an extremely elderly man of about 90 who was hunched over and could barely walk. We used to see the two of them entering the basement of the building through a back door. We’d wait for them to come out but they never did. We never talked about what they might be doing in there.

–Babushka Landlady and/or her “partner” went to the basement and banged on the pipes with metal rods to fool the tenants into thinking the heat was working. The boiler was always off or very low. I caught them doing this. After that they stopped and the heat suddenly started working again.

Anecdote #2: El Presidente beer and the rotting bathroom rug.

Same year, the same apartment: My friend and I had no car but we’d walk over to the Cuban deli and buy a case of El Presidente beer. It was terrible beer that tasted like old wet cigarette butts but we’d go through the whole thing, sitting in the tiny single bathroom getting drunk. The bathroom was carpeted with a rug that had once been plushy grey but had turned into a rotting clay-like substance from the cat peeing on it all the time.

It was disgusting sitting in there but we always sat in there anyway, for reasons we could never explain because we could have sat anywhere else in that apartment. One of us would sit Indian style on the lid of the toilet, the other propped on the side of the tub. We’d talk and talk and drink until the room began to spin. Our feet made squishy sounds in the sodden rug, and I contracted a bad case of Athlete’s foot. Athlete’s foot is no joke, by the way.

That isn’t a picture of us, just a couple of girls we probably wished we looked like. And they’re in a bathroom too.

Anecdote #3: The flying Oxtail soup.

Don’t open that pot.

Once my friend decided she’d make some Oxtail soup. In the middle of July. She started the soup in a big tureen, then left for a weekend trip with her boyfriend. I was spending the night somewhere so didn’t arrive home until the next day. Obviously she had forgotten about the soup she started.

The first thing that hit me was the smell. I thought my cat was dead somewhere. I cautiously approached the kitchen and opened the lid of the tureen where the smell seemed to be coming from. I took one look at the green-white mold growing on top of what looked like chunks of rotten meat and started dry heaving, then picked up the whole tureen, opened the window, and tossed it out into the alley. It was too disgusting to even attempt to wash. I have never been able to eat Oxtail soup since then.

Anecdote #4: The Folded Fish

Okay, it wasn’t an Origami fish. He wasn’t smiling either.

It was 1981. My friend had a new apartment. She asked me to house-sit while she went on a trip, and that meant feeding her fish too. There was one particular fish bowl I kept forgetting about. It contained one tiny golfish. The day she was to return I finally noticed the fishbowl and floating on top was its tenant, partly rotted and folded in half. I felt terrible about killing her fish and tried to hide him under some of the stones but that didn’t really work and he floated back to the top. Fortunately my friend wasn’t too upset and laughed because he was folded in half.

There are other stories but these are the ones I always think of when I think of us back in the day.
I miss you, my friend.

ETA: I just realized 3 of these stories involve rotting things. What does that mean?