It’s spring in DC. Not technically, of course, not for another 24 hours or so, but don’t try to tell any of us that. The sky is pure blue, not a cloud, becoming richer in color over the course of the day. Tomorrow is the National Marathon and temps will be in the 70s. Daffodils dot the sides of the GW Parkway. Safety be damned, people are running in the evenings, shorts and all, and sidewalk cafes are overflowing. It’s no secret that I love this weather. I’m a new woman in spring, savoring the sun in shorter skirts, waiting patiently for the summer. It doesn’t get better.

This post was originally published in the summer of 2008. It’s one of my fondest memories from that time and I rolled around in the memory while reading it. Tan skin, sand in your handbag, the smell of Coppertone, flip flops. And lots of laughter.

Girls Gone Child

I’ve often wondered what boys talk about at sleepovers, whether it’s about girls or football or embarrassing Chemistry class erections. I know what girls talk about, and can vouch for the fact that it doesn’t change much from the time you’re using a Strawberry Shortcake sleeping bag to the age at which you slip into teddies for bed. It certainly wasn’t too different for three of us making the long drive home on Saturday from Rehoboth Beach.

Two of us had lost our dads, so that became something that was associated with the in crowd, and the other girl then had to deal with our inappropriate death humor for the rest of the day. It’s the kind of stuff you can mock when it’s you, like “look how fat my fat, fat ass is today,” but should someone else say it, you want to make meatloaf out of her face. I’m not sure how it happened, but poor Aimee had to endure us making jokes about her living father, which over the course of the hot day dissolved into jokes about us, her dad, and dirty, sweaty sex. We’re so evolved.

Early on I mentioned my passion for all things true crime, and one of the two women revealed that she has been in many a crime show re-enactment, which of course immediately gave me visions of licking her face. Was she a star? Oh yes, she said, in one of the shows she played the actual killer. I’m pretty sure it’s understood that news of this nature makes you my new best friend, and that I will now attach myself to you like a leech until I suck you dry of every bloody detail. Turns out she doesn’t have a copy of that performance, but says that when her big episode airs, she gets calls from friends asking, “did I just see you strangling a child on television?” And she says yes. Yes you did.

Through a fierce rainstorm and some hydroplaning in the darkness of Delaware, we divulged our greatest fears, including inadvertent bowel movements, cyborgs, mean ghosts, year-round Christmas stores, and The Creature from The Village, which looks harmless to me but may someday may leave another on the verge of adult bed wetting. One of the girls flipped off an 18-wheeler in the darkness behind us and was treated to a lecture from me, because it is a well-established fact that psycho truck drivers begin sharpening their killing weapons when angered by sorority girls on back country roads.

We spent the last hour asking each other poignant, challenging questions, the kind that reveal the depth of three bright 30-somethings on the verge of braiding each other’s hair.

Would you rather sweat mayonnaise or malt vinegar?

Would you rather gain 40 pounds that you will never lose, or live in the countryside until you die?

Would you rather be locked alone in a year-round Christmas store or break down overnight on the side of this road?

Would you rather walk in on me having sex with your father or wake up to That Thing From the Village standing over you?

Awesome. Then the interrogator upped the ante by adding, “and That Thing From the Village? It’s standing over you . . . WITH AN OUTSTRETCHED CLAW” – the detail of course designed to make it infinitely more menacing than just a boar’s head in a cape, which of course it did. The move was so successful, actually, that when I pulled up a picture of said Creature on my blackberry and fooled the driver into taking a look, she went into a hands-off-the-wheel panic and nearly ruined the chance of any of us living to have consensual sex again. We clapped at our success. The joy of knowing the weaknesses of your friends.

The road lit by lightning, we talked about bad Ouija board experiences and the fact that a man was once shot to death on the front porch of my building. Another shared a close encounter with an apparition in a Savannah hotel hallway. We managed to scare the bejeesus out of each other for two straight hours and each vowed to sleep with lights on to ward off cyborgs and monsters and animated Santas. Let the record show that I indeed slept with the lights on that night, but only because Aimee’s dad likes it better that way.