Melissa Gone Wild

Did you feel it? The subtle shift in atmospheric pressure around 1:15pm on Thursday May 12th? The momentary darkening of the sun? Did you feel off balance for a second as the earth shifted on it's axis? An unexplained pulling at your back, as if a black hole had opened up behind you and was sucking you in? I know you felt something. You must have. Because Melissa and I ran into each other.

(For those not in the know, Melissa and I have been best friends since childhood. Well, only friends since childhood, if we're being honest....)

This unexplained scientific phenomenon happened at Chick-Fil-A in Audubon. I was coming home from the kids' piano lessons in Norristown, and Melissa had just been to a kennel in Audubon to pick out a puppy with her husband and kids. It was one of those rare days when neither of us knew what the other was doing. I didn't know I'd be going to Chick-Fil-A, she didn't know where Audubon was and had never been in that area before. Melissa and I don't live close enough to each other to run into each other. Our in person contact is always planned.

I walked up to the counter to order, and stopped in my tracks. I saw a woman from the back, and something about her made me stop in my tracks. Everything around me slowed down. I saw her feet first, and if you know Melissa, you know that her feet would stop anyone in their tracks. A man is known by the company he keeps, but Melissa is known by what she keeps hidden by Converse in the winter months. Her feet are prehistoric. Reptilian. Skeksis, even (only Andrew will get that reference, but it's a good one).



There are random bones and knobs sticking out from every which angle. You barely recognize them as feet. And then she puts on a toe ring and I want to shout out, "Gollum has his Precious!!".

But I digress. The point is, the feet I saw looked so familiar to me. I moved up this woman's body and realized I knew that tee shirt from somewhere. I looked up higher to the hair, and said to myself, "Huh, Melissa wears her hair like that..." But my brain took so long to register that yes, it was Melissa. You see, I never see her in the wild. I have never seen her when she didn't know that I was seeing her. It was like I was a National Geographic photographer on assignment in the Siberian tundra and I had just come upon a rare white tiger that I'd previously only seen in zoos.

A million thoughts were running through my head: "Am I really seeing this?? Can it be true? Don't make any sudden movements, you'll scare it! I wonder how it got here? What is it about to eat? Where is it going? Holy crap, it really IS white! Wow, it never does THAT at the zoo..."

Once my brain finally allowed me to admit it was Melissa, I walked up and stood right behind her without saying anything. She jerked her head around, and, being an extrovert, had the same reaction I had had minutes before, only very loudly and dramatically. We were both so flustered at what was happening that we couldn't complete a sentence. It was fragments of, "what is going....how did you.....i don't even know where.....puppy....i was at....the kids are...I...chicken.....andrew lives near here??...."

Fortunately she had to run because her husband and kids were waiting in the car, otherwise we'd have both probably melted into puddles of confusion as every neuron in our brains exploded like a 4th of July fireworks finale.

I finished having my lunch with my brother Andrew and LittleRFL, but I was in the fog of nuclear fallout. As soon as lunch was over, I got into the car and called Melissa. She was experiencing the aftermath as well. We talked for 60 minutes about the scientific anomaly that had just occurred.

We realized that we don't know how to be casual with each other. We've never had call to be, and have ZERO interest in such behavior. It would be beyond ludicrous for me to say, "Oh hey, Melissa! Funny seeing you here! Getting some chicken? Okay, I'll talk to you later!" She would sooner wear frosted eyeshadow than say to me, "Suzanne! I didn't know you were going to be here! Oh cool, Andrew lives near here, didn't know that! Ok, gotta run!"

We have learned in our lives how to do that with other people, in order to be accepted socially. But it's impossible to do it with each other. It's unnatural. It would have been much better if I had pretended I hadn't seen her, and the moment had never happened. It was too creepy for words, although I've given it many more words than previously intended.

So we apologize if the resulting earthquake, asteroid or blackout messed up your day. Trust me when we say our day was much worse. We saw something we never want to see again; Melissa and Suzanne trying to pull off casual. It's ugly, it's uncomfortable, it's degrading. It's like that time she and I went to the Philly Zoo and saw/heard the giant turtles mating.

Reminds me of a blog post my brother Eric sent to me the other day, written by a man who is losing his voice to cancer. Christopher Hitchens says:

"A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull or obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful."