Tag Archives: tracey

Bethany, Tracey, the Chocolate Dentures, and the Little Nubbin

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My cousin Bethany and I were born 47 minutes apart. Same day, month, and year.

My uncle called my grandpa from the hospital: “You have a granddaughter!”

And then my dad called 47 minutes later: “You have a granddaughter!”

“I know,” my grandpa said.

“No, another one!”

Growing up, Bethany and I got along–very well, I’d say–but there were little things that separated us. She was really into the outdoors, and I was really into my hair. She was really into Jesus, and I was really into shock humor that she found appalling. She was really into being a smartypants knowitall first-grade-skipper, and I was really into being a bratty tattletale who didn’t care about anyone else. But we both liked New Kids on the Block and Pass the Pigs and Mastermind, and we could play in her basement for hours when she devised “pool tests” for my sister and me to challenge our skills (comma “lack of”) on her family’s billiards table, and she once helped me learn all of the books of the Old Testament during her church service so I could impress her Sunday School class afterward.

I decided to go to OSU as a high school senior after visiting Bethany there her freshman year, requested to live on her dorm floor the next year, and had a group of movie-watching, trivia-playing, Chinese-buffet-eating friends already waiting for me because she let me hang out with her. We lived together for a year in college in what basically amounts to a slum house with a broken stair we would’ve fallen through several times if the carpet covering it hadn’t been there to save us, a random working kitchen in one of the bedrooms, exposed power lines on the fire escape, neighbors who lit our dumpster on fire, and a parking lot where our cars were spraypainted. Soon after, Bethany moved to Russia for two years, figured out she wanted to be a veterinarian, and came home to go to vet school at OSU.

And . . . something was different. Maybe we had just grown up. Or maybe the distance had made us subconsciously realize how important family is. But where I used to see this smartypants knowitall dork kid, I saw a genuinely warm and caring person who could constantly make me laugh and knew everything about me because she’d been there for all of it. Now I look forward to seeing her on holidays and try to spend extra time with her and her mom before big family dinners, making their famous cloverleaf rolls and pumpkin rolls and exchanging gifts that only we would be amused by.

So when I only had time to see Bethany on Christmas and New Year’s Eve during the first week of my last visit home, I talked my best friend, Tracey, into driving us to see her in Portsmouth, Ohio, which is the halfway point between our hometown and Bethany’s new vet job in Kentucky. We were using some pretty crappy directions we’d printed out, got ourselves lost in downtown Portsmouth, and found ourselves driving across the Ohio River into Kentucky accidentally. U-turns are illegal in Ohio, but when we got to the end of the bridge, we decided we were technically in Kentucky, and Tracey swung her car around right there in the middle of the intersection. We cheered and high-fived and congratulated ourselves for being total badasses.

We had dinner with Bethany at a BBQ joint called Scioto Ribber (See what they did there? It’s a play on the Scioto River! Which I challenge any non-Ohioan to pronounce.) and then went for dessert at DQ (even though there was a cute local place right across the street), which is really the whole point of this post.

Bethany’s ridiculous faces as she enjoyed her Blizzard:

And Tracey’s ridiculous faces as she tongued the little nubbin on the top of her sundae and then found a dentures-shaped piece of chocolate in the cup:

Good times.

(nubbin!)

I’m Certain All BFFs Are This Freaky

Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, why i'm better than everyone else
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I was talking to my BFF, Tracey, the other day about the fact that neither of us has ever needed prescription drugs. I asked, “Should we be on drugs for something? Everyone else is!” She replied, “It’s weird enough of us to not be on drugs, but it might be weirder that we’ve never sought mental health treatment in the first place.”

And at first I was like, “Yeah! Weird!” But then I was like, “Wait, no, not weird.” And then I confessed to Tracey that despite pretty terrible things happening to me–like, say, my mom dying of brain cancer when I was a senior in high school–I think I’ve managed to stay awesome because I’ve had her to talk to since we were just wee little lasses. And then she confessed to me that despite pretty terrible things happening to her–like, say, her dad’s brain aneurism, brain tumors, and subsequent lifelong health issues–she thinks she’s managed to stay awesome because she’s had me to talk to, too.

I have a blogfriend whose best friend died a couple of years ago in a horrific and horrifically random shooting, and for a while, her online journal was almost solely about coping with this sudden death and the tremendous life changes it brought. Some of her friends were annoyed by her constantly talking about it and acted like she should move on with her life, but I totally got it. To have a best best friend–not just a good friend but a best friend who knows everything about you and doesn’t need to put you down to make herself feel better and doesn’t try to make you jealous and can handle you practically living with her for two weeks straight during your Christmas visits home–and then to lose that? The pain is almost unimaginable to me.

On the phone yesterday, I asked Tracey not to die, and she agreed to try, but we decided that if either of us does kick the bucket too soon, the other will keep her memory alive in the very best ways.

Tracey says she’ll build a roadside shrine to me (this may only be in the case of death by car crash, but I hope it’s no matter what) with a cross and flowers and all the fixin’s and that she’ll come every day to replenish it with–and I’m not sure what this means–baby doll limbs. Is that a common shrine element? I hope so.

I decided I’ll end every blog post with mention of her passing, but she said she’d actually prefer if I put it in my e-mail signature. So I said I’ll sign every letter, “3/9/11 – Never Forget,” a la all the 9/11 memorial crap. She thought it a little morbid for me to use yesterday’s actual date, but I’m nothing if not totally creepy.

Then we started talking about the “Hoarders” episode where the lady’s brother was a fireman who’d died trying to rescue people from the towers on 9/11, and the pain of losing him was so great that she was over-collecting anything related to 9/11 or NYC in general or patriotism or simply the colors red, white, and blue. We decided that my “Hoarders” episode about all of the Tracey-related paraphernalia I’ve saved over the years would be pretty embarrassing. But her episode about her Katie-related collection would be much, much worse.

Because she has my FINGERNAIL CLIPPINGS!!!

BFFs! BFFs! BFFs!


on the subway


pretending to smoke at Pete’s Candy Store and looking so awkward


feeding shaved ice to a gargoyle in the East Village


and then tasting his sweet ice breath


in the changing room at Dylan’s Candy Bar