Oh, that Sally....
On the phone with my mom;
Me, "Do you happen to know where my 5th grade school photo would be?"
Sal, "I don't know. What does it look like?"
Ummmm....
I guess that got her looking through her boxes of photos, because not long after our conversation, my phone started blowing up with texts from my mom of old pictures of me (none of them being my 5th grade school picture, however).
Me, via text, "Ugh. Why didn't the damn dentist ever put braces on me? Ew."
Sal's text response, "Because you didn't need them, snaggletooth!"
The year after I graduated from college, I had moved back in with good ol' Sally. One day, we were at Target together and I put a package of mint creme Oreos in her cart. I'm not quite sure how I got away with getting them home, but somehow I managed.
Here's the thing, I only like the inside part of the Oreo. The cookie is a waste of my time. If my half-sister, Olivia, isn't around to eat the cookie part for me (she doesn't like the inside part. We're a perfect Oreo match), I will eat the middle out, stick the two cookies back together, and put them back in the package. I don't want to waste them! I figure someone has to eventually come along who isn't too grossed out and eat my discarded cookies. It's bound to happen.
Day 1 of Oreo Heaven, I ate the creme filling out of a good 7 or 8 cookies, putting their chocolate cookie carcasses back in the package. When I got home from work the next day, I went to find the box of Oreos, but they were no where in sight. Later, when my mom got home, I asked her, "Hey, Sal, where'd you hide the Oreos?"
"Oh, I decided that we didn't need that garbage in our house, so I took them into school and gave them to a co-worker."
"Umm, did you happen to check inside before you gave them away?"
Sal, "No, why?"
After explaining my Oreo eating habits to her, her eyes got huge. "Oh my gosh!" But then burst into a fit of laughter. "I'll have to go ask my co-worker how she liked those cookies tomorrow!"
I hope she enjoyed them.
My mother has a tendency to buy cards (birthday, Christmas, Hanukkah, whatever she finds funny or appropriate for any particular reason or individual) and then just stick them in a big box in our house. Her intentions are good, which is to use them, but there is no rhyme, reason, or organization of any sort to this box, so the cards simply continue to fill up the box, year after year.
Every once in awhile, Mom will realize, "Oh crap! It's so-and-so's birthday!" and take out the box to go through cards, trying to find an appropriate card for that person. Last year, a couple days after my twin cousins, Ana and Cristina's birthday, I sat with Sally as she went through her card box, card by card. She re-laughed at some of the cards she had bought in the past years of her life, remembering some, but having no recollection of others, so the joke was just as new and hilarious as the first time she read it. She was a bit stressed at this point, because she had promised Ana and Cristina the year before that she wouldn't be late this year (ha).
Finally, she pulls out a "Happy Belated Birthday" card. "Oh!" she says, "I bought this card for Ana a couple years ago!"
The card read, "Sorry I missed your birthday" on the front. I told Sal to just write "in 2004" on it and call it a day. Easy enough. The envelope was already addressed, stamped and ready to go. It had been floating around in the Well Intentioned Card Box for who knows how long, just waiting to be signed and sent to Ana. And really, can't a belated birthday card be sent out at any time of the year?
I am not lying about this at all. My mother put the card back in the box and sent Ana a different one.
