Colour Me Dead

Andrew almost had to drive me to the ER the other night. We had gone for a walk in Fort Langley, talking and laughing together, having the greatest of times. People were staring at our nauseating display of adoration and affection as we glided along the path, propelled by love and Spanish coffees. Suddenly Andrew grabbed my hand and, shocked by the coldness of my skin, held my hand up to examine it. It was blue. He grabbed my other one and as we stared in horror we saw that both of my hands were blue! I'm talking like, BLUE blue.

"You look DEAD, Suzy!" I could see that Andrew was panicking, and he quickly turned us around to walk us back down the path. "We have to take you somewhere to get checked out. You may feel fine but it's only a matter of time before something happens."

I phoned my mom and, with a shaky voice asked her to please come over and stay with the kids so that Andrew could take me to the hospital. When I told her what happened over the phone, she thought I had told her that "I'm covered in glue."

I calmly put the kids to bed while we waited for my mom to get there. When she came in and saw my hands, she let out a huge sigh of relief and said "Are those new jeans that you're wearing? Because this happened to Lori and Tracey and I when we lived in California. The blue dye from the jeans can rub off onto your skin." Incredulously,  the three of us began rubbing our hands onto the leg of my jeans and sure enough, all of our hands turned blue.

So we sat around and had coffee and talked, which would have been really uncomfortable had I been covered in glue.

Jerry Springer Tag

 I recently reunited with my life-long friend, Christy. We grew up in the same church in Delta, BC (that's our "Wee College" grad photo) and then ended up at the same private school in grade ten. Christy and I have some pretty great memories of high school but for the most part, we were on different life paths; I spent my Friday nights throwing up Sambuca at Jon Eddy's house while Christy snuggled with her high school sweetheart, Ryan, on one of their couches watching Drew Barrymore movies.

Christy and I both got married young and had our first children pretty soon thereafter. We did our best to stay connected but between the naps and feedings and pregnancies and all the chaos that new parenthood entails, we weren't able to visit each other as much as we had hoped.

Getting bored? Me too.

Fast forward 13 years. Two weeks ago we found ourselves sitting across from each other at Earl's, inhaling spinach dip and red wine, and talking about divorce and sex and money and having days where we would sacrifice sex and money for just 10 minutes of peace and quiet and then having such lonely nights that we cry so hard we'd throw up.

We played "Jerry Springer Tag" where we went back and forth with our mind-boggling life stories, shocking the socks off of each other yet not really at all because having gone through all that we've lived through, we both know that anything can happen, and everyone has a story.

Everyone has a story.

That's the conclusion that Christy and I have come to, over and over again. I always thought that I had the craziest stories, until I met Andrew. And Christy. And Jane. And the hairdresser that I used to live next to in Abbotsford. And the patients who come into the physio clinic. And every other human being on earth with a beating heart.

Let's just peel off the face masks and back each other up in this crazy show that we call life. The sooner we admit that we are fallible, the quicker we can cut to a commercial break.