Private Jokes: London with My Sister, 2002
My sister and I haven’t always had the best relationship.
In 2002 we spent a week in London together.
There’s a silly backstory: She and her friend Jennifer were superfans of Bush, the British late-alternative band that my snobby Gen X self thought of as “Nirvana lite for kids who missed the real thing.” While my sister dutifully saved her waitressing tips for a pilgrimage to the anointed homeland of the band’s lead singer, Gavin Rossdale, her Number One heartthrob (she held up “Will You Marry Me?” posters at concerts)… her friend did not, and had to bail out of the trip last minute. My parents didn’t want my sister traveling alone. I was just out of college and at my first “career” job, writing for a community newspaper, living with my parents and sister. I had some money saved up, so I bought a plane ticket to accompany her.
We were different there. Something changed between us. I partly credit that drizzly gray-stone city, its Paddington Bear vibe, its jolly friendliness. Its lack of a foreign language for us to learn. The way you felt like you were supposed to wear a blazer everywhere. Its overall easiness and soft, woolly edges.
In London there was no ancient jealousy, no simmering resentment over injustices of the past. Instead, we had private jokes.
“Remember the panhandler who looked like Popeye, with the cockney accent out of a movie, who asked us for money, and how we weren’t yet used to how much our new coins were worth, so we panicked and gave him the equivalent of twenty dollars, and he beamed at us and exclaimed: ‘Luv’ly ladies!’ ”
“Remember how we saw our first double-decker bus and were so excited we clambered right onto it, without paying, and the driver yelled at us: ‘Do you not speak English?’ ”
“Remember how we were the last tourists on the London Eye one night, and afterward we went to McDonald’s, famished from walking all day, and the guys there were at the end of their shift with lots of leftover burgers, so they loaded us up with cheeseburgers, and we went back to the motel room and I collapsed on the bed like a starfish, and said: ‘Hit me,’ and you tossed me a burger and I devoured it in maybe one second?”
“Remember the day our agenda said go to the British Museum, home of the Rosetta Stone, among other storied antiquities, and we went and both of us were being polite, thinking the other was enjoying it, but really both of us were so bored, and so finally we said: ‘Do want to go to Topshop?’ and it was such a relief, and we bought colorful bohemian clothes we’d never have bought at home? And how we wore those clothes, plus dangly earrings we bought on Portobello Road, when Mom and Dad picked us up at the airport, and we sighed and were probably insufferable, talking about how boring people in the U.S. dress in their Abercrombie & Fitch? How we said the trip had changed us?”
