MEMOIR
Old Broads and Stale Coconut
(Oh…and the art of teasing priests)
Her name was Lottie Carter.
We randomly chose her.
For Northern New York, it was a freak February day. It was extremely warm — much more like May than the dead of winter. We spent the better part of the morning wandering around town aimlessly; we were 11 years old and bored.
It was barely afternoon and we had already done everything there seemed we could do. We went to Newbury’s to stick our gum under the counter. We went to George’s Fruit Market and bought Funyons, Cadbury Cream Eggs, and Mountain Dew. It was an amazing brunch. We read our Tiger Beats. We swung on the swings at Flanders Elementary School. Rinse. Repeat.
It was one of those friendships that only live and seem to survive in that ‘tween window, full of strange adventures and laughter over much of nothing.
I was a peculiar young girl.
But at eleven years old, I met this other peculiar young girl — Stephanie. Our mothers had just completed nursing school together and we were new to their neighborhood. She was just as quirky and strange as I was, and much to my mother’s delight, she brought me out of the depressed bookworm shell I had cocooned myself into the year before.
