So it appears that admitting I have a few seriously trashy events in my history is funny to some people. Last night, as we played the game "Hot Seat," and I provided the nugget that I once had a semi-public slap fight with a neighbor as the trashiest thing I'd ever done, everyone at the game night party demanded to hear the whole story. My daughter helped me fill in the gaps in my memory. And then reporting briefly about it here led to my mother insisting on hearing it all. Okay. I suppose in for a penny, in for a pound. Here goes:
When my daughter was in third grade, there were some kids on the bus who were awful to her, calling her "cat girl," in a non-friendly way. I was a little sensitive to any hints of her being bullied, so when I looked out into the cul-de-sac one day, and saw some of these neighbor kids taunting her and throwing something at her as she rode her bicycle, I got angry and charged outside. I told the other girls to back off and stop harassing my daughter. Suddenly another woman appeared on my right, telling me not to tell her kid what to do. I can't remember the "conversation" exactly, but I'm sure that one way or another, I told her at high volume to stop her daughter from bullying mine. The other woman slapped me hard across the face, knocking my glasses askew. By this point, all the kids were just standing there, aghast, watching wide-eyed at this confrontation. When she hit me, I turned to my kid and said in that freaky, too-quiet angry voice, "Call 911." I turned back and told her (still in the deceptively calm voice) that I would have her up on assault.
I don't remember how things broke up from there. We each went to our own houses. Naturally, the kids did not make any phone calls to authorities. They were too stunned to do anything like that, and I was actually relieved once I calmed down a little. Later that evening, there was a knock on our door. It was the neighbor woman, in tears. She had been replaying what happened in her head over and over, and was so embarrassed and ashamed that she was actually throwing up. Her daughter convinced her to come over and apologize.
The ironic part was our daughters eventually became super close friends, spending nights with each other at least once a month. After a fashion, the neighbor and I developed a friendship too. She even came to me for advice several times (this was during my reference librarian period, so I was used to people doing this even when I wasn't at work). I lost touch with her once we moved away from North Carolina, and hadn't thought about the incident for many years, until last night. I was trying to remember her name, and once I said that I thought it was something like "Crystal," that got stuck in my head and I couldn't make any more guesses after that, right or wrong.
Last night's party was too fun, and I mean that literally. I laughed so much and so loudly that I wore myself out. All day I felt like I had screamed myself hoarse at a football game. My lungs were tired, my throat was sore, and I fell asleep in my chair no less than three times. I spent the entire day in pajamas, with one to three cats sleeping on top of me at any given time. My big accomplishments were making crepes for breakfast, and managing to shower and put on fresh pajamas after dark. Even as worn out as I was today, I would go back and play the same games again in a heartbeat. I can't recommend them highly enough. Hot Seat is a physical game, in a box, with a deck of prompt cards and 10 pads of note paper for everyone to submit guesses. Quiplash is on Jackbox.tv, and you download games to play on consoles like XBox, and up to 8 people all play in a virtual room on their own devices. These are excellent party games. Try them.
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