2007-06-12
10:21 a.m.
When I was in school in Fayetteville, Arkansas, my best friend was named Rhonda. I loved going over to her house because it was way out in the country and it was big and fancy but you had to drive miles of dirt roads to get to it. Her dad was named Jerry and he was exactly like a suntanned Al Bundy: slightly disgruntled, passive, and perpetually sweaty. Her mom Barbara worked in our elementary school library and my favorite thing was to go home from school with Rhonda, it was like an adventure. Her sister Sherri was 3 years older than us and I thought she was the prettiest, coolest girl ever but she hated our guts. We must have been completely annoying. Rhonda�s dad was a contractor and he built their house and they had acres of farmland and cows and horses. He was always crashed out on the couch after a long hard workday, sans shirt, and he�d get really mad if you got between him and the tv while he was watching boxing. Once when we were 10 or 11 we dressed up like gypsies and asked everyone if they wanted their fortune read. Barbara didn�t, Sherri didn�t, and Jerry really didn�t but he sort of begrudgingly came into the game room where Rhonda had stuck a flashlight into the side pocket of the pool table and put a bowl over it to make a crystal ball. He sat across from her, no shirt, eating popcorn, and Elvis�s gospel hits were playing on a really crappy tape deck in the hallway (he insisted on playing Elvis if he was home). Rhonda was sitting at the table wearing like three dresses trying to look like a billlowy gypsy and had a scarf tied around her head and Jerry was listlessy eating popcorn while he had his fortune read. She asked to read his palm and he reluctantly let her and kept chewing popcorn. She laid out playing cards that were supposed to be like tarot cards and told him he'd better change his attitude or he was going to die in a tractor crash, and then she looked into her crystal ball and said �You will be reincarnated�as a bra.� Jerry gave an appreciative snort of laughter and that was all the feedback we got from his fortune. Then he said �Is that it?� and went back to the corduroy couch to watch boxing.
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