Nic Narrates

While Nic is strutting around topless on some tropical island beach, enjoying fruity alcoholic drinks with umbrellas (dare I say, “fancy” drinks?), and cavorting with spring breaking college boys (let’s hope), I’ve been asked to fill in for her with a guest blog or two.

I’ll warn you right off: I’m new to this blogging thing (you can find my own -much more boring – blog here), and don’t have her skill with personal narrative. In fact, when she asked, I wasn’t sure what to write. She gave me some suggestions. Being a guest here, maybe it’s best if I just follow them.

You could tell them a funny story from the years we’ve known each other … Maybe the time I thought you were going to say the “L” word at the sunset swing and I got all awkward because it was romantical and I’m a dork, so I asked if that was poop over there on the ground and pointed.

It’s true. We dated once, and went with some good friends to Galena in western Illinois. Atop a small hill, looking westward down into a little green farm valley was this little, private 2-person swing. We sat there, watching the sun set on one of those perfect, warm early summer nights. I’ll admit, I was simply enjoying the moment; dropping an L-bomb was the farthest thing from my mind. But Nic being Nic, she decided to aggressively circumvent any romantic intention on my part, accusing an innocent nearby wood chip of being fecal matter. But of course, she still being terrified of me and me being a bit of an outdoorsman, we had to investigate. She argued for its poop-like attributes for a few minutes, but in vain. It was a wood chip. I even picked it up. That was the end of our swing adventure.

Or you could write about something fashiony like my personal love of handbags and how I schooled you on them, etc. and how that’s stood you in good stead. 
 

It is true; I know more about handbags than most any heterosexual male ought. Although I haven’t looked in awhile, there was a time when I could tell a Dooney & Bourke from a Prada or Coach or Burberry. I do owe this to her, and it’s amazing how far handbag recognition will get you if you’re trying to meet a girl at a bar. Thanks to the anonymity of blogging, I can even admit that I helped her build a handbag once, for her birthday. I had told her we were going into the city to see a baseball game (which she hates), then surprised her with it. Then I got yelled at for using the I-Pass wrong, but that’s another story.

But if you want to know more about the real Nic and “something fashiony,” you need to know how she used to shop for shoes (and for all I know, still does). I don’t mean how often she shopped for them — I mean the technique involved. You see, anytime we went to a shoe store a store with shoes in it, she would stop by me, hand me both of her shoes (and she could get out of shoes faster than anyone I’ve ever met), then go skipping up and down the aisles. Singing a shoe-shopping song was optional, but known to sometimes happen. Apparently, her foot is the same size as most of the display models, so she would just tear one off the rack or display, slip it on, and model it in front of the mirror. Although I was definitely the athlete between the two of us, I could somehow never keep up in a shoe store. She just had another gear. Mothers used to pull their children closer to them when Nic shopped for shoes. Now and then, between the aisles, I would catch a glimpse — only a glimpse — of a Tasmanian-Devil like blur whizzing past in a cloud of motion with only a smile and bare feet visible.

Well. That ought to embarrass her enough for one post. If I have time this weekend, I’ll be back to cover the rest of her suggestions, including the upcoming college basketball tournament (and the best place in Illinois to watch it) and (to again quote her email) “dating from a dude’s perspective.” Yikes.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

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