When I was 8 I wasn’t asked to a sleep over at Lacey’s house. She was the “coolest” girl in school - at the time I went to a private school, so really, being popular wasn’t difficult - and Lacey had a birthday party that didn’t include plain-brown-shoe wearing me.
I cried. I remember looking into my tinted mirrored wall - it was the late 80s, after all - and trying to figure out what made me different from Lacey and Stacey, the cool girls. (Names have been changed, but the spirit of the names remains the same, I assure you.)
A few years later, having gained some coolness - really, Lacey and Stacey (and/or their parents) realized that our class size really didn’t lend itself to being cliquey - I was invited to sleep over at Lacey’s house with the other girls in my class. We jumped on her trampoline… bounced on this thing:
and then watched Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves on VHS. It was awesome.
In the morning, we all had breakfast complete with Sunny D and as the second gallon of juice-like substance wasn’t in the fridge, Mrs. Traeger put ice in my glass. As I drank the yummy almost good-for-me awesome Sunny D, I began to chew on ice cubes.
Mrs. Traeger glared at me from across the breakfast table.
That was the beginning of the end.
As a result of the dirty look that Traeger gave me, I got up and got more ice cubes in my cup. Traeger wasn’t my mother, she barely even knew me. She couldn’t tell me what to do with just a glare. Even after my dentist told me not to chew ice after filling my 4th cavity, I sought out ice cubes - dude, the amazing ice cubes from Sonic are worth the hype.
This morning the dentist gave me the bad news.
4 root canals are necessary. Yep, those cavities have turned into root canals.
Sigh. I should’ve paid attention to the glare.
