You are sitting in the hotel downtown waiting for your lover to arrive. The snowfall is alarming, and you know he hates driving in adverse conditions. The weather this Valentine’s Day is nothing but adverse conditions, but you pleaded with him.
“Please! I want to see you!” And you do, but you want to wear your new outfit just as much as you want to see him. You peer out the window and sigh. With or without him, you are going to your prix fixe dinner reservation. You are stuck in town with the snow and there’s no safe way to get home. You ponder how to get across the street to the restaurant in stiletto heels.
In 7th grade, maybe eighth grade, my best friend and I decided to go out for track.
I don’t know why. Neither of us were the least bit athletic and the only thing I can imagine is that the running craze was starting in the US. So, there we were: two extremely skinny girls standing in the hot North Carolina sun waiting for Mrs. Anders to start track practice. Within minutes we learned that showing up was all it took to be on the team.
With no further ado, she set us to running laps. This was late August in coastal Carolina. It wasn’t just hot, it was need-to-grow-gills-to-breathe hot and humid. Miserable. And this was in the days when it was believed that drinking water while exercising was a Bad Thing. A Very Bad Thing.
Me: <false-shocked look on my face> WHO TOLD YOU THAT?
SuzieQ and CutieQ: looking at fingernails, tugging on socks, letting hair fall over face>
Me: Tell me, girls!
THEM: <in unison> Steady Ed
Me: HOW WOULD STEADY ED KNOW IF I HAD A PIERCED BELLY BUTTON?
THEM: <trembling, no answer>
Me: <can’t help it anymore and laughing>
THEM: Connie! You had us scared.
Me: Good. I was the first female Navy Seal, you know. It keeps me in practice to be scary now and then.
THEM: Well? Do you?
Me: Do I what?
SuzieQ – <peals of giggles>
CutieQ – Have a pierced belly button?
Me: I do.
THEM: LET US SEE!
Me: No. <baring my teeth and looking fierce>
THEM: Why not?
Me: I don’t show it to anyone.
THEM: You showed it to Steady Ed.
Me: I DID NOT.
THEM: Let’s go ask him. <conversation in background. Steady ED saw the impression of the ring when my t-shirt pulled across my body while putting stuff in upper kitchen cabinets.>
Me: <girls come back> Oh good lord, what do you want now?
THEM: When did you get it pierced?
Me: <staring at the ceiling and ciphering on my fingers> I think in 1998.
THEM: THEY HAD BELLY RINGS BACK THEN?
Me: Let me just fetch my shawl, sit in my rocker and y’all can rub my bunioned feet while I tell you about hand hammering the ring out of bronze at the Blacksmith’s after churning the butter and hauling wheat to mill grinder, and how I almost died when it got a little bit infected because penicillin wasn’t invented yet and the old Wise Woman in the hut at the edge of the forest told me to use salt. Hell’s bells! Salt was expensive in those days, but it works.
THEM: It sure does. When I got my nose pierced they said to snort salt water.
Me: <Sigh. They never know when I’m joking.> I’m wounded. Y’all are turning me into an old woman.
THEM: Naw, you’re already old. I wish my *mawmaw* was like you.
W. Va. Fur and Root 