I Can Handle It

Tonight my friend Andrew called because he's coming to NYC this weekend and we're going to be hanging out. This is sort of a huge step for us because he broke up our bestfriendship a few months before my wedding, at a time when I was really stressed out because I hadn't selected a venue, my mother had just started a new business and was completely unavailable for any support, and every question I asked my then-fiance about anything concerning the wedding, be it invitations of programs or cake was met with, "I don't care."

Of course, what Peter ACTUALLY meant was, "Whatever you wish, love of my life." But he chose to express it as, "I don't care."

I ended up not inviting Andrew to my wedding. At the time it was just one more thing I didn't want to deal with, especially having to already deal with Peter's estranged family members, the non-estranged mean and awful sister, my grandfather who was rushed to the hospital the week of my wedding, etc. etc. ETC!

In hindsight, I felt that I should have invited him and my advice to anyone getting married is that if you want to ever have a relationship with the person you're thinking of not inviting, please invite him/her to your wedding. Because even though you don't want your crazy bitch sister at your wedding because you hate her, one day she may marry George Clooney and wouldn't you just wish you could spend the summer with them in Italy.

We've been trying to repair our friendship for the past few years now and this last phone conversation actually felt like the old days.

We were talking about how he has this friend who does not believe in conserving water. He leaves the water running for half an hour before he showers and when Andrew travels with him to foreign countries, sometimes very poor countries with limited water supplies, it drives Andrew up the wall.

During one of the two years my family lived in NJ in the early eighties, we had a drought in Bergen County. Some of our neighbors who would water their lawn at 2 in the morning, which would drive me crazy because in my house my grandmother was taking micro-showers. To this day, I don't know how she would do it. She would go into the shower with a Dixie cup full of water and two minutes later, have been bathed and shampooed and smelling like flowers.

I used to feel that those bad neighbors were spitting in the face of all the sacrifices my family made to preserve our water supply. And for what? Green lawns? It soon became a badge of honor to have a dead yellow lawn and anyone with a green lawn was looked upon as a traitor.

Andrew told me that it's very common in San Francisco for people to turn on the faucet and leave the water running when they're in the bathroom. And when people do that at his house, Andrew says to them:

Hey! Stop wasting water in there! Listen, if I hear you pooping or farting in there, don't worry! I can handle it!