Just a Small Town Girl

I came to Facebook late. It just did not appeal to me communicating through such an impersonal medium. I actually only joined to check out the pics of an ex-girlfriend’s kids whom I was quite crazy about and I wanted to see them all grown up. Easy enough....A few days later my email was flooded with friend invites. Since the invites actually outnumbered the junk enlargement offers I decided to accept them and catch up with some folks.

Then came a surprising and welcomed invite from a young lady we will call Bubbles. Surprising in the sense I was complimented that she remembered me and welcomed because Bubbles was by all my memories a super nice person.

We had a history without the details that make history interesting. We lived on the same street in a very small town in Kentucky. We rode the same bus. Occasionally we found ourselves at the same church functions. That is the makeup of our prior history.

It was the 80’s and I thought I was a punk rocker damned to live in the cultural void of a rural town. Try no stop lights! Bubbles, was a smart somewhat conservatively dressed good girl. I was writing bad slogans on my jeans and a little to sulky. Bubbles went to church every week and did her homework. I wrote bad poetry about the color black and walked to the next town to climb in girl’s windows. Bubbles got good grades and made friends easily. I shot for the also ran GPA and got asked if I was a Satan worshiper… a lot. I thought of Bubbles as a really nice person who would see me as a loser. Bubbles now assures me her perception was I was too cool to approach. Apparently our history could have been more colorful had we recognized the John Hughes film that lay right at our feet.

Accepting her request has led to nearly two years of great conversation that contained very little of the horse shit people wade through to get to really know someone. I found that we nearly went to the same college. That our small town butts have both travelled abroad. Our politics and spirituality seem to be parallel and usually stay unspoken. We both know the trials of dating as a parent after a failed marriage and having children requiring a diagnosis of some type. We share a love for silly and improper subjects and genre-less music. Bubbles can swill beer like a man and can tell a good dirty joke. I can somewhat handle my end when the talk switches to quantum physics.

I could say she came down to my level, or claim a half full glass and say I rose to hers. The truth is we left our small town and refused to avoid each other’s path this time. While facebook can be a mind numbing waste of time is does have its pay offs. Bubbles you doth rock. You are not so bookish I am not so mysterious and our history goes on.