Chronically Ironic

·Are You Finished With That?

My friend Janet was in a horrible car accident when we were about 21. She was driving along, minding her own business, when another car jumped the median on the freeway and ran into her car, upside down. She had many broken bones, a collapsed lung, and a broken jaw. After about two months in the hospital, she got to go home. She was in a wheelchair most of the time, but finally got on crutches. Meanwhile, she had to have her jaw wired shut so it would set correctly again. This lasted quite awhile. It sucked. I remember her calling me through the gritted teeth of one who is completely frustrated with her own situation in the middle of the night, desperate to feel better and to be whole again.

When she finally was allowed to start driving, there was no stopping her. We would go everywhere just so she could get out of her parents’ house - she was completely stir-crazy from being confined for so long. She drove this awesome black OLDSMOBILE and it was not really cool, but Janet made it so, windows tinted and Nirvana (the height of fashion at the time) blasting through the non-stock stereo.

One of our Go-Nowhere-Drive-Fests led us to glorious Denton, TX, where the fields are green and so is everyone’s clothing. It’s a college town, home of the University of North Texas. Janet went there before the accident, and I think we were driving around just to see what might have changed in the months she had been laid up in the hospital. Well, not much had changed, and even if I went there now, 17 years later, only a few things have. Her jaw-wires (or whatever you call it) had been removed, and she was able to eat, but mostly just soft stuff. Her teeth weren’t working 100%. So we drove through Taco Bueno (way better, but rarer, than Taco Bell) and scrounged together whatever sad change we had. It was enough for one (1) bean burrito. I lied and said I wasn’t hungry. Shit. I’m always hungry.

Janet proceeded to do something that was neither weird nor freaky to either of us, given the circumstances: she ate all of the filling out of the burrito, avoiding the warm and delicious flour tortilla. She couldn’t really bite down on anything; she just kind of licked out all the insides. Once finished, I looked over at her and said, “Hey, are you finished with that?” She said yes and handed me the tortilla, empty of its cheesy, oniony, beany contents. I then ate the tortilla. After I finished, there was a dramatic pause of silence in the car upon the realization of what had just occurred. I looked at her, she looked at me, and in unison, we started shouting, “GROSS!! GROSS!!!”

The thing is, it was ME who did the gross thing, not her. We were poor, I was hungry, and I did not think twice about eating something that she had basically just licked. Not until after. We laughed, tore out of the Taco Bueno parking lot, and as the drums kicked in to ZZ Top’s classic “La Grange,” I threw the burrito wrapper out the window and we sped off down the freeway back to Dallas, never to visit Denton with our rebellious, disgusting, burrito-eating ways ever again - just two white middle-class girls riding the wind back to Dallas in a black Oldsmobile, forever.

Being Poor is Cool