gettin away with it

we all know those people who can, with minimal output, get away with nearly everything. i am not one of those.

but there is my dear friend alyson. in college she would run out of her cell phone minutes by mid-month. one of those chatty types that's always taking care of everyone and would therefore plow through her contracted allowance quicker than you can say "bob's your uncle."

no minutes? no problem! she'd call t-mobile customer service and, if necessary, hang up and redial until she would get a dude on the phone. using her flirtatious wiles and energetic charm she'd paint a picture of why she used up her minutes, always striking an empathy cord and winning 1000 or 1500 extra minutes for the month, a la gratis. this is just one instance in a series of many (ask her about getting her name legally changed at the DMV last week even though she forgot her marriage license.)

there's my old friend matt. he had a really magnetic personality and would just kinda look at people in a way that sang, "hey. how are you? i love you. you're my friend." he would get away with everything, and besides that, hooked up with loads of free stuff.

there was pot-head mcgee who was in my history class junior year of high school. his scholastic routine consisted of:

I. swagger into class
II. sit down at seat in back
III. allow head to thunk onto desk, padded by thick crop of unruly hair
IV. sleep through entire 90 minute class (we had block scheduling)
V. wake up when bell sounds, clean up lake o' drool, swagger to next class
VI. repeat

no one ever had beef with this. nary a word was said in objection by the teacher.

i stumbled into class one morning after pulling an all-nighter with lanz finishing a project, and teacher started plugging in the VCR for a video. cha-ching! i decided, for the first time, just this once i was going to see how life is on the other side. i layed my little heed down on the desk. it was there not 10 seconds before mrs. history teacher called out in a chirpy voice, "meeeeredith, you need to stay with us, here." what, mr. fuzzy top over there hasn't been conscious for a moment's discussion on the rebel army, and i'm not allowed to vacation from a documentary narrated by jane seymore about stalin? jeopardy sean connery from SNL said it best when he said, "it's unjust."

i wonder what in my chemical make up seems to preclude me from the "gettin away with it" club.

i've tried. oh but i've tried.

in high school my choir toured in new york. we were with 2 other high schools from orange county, and on the last big apple night our hotel was drenched in the scent of teenage ne'er do welliness. i could describe many of the shenanigans, but i'll let this single one paint a sufficient picture: boys from fountain valley high school wore snorkel gear and towel-capes. are your minds reeling yet? i thought so.

i had to return a dress i'd borrowed to a girl i'd met from fountain valley (actually, THE alyson i speak of up above!) and it was "lights out" time, but i knew that half of the hotel was blatantly disregarding this fact; why not i? my friend jamie and i 007-ed our way to alyson's hotel room, not spotting a single gestapo chaperon. we dropped off the dress, chatted for a minute, flirted with the audacious and dreamy towel-caped capers (they'd written their hotel room numbers on my hand earlier so we'd know where to visit...oh my butterflies!)

jamie and i were about to return 5 flights up to our hotel room, and i suggested we take the super-sleuth stair well. jamie whined that our legs would fall off if we did that; the elevator would be quicker. "but mr. messenger [our very formidable choir teacher] could be on the elevator!" "no he won't meredith, it'll be fine. it'll be much faster this way."

we go one flight up. one flight, and ding! the elevator doors open, and in walks mr. messenger, with gamma rays of penalty shooting from his eyeballs. it helped ever so much that we were the only 3 on the elevator. that's all i'll say there.

no gettin away with it.

until! until!!! friday night i drove to vegas. i feel in the year i've been home from rosta cica i have taken so many, bordering on too many, road trips. i'm never in one place very long at all (don't get too excited, i vacillate between only about 3 places), and while i enjoy the visits and travels on ever so many levels, my accident/ticket/tire blow probability is on a constant spike. i already got 1 ticket last month, which i haven't even gotten around to paying yet, so imagine my fervent annoyance when a copper pulls out of nowhere and flags me down when i was apparently going 93 mph. blast and wretch. i went to my happy place (a lake house with calorie free brownies and a single, mormon, hetero rufus wainwright) and breathed deeply and braced myself for the verbal lashing and promise of a personalized astronomical fee.

the cop asked for all my materials, asked where i was headed, and how fast i believed i was going. there was compliance but no hope of mercy.

he went off to run my info through the system. i looked in my rear view mirror to find that 2 other cop cars were behind his. what, did he call for back up because he took one look at me and noted the probable num-chuck skills? he returned with a big toothy grin, handed me my stuff, and let me off the hizzle!

i could have kissed him. i didn't but i could have.

i got away with SOMETHING!

with david sedaris making his grand debut in my life this year, plus getting away with something, plus seeing radiohead last night (post to come) my life just might have peaked!