The other day I was Skyping with my mom and little sister and something came up in the conversation to which I replied, "That is jacked up. J- jacked up." My little sister got a confused look on her face as any normal person might and demanded an explanation for my odd outburst. But my little sister isn't the only one to have heard that phrase escape my mouth at one time or another and I figure that it's about time to tell the world the story of Tallulah and Gorge.
Not especially alike, we were brought together through Girl Scouts. You see, both our mothers had been Girl Scout leaders since the beginning of time. Our re-do just happened to be a training weekend for day camp counselors. The theme for the weekend was Survivor (you know like that TV show). Somehow we got stuck in the same group. I knew Allison didn't like me and so I didn't push the whole friendship thing. But being a leader's daughter does something to you, it makes you a little sassy, kinda bossy, and a lot defiant. (I think it comes from getting in trouble from your mother when no one else does.)
So there we were at this Survivor camp training and the task was to build a shelter that would withstand a bucket of water with only a tarp and some rope. I watched as other groups trotted off and started tying ropes to things, draping tarps, and hoping they wouldn't get drenched in a couple minutes. After only moments of discussion and ignoring the other member(s) of our group we made use of a bench and some overly large bricks and rocks and came up with something that would surely keep us dry when the bucket of water came splashing down.
When it was our turn, Allison's mom came over with a large bucket of water. Her malicious smile (she obviously enjoyed getting to soak us) quickly faded when she saw our shelter.
"You can't use the bench, or these bricks. You were just supposed to use the tarp and rope." She could see our superior craftmanship and knew she wouldn't get to soak us.
"But we used the tree and we found that. We just found the bench and bricks too," One of us responded.
"You wouldn't be able to find bricks and a bench naturally occurring in nature,"was her retort.
"But the Girl Scout law clearly states to use our resources wisely and that's just what we were doing,"one of us said. BAM!
I watched the wheels start to turn in her head. She looked between the two of us making a very compelling argument and her face turned into sheer terror. After all that trying she and my mother had finally succeeded in putting us together and the result was so much more than she could have ever imagined. Her expression screamed, "What have we done?!"
Once we were friends, no one else had a chance. The two of us together were unstoppable. Our antics were often annoying to those around us. Like in St. Augustine when we convinced one of our fellow troop members that our relationship was more than friends (there may have been some in-the-closet t-shirt trading involved.) and then put a face cut out of a magazine on a stuffed penguin and woke everyone up in the middle of the night with our boisterous laughter. Or our burping competition from the backseat of the van as we drove through New England and the rest of the troop was asleep. Burp, giggle. Burp, giggle. Burp, giggle. We were loud and goofy and clever and we didn't care who heard it.
In our non-Girl Scout hours we watched movies and ate Sqwish and jumped into the lake in December and took dance classes and skipped dance classes and played cards in the boiler room and went to reconvene at Dairy Queen. And when we weren't doing that we were just annoying our mothers as payback for trying so hard to get us together.
So what does this have to do with "J- jacked up."?? On a campout one January we were put into two teams to go on a video scavenger hunt. The task was to find things in nature to represent every letter of the alphabet. While the other group found things like, "L- leaves" or "G-grass", our letters were more like, "That tree is jacked up. J - jacked up." Or "P- pole dancing" or more famously, "M- MANIAC!"
Watch and enjoy!
(Take note of what I'm wearing: a beanie, cut off gloves and some sort of half shirt...it was a weird phase.)
Tallulah and Gorge were born a few years later (She was Tallulah, I was Gorge, in case you can't tell from the picture). They came when we no longer attended Girl Scout events but ran them. Tallulah and Gorge were showgirls with yellow feather in their hair (See: picture at the top). It was a murder mystery campout weekend where the campers had to figure out who was the murderer. If Allison had been more on top of things I could have given you excerpts from our cleverly written bio. It's silly ingeniousness was really the culmination of our friendship.
Allison let me be goofy and crazy and not care, like when we found all those little creatures in shells on the beach and for some reason decided to boil them (??). She taught me fun phrases I use everyday like "that's sub-par" or "when I was knee high to a duck." She even gave me my favorite nickname when she went through a phase of retorting, "Your Face" to anything anyone said and eventually (for some reason) I was dubbed, Face. Even nine years after that initial shelter argument we're still BFFLs (pronounced Biffles) and I will always be her Face.
So next time you hear me say, "That is jacked up, J-jacked up." You won't be confused. (PS you can watch the P-Pole Dancing video here)
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