it must be out of state.

i picked up a book the other day that may as well be my own biography. written by a girl from my hometown (who now also lives in my current town), it’s possible that we are sisters. except that i don’t have any sisters and we don’t have the same DNA.

details.

the fact that i have never met this girl is somewhat astounding, seeing as though we grew up only a couple of streets from each other, have the same extended overlapping circle of friends, and have parents who run in the same neighborhood country club crowd. oh and my godparents are her blood relatives. hm. i attribute this lack of ever meeting to the fact that she is several years older than me and went to boarding school way far out of my teenage reach. nonetheless, our journeys are somewhat carbon copy, so if you don’t want to wait for me to finish my quarter-life memoir, just read hers. then you’ll know practically everything about my life as it transcended from southern debutante balls to the northern underbelly of a metropolitan empire 8-million deep and counting.

if you have to ask what a debutante is or does, then you already know. there isn’t much to it other than parading around on the arms of your father and 2 closest male friends while wearing a wedding dress before you are even legal to have a drink, much less be in the market for a wedding dress. oh and you have to know how to curtsy. but don’t worry, they teach you how to do that during debutante training. because, yes, there is such a thing. and you’ll spend a large portion of the glamorous brouhaha shaking hands with a distinguished group of elders (who you don’t actually know but who your parents supposedly do) who basically had to vote you into to this charade that once served as a means to finding a suitable husband in a hoity-toity version of legalized prostitution.

think red light district for the upper echelon.

my mother was a debutante. so i was a debutante. end of story.

in the comfort of the summer sun and atop a beach towel that i recently purchased at costco for free+cheap (and the only item in the cart that i wasn’t forced to buy in bulk), i sat and read her book in a park down the street from my apartment.

at about hour 2.5, a familiar couple and their almost matching chocolate and yellow labs walked into the park for conversation and a round of fetch. the dogs would actually be matching if they weren’t completely different colors. again, details.

i’ve seen this couple before. many times. they always come in separate cars, with separate dogs, and usually during hours when people with jobs are still at their jobs. i wonder what it is that they DO. just as they are probably wondering the same about me – at 2:35pm on a non-holiday monday.

i pretend they’re having an affair. or less incriminating, are just really good friends who like to walk their dogs who are probably also really good friends.

as i pulled out of the parking area and down the narrow one-way road that leads out to a bigger road that leads to my apartment, i watched as the couple scampered to the side of the road. and froze. protecting their loins and docile k-9s, i suppose.

rest easy, dog lovers. i am doing all of 3 miles per hour and spotted you from 200 yards away.

as i passed, windows down, i heard the man say “must be out of state” and then watched from the rear-view mirror as he inspected my license plate to confirm (or deny) his suspicions, as north carolina only requires you to have one license plate on the rear of your car unlike other dumbdumb states who require the redundancy of two. one front, one back.

yes, it is out of state.

i am out of state.

the former is a well-plotted attempt at running the largest insurance scam i can get my hands on. also known as safeguarding the vehicle’s title and taxes in a state that doesn’t insist on robbing you blind every chance it gets.

the latter . . .

well, i haven’t figured that one out just yet.