As a 45-year old woman, I’m still amazed at the choices we make – or don’t make – and the roads to which they lead.
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of reconnecting with a gal I’ve known since the dawn of teenage-hood – back when we wore matching outfits with our coordinating B.F.F’s, crammed into the back of a tiny gold RX-7 to cruised “The Boulevard” and watched to see whose feathered hair and Bonnie-Bell glossed lips garnered the most attention.
Nearly three decades since high school, my decision to marry and have children do not mark the path chosen by my naturally blonde, mini-skirt wearing, unmarried friend.
Two women – two choices.
I chose the tradition path, while my friend chose the path that rims the edge. Currently, she assists her sister with the company they created (OxyLent), yet refuses to be a slave to the standard five-day work week. She speaks of hip D-J’s and music (of which I’ve nary a clue) and travels to Europe as regularly as I travel to my neighborhood CostCo.
Her smile lights up a room, and she has an energy that’s infectious. You can’t help but love and adore her. I know I do, and have since the moment I met her.
As we were sitting pool-side, my friend shared a story of a random night in Las Vegas {at the completion of which, I affirmed, “I’m coming back – in my next life – as YOU!”}
Here is the story as was told to me (as best I can recall. Between my imaginative interruptions, and the untold number of champagne bottles we drained in a single sitting – I’m sure some details are enhanced while others are left out altogether.)
When we were in Vegas, my sister and I went to the Chandelier Bar. We heard to go to the second floor, not the first or third.
We got all dressed up and when we got to the bar, there was a rope in front of the second floor entrance. I asked the bartender if we could check it out and he said, “There’s a private party on the second floor.”
I said, “We just wanted to see it and have a drink.” He looked at us – all dolled up – and said, “Oh, go ahead.”
When we got downstairs – it was wall to wall men – investment bankers.
This guy came up to us and said, “This is a private party.” After we chatted him up a few minutes, he said, “Go ahead, stay and have a drink with us.”
So we did.
The drinks flowed freely, as well as decadent food choices – too numerous to mention.
We had so much fun.
If the above story happened to me, the result would have been very different:
We arrived at the Chandelier Bar – all dressed up – to discover the second floor bar was closed to a private party.
After repeatedly being denied access, and after security asked us to leave, we’d huff out the door and hit the dive bar on the corner, where we’d arm-wrestle our way onto two grimy bar stools and order cheap draft beer and snack on the community bowl of bar nuts.
As we swirled on the bar stools, drinking from chipped mugs, we’d complain endlessly about the asshole bartender at the fancy, sparkly place who wouldn’t even let us LOOK at the second floor bar.
We’d return to our low-brow motel room and attempt to close the 1970′s-styled curtains to shut out the neon “Rooms Available” sign that flickered haphazardly, yet palled in comparison to the distracting Hollywood-style trio of lights that rotated aimlessly from the all-night party being held at the penthouse of the splashy, new Cosmopolitan Hotel.
I’d sigh, thinking, “That’s how the other half lives.”
Tale of Two Chicks and Their Ultimate Choices.
I joketh not.
