II just knew I left my watch on my dresser! My sister took it...or one of her friends...I just know it!
Yep that was me somewhere around 19 or 20 years old. My little sister was 9 years younger. Her best friend at the time was this little pain in the ass, Jill Kimmel. I didn't know much of her or her family except that they lived down the street and my sister was always hanging out over there. Those pesky little kids were always up to some sorta conniving. And I don't remember ever thinking they were very funny at all, ever.
One day as I was searching for one of my beloved Swatch watches in my bedroom. I had quite a selection. One in particular was missing... And the first thing I thought of was my sister or one of her little friends took it! I ranted about it, hoping to scare my sister into a confession, but to no avail. My precious watch had been ripped from my possession so swiftly. As I mourned for my Swatch Watch I boiled with anger and finally landed on a perfect candidate for my resentment! That Jill Kimmel did it, I just know it!
I was sure that Jill took my watch. But my sister swore neither of them took it. What could I do...I thought of some sorta torture, but that would land me in trouble with my mom or her parents, for sure! I had been duped by this Jill Kimmel gal...and I couldn’t do anything about it!
Many weeks later as I was rummaging through the top drawer of my dresser, I found that damn watch...it had fallen or had been brushed into the top drawer unbeknown to me!
I had to eat crow...damn it! Now I couldn’t resent my sister or that Jill Kimmel!
She remained forever on my mind as one of those valuable lessons in life.
Some years later I learned that Jill was the sister of Jimmy. Jimmy Kimmel. Who would have figured that you could live a few houses down from one of the funniest guys around and never know it! I had no idea. Jill was also some sort of comedian herself. I found her on Facebook and MySpace and stalked her for a few minutes. I found out she was quite funny and adorable!...It must run in the family. I must have not seen the signs of a budding comedian at the time...but then again I was really only concerned about me… and my Swatch Watch of course!
Now, every time I think to accuse someone of something...I think about this story and I remind myself of the infamous Jill Kimmel!
:)
5 comments:
How could I forget this incident? It is deeply ingrained in my memory and your story has compelled me to write my own:
This is how my side of it unfolded...
I moved to Las Vegas in January of 1977 from Brooklyn, New York. I had just turned 7 years old.
I don't remember exactly when it was, but a girl named Jenny Benton and I became friends. We hung out every day after school until we were forced to go to our own homes and beds.
She wasn’t as outgoing as I was but she became my best friend. I thought she was so cool because she had a single mom who worked (my married parents always seemed to be at home and up in my business) and an older sister who was pretty and smart (I only had brothers). Her older sister’s birthday was on October 27, the same day as my childhood crush Simon Lebon. The sister’s name was Audrey, which was odd to me because her mother’s name was also Audrey. I never knew a girl named after her mother before…but I liked the name so it seemed okay.
Jenny's middle name was Robin and I thought that was so pretty. I never knew anyone named Robin and I didn't believe her when she told me. Her mom verified that was really her name and then I was impressed. People from Brooklyn were never named Robin.
Jenny used to feel self conscious because she was a little chubby and I was all legs. Once I overheard her mom tell her, “Just wait until her metabolism slows down”. I don’t think Jenny knew what metabolism was. If she did, I wish she would have told me. It seemed like a slam at the time, but looking back now, that was a nice mom thing to do-assuring her child that her friends would also get fat one day. It’s something I would totally do for my daughter.
We would go to the lake with Audrey the mom and her boyfriend Phillip. Phillip liked ribs. We'd call him "Rillip who liked phibs". We were so clever. Phillip not only liked ribs, he also liked smoking hashish, which he did in front of us once at the lake. I didn't know exactly what it was but I knew it was bad. I also knew if I told my mom that she wouldn’t let me hang out at Jenny’s house anymore. She also probably shouldn’t know that we rode there in the back of his pickup truck, flying around like ragdolls.
Audrey the mom was totally into fitness and had a body to die for. She had those little indentations at the small of her back and wore string bikinis all summer long. Phillip liked that too. She used to try to get Jenny to exercise and would pile the two of us into her Datsun B210 and bring us along to the gym where we’d pretend to know what we were doing but mostly just liked sitting in the hot tub. Once she had us “training” for a 5K Turkey Trot…Jenny and I ran around the neighborhood every night for weeks, just like she taught us…roll from heel to toe, heel to toe. To this day, whenever I run I think “heel to toe, heel to toe”. Granted, that only happens if I’m chasing a grocery cart from rolling into my van or something, but still…heel to toe, heel to toe. It’s funny the things that stay with you.
Jenny and I had our own club called The Waka Waka Women of the World and we shared inside jokes and played practical jokes on neighbors. We mixed up concoctions of milk, flour and toothpaste and convinced the neighbor kid Neil that we had made him a vanilla milkshake. He drank it. He got sick. We put ketchup on maxi pads and placed them on the sidewalk.
We were scared of Gina Lopez and her sister Rosalie but sometimes Jenny would play with them anyway. Nicole Oravetz was super mean too but when she invited me to her house, I would always go. I’d show up and she wouldn’t be home. Then I’d go call for Jenny and we’d have a great time. I probably should have done that first but Nicole took belly dancing classes and had a club called “Tiffany Top Tips” where she made me hand-drawn newsletters that were awesome. I wanted to be like Nicole. Nicole ran away from home in the 7th grade and I never saw her again, but that’s another story for a different chapter.
(part 2)
Jenny and I made up songs and poems like, "Paul, Want A Banana?" and "Russ, Russ, Bigger Than a Bus". One time I had a sneezing fit in her driveway and we counted 32 sneezes. That’s a lot of sneezing. I told her that my grandma used to sneeze that many times in a row and we all would laugh and laugh. She’d get so mad and yell at us between sneezes. That made us laugh even harder. My grandma was the best.
We'd watch the neighbor across the street work on his car. Eric Cellini was his name. We were about 10-11 and he was around 18. His friends would come over and they'd all hang out in the driveway with their shirts off. Jenny and I would peek out her front window and yell, "I LOVE YOU" and then duck down, giggling. We were sure he didn't know it was us. He gave us the nicknames, "Jill-joch" and "Jenni-roch". Guys don't give you nicknames unless they like you. How awesome was that? We were so cool. We had our own nicknames for each other too. She was Jennicent and I was Jillicent. She thought those up.
We would save our money and walk to the dollar theater on weekends and as often as possible during the summer. If we found an extra quarter in the wash, we would buy unicorn or rainbow stickers at the corner Hallmark. We could never afford any of the Hello Kitty or My Melody stuff but we’d lust over it for hours. Little Twin Stars were so cute too…little pads of papers, stickers, miniature colored pencils. We wished we were rich. Sometimes we'd treat ourselves to a 49-cent hot dog or a 25-cent ice cream cone from Thrifty. Those squares scoops of ice cream were the best. The rare weekends she would spend at her dad's house seemed endless.
The movies we saw most frequently were “Breaking” and “Breaking 2: Electric Boogaloo”. Boy, could that ShabbaDoo move. If the ballet dancing white girl Kelly could become a break dancer, then why couldn’t we? The first time we saw “Breaking”, we immediately went back to Jenny’s house and discussed what our street names would be. Mine was “TC” for “Totally Cute”. I don’t think we ever settled on one for Jenny. We decided our uniforms would be t-shirts with our street names and those black cheerleader trunk things that looked like bathing suit bottoms. We didn’t have any cheerleader trunks so we wore bathing suit bottoms. Technically, they weren’t bottoms, they were one piece bathing suits because we didn't have bathing suit bottoms either, but we looked cute. We wore our t-shirts over them and longed for legwarmers, but those would have to wait until we recruited other kids from the neighborhood to be on our crew.
We popped in the 8-track of “Rapper’s Delight” and learned every word, which suddenly became much more interesting than trying to learn moves and all of that sweaty dancing. That song started my lifelong obsession with rap. Eventually I would trade in the moniker “TC” for “White Chocolate”. People laugh now when I tell them my rap name…not because it’s necessarily funny, but because most regular 40-year old people don’t have rap names.
Jenny had Vans sneakers with a unicorn and rainbow airbrushed on them. She and I swam for hours in her pool and found her mother's porno stash. There was something called “Emotion Lotion” which tasted like cinnamon and got hot when you blew on it. I wasn’t sure exactly where you were supposed to use it, but after we watched one of the pornos called, “The Other Side of Julie”, I had an idea. I learned how to use a tampon by practicing with the box Jenny and I found under Audrey the sister’s sink. Jenny bought me a unicorn pin for Christmas one year. I still have it in an old jewelry box somewhere.
(part 3)
One day my mom got a call from Jenny’s mom. She said that Audrey the sister’s Swatch watch was missing and asked if maybe my little brother Jon (who was 6 years younger) had thought it was a toy and inadvertently taken it home. Now I realize that was her way of giving me an “out” in case I had taken it…I could return it, blame it on the innocent actions of my little brother and all would be forgiven. Jenny and I could resume our slumber parties and the watch would never be mentioned again.
My mom asked Jon and then me, and reported back to Audrey the mom that neither one of us had taken the watch. I didn't think much of it...except that Jenny stopped talking to me.
Every day I walked past her house and wondered what she was doing and what was going on inside. Who was making up songs with her? Was she practicing her break dancing moves? Maybe she was over at Gina and Rosalie’s. Maybe to break the ice I could go in through the garage and hide behind the couch and jump out and scare her like I had done a million times before. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a good idea. Did she really think my brother and I were thieves? Audrey the sister sure did.
I had other friends, I was never bored...Jenny was a year younger than me, so we were in different schools anyway. She was at the sixth grade center and I was in junior high. She wore KISS concert t-shirts and I was more of an Esprit girl. I convinced myself I was older and prettier and who cares about Jenny Benton and her stupid older sister Audrey anyway.
She didn’t know I had gotten braces or had my first kiss at Kyong Park’s birthday party. He told me his name was Joe Sheral and that he lived in California but I think he lied because I saw him a few weeks later at a UNLV basketball game. He was stupid anyway because he tried to put his hand down my overalls when he kissed me and his tongue was all slobbery. My Aunt Fran was visiting from New York and when I got home that night I told her all about the kiss and she promised not to tell my mom. It seemed like such a huge deal at the time, and I guess it was. I’m glad I had Aunt Fran to share it with because Jenny, although just 5 houses down, was much too far away.
I’m not even sure how much time went by. Maybe it was a few months, maybe a year or more. At this stage in my life some memories are so crystal clear and others, well not so much. This is one of those “blurry” times. I think it was about 6 months but I can’t be sure.
At any rate, life went on without Jenny. My birthday party, Christmas…I didn’t die. Neither did she. Interestingly, I never once saw her during the time we weren’t speaking. Didn’t see her outside, never passed her on the way to school…it was as if that house and its missing watch her swallowed her up whole.
School had begun several months before and it was January. The only reason I know that is because Jenny’s birthday is January 24. She’s an Aquarius. She had started at my junior high that fall and was in the 7th grade, while I was now in 8th. I was in the lunch line, deciding between getting the Big Texan which was a roast beef sandwich or just getting fries and a chocolate chip cookie, when Jenny approached me.
I hadn’t even seen her at the school that year, so it was surprising to see her at all, let alone have her hand me an envelope. She walked away without a word and I opened the small white piece of paper.
In a handwriting that was so familiar yet seemed so foreign, she had written, “My sister found the watch in her drawer and I am sorry she blamed you. Will you come to my birthday party?”
I felt a wave of relief that the truth was known…and a little bit of sadness for all that we had missed out on because of this misunderstanding. Without hesitation, I accepted her invitation and bought her a gift that was probably embellished with unicorns or rainbows. Maybe I even convinced my mom to spring for something with Hello Kitty.
(part 4)
We never talked about the watch incident. I went to her birthday party and had fun but I felt a little different, more mature maybe, than the rest of her friends. These were girls from her soccer team and class that I didn’t see outside of Jenny’s parties. We played “light as a feather, stiff as a board” just like we had in years past. I’m sure there was junk food and pizza involved. I probably brought my pillow and flowered sleeping bag with me, but this time I opted for a spot on the floor slightly off the side of the couch… in years past I would have proudly claimed the spot angled toe to toe with the birthday girl. The place I had occupied on so many prior occasions seemed to have lost its appeal, and I allowed another girl to slip into the coveted area that only a best friend should enjoy.
I don’t know if she felt the change the way I did. I never found out if she was hurt or sad or missing me. I don’t even know if she was ever really angry with me for allegedly taking the watch, or if it was just that her mom had forbidden her to speak to me. I never asked.
Years passed and Jenny and I were friendly. We would see each other riding bikes on the block or walking in the halls at school and would say hello or stop for a few minutes to catch up but it was never the same. Gone were the days that we would trek to the end of our block to have picnics in the model homes. The endless hours we’d spend talking on the phone when one of us wasn’t allowed to come out and play were over. I never heard about her first date or her first dance or if her mom ever married that creepy Phillip guy.
In June of 1986, my dad got a job in Arizona and we were moving the day after school let out. My parents were going out with friends so I decided to have a party at my house. Audrey the mom let me ice down and hide the keg over at her place until my parents left. She was always cool like that. My mom was furious years later when she found out. Good thing I never told her about Phillip and his drug use. Jenny didn’t come to the party and I don’t even really remember officially saying goodbye.
On June 8, 1986, my family loaded into the cream colored station wagon; my dad was driving as always, with my mom navigating his way. My little brother whose name had long since been cleared of all watch-theft charges was now almost 10 years old and belted firmly in the middle row. My older brother had just completed his first year of college and was not thrilled to be leaving. I think he may have driven his own car separately but that’s another one of those fuzzy details.
I was 15 years old and leaving my cousins, my first boyfriend, my church, my school…I was devastated. I had said my goodbyes to all of them the night before. There were tears and hugs but I knew I’d see my cousins at Christmas and that I’d find a new church and a new school…possibly even a new boyfriend.
I sat in the last row of the wagon--the row that faced backwards--and as we pulled away from our home, I could see Jenny Benton’s house. She wasn’t standing in the driveway waving or running after the car crying. Everyone else that was important to me had wished me well…but as I had moved on with my life, she had moved on with hers.
This friend I had built my childhood around, the one I had told all of my secrets to, the Jennicent to my Jillicent, was nowhere to be seen. She was off, living a separate life that had begun for both of us the day the watch went missing.
I still miss her.
Well I hope she reads this and realizes the loss as I do. I read your quips and smile or laugh everyday and know you are doing great.
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