Calamity Susan and How I Murdered My Best Friend's Parakeet

I've gotten a BIT more focused as I've matured, but when I was younger I could really get myself (and those around me) into, well, quite honestly, a mess. I once caused an entire European soccer team to take the wrong train; they couldn't have been very happy about that.  Another time I was late and literally running to my then boyfriend's college graduation, and fell and broke a heel off my high heeled sandals, so I just took them off. I was flying from Georgia to New York to visit my parents another time, and the day before my trip I could not find my plane ticket. Anywhere. I never did find it. I had to go through all kinds of hoopla to get a new one reissued on such short notice (and no computers, this was the late 1980's) 

I lost my passport once days before a flight from Germany to the states and wound up at the American Consulate, and I swear the only reason I was on that plane was the fact that the guy behind the counter happened to have gone to the same high school as I did. I forget how it came up, but god bless Suffern High School.

I also once, trying to be helpful at a red light, leaped out of my car to hand the driver of the car in front of me the license plate that I thought had fallen off and someone put up on his trunk for him. It was a car dealer with a temporary plate. He thought I was insane. I know, blonde. It explains a lot I guess.

Maybe my lowest moment came when I was living in Germany in the early 80's. I was alone a lot with my husband being in the field frequently, and I was unofficially adopted by Janet and Charlie. Charlie was my husband's Company Commander, and therefore my husband's boss. We had a great battalion of Army Officers and their wives. (I was going to say and husbands, so as not to be sexist, but I don't think we HAD any army husbands in our group back then.) 

Anyway, this was a very tight group of people, from the Battalion Commander, Colonel Frank Henderson and his wife, Penny Lee, to lowly Lieutenant's wives, like me. We traveled en masse frequently, Berlin, Paris.... the whole gang went. I was the baby of the group, and was well taken care of and looked after, particularly by Janet, and Charlie, too, when he wasn't in the field. They'd have me over for dinner frequently, or just to hang out. My husband and I also spent a lot of time with Janet and Charlie, just us two couples frequently, when the guys were on base. 

Janet was the organizer and the boss for the four of us. She made the travel arrangements for trips and told us what we needed to do and where to be. We were happy to have her direction. Janet was always responsible, unlike some other people she associated with (ahem). Only one time do I remember Janet not being totally responsible, and I'm sure I was AT LEAST partly to blame for that. Janet was teaching and her group of teachers at her school were going to some beer garden or festival, and they had a bus taking the group and bringing them back home. Our husbands weren't around, so Janet asked me if I wanted to go with her. You don't have to ask me to go on an adventure twice, so I said sure! 

There was a lot of beer. Strong German beer. There were plastic squeaky hammers which just seemed to appear, and people were bopping other people on the head (or wherever with them). I believe we lost track of time and wound up sprinting for the bus, but we did get on it. This is when Janet started to not feel very well. Never a big drinker, she had had one too many. We got to her apartment and I asked her if she wanted me to stay with her. Yes, please. She gets into bed, and I go in to check on her and see how she's doing. I was happy to be able to help someone who was so good to me.

Do you want anything? I ask her. "Water." So I head on out to the kitchen, but the boss is not so under the weather that she can't shout out a specific instruction. "In my Seattle Seahawks glass," comes the request. I locate what is clearly the only glass suitable for the occasion, and take her ice water. She drinks, she sleeps, I go to bed, all is well in the morning.

One time Janet and I decided we should highlight our hair. Now I have highlighted my hair since I was in high school, but Janet had not, and she had beautiful, shiny healthy medium brown hair. So we did each other's hair, and I got too enthusiastic with her highlights, I kept adding them and seeing what I thought, one more here, more there. Perfect. I was quite proud of myself. 

Until she washed everything out and her hair was, and I am not kidding, the color of a bright yellow Easter Egg. It was too late or something to go to the store for brown hair color, to try to restore it, and I think the next day was Sunday or a holiday and all the stores were closed, so poor Janet went around with a bandana on her head for a day or two. That's not the worst of what I did though, oh no. I'm getting to it.

Janet and Charlie and Tom and I decided we should get new BMW's to bring back to the states with us. So one Saturday, we go into the dealership and a sales guy is at his desk, and we tell him we'd like two BMWs, please. They got a navy one, ours was black. Charlie and Tom, when it was time, drove them to the place they were going to be shipped to the US from, and I believe my husband narrowly escaped death when a truck jackknifed on the autobahn near them.

The autobahn, incidentally, has no speed limit.  I didn't know how to drive a standard (which our BMW was, and therefore I needed to learn), and Charlie had this bright yellow Mazda that was a standard, and he said he'd teach me. So we left my husband and his wife somewhere along the road in our car (the Mazda was a two seater) and we start driving. I'm doing ok, and Charlie is very patient with me. I'm getting the hang of it, and Charlie says, in all seriousness, "When you go a hundred we'll turn around and go back."

I said, "I don't want to go a hundred, I'm scared." "Oh come on, look, everyone else is going fast, you need to get experience shifting at high speeds. Hit a hundred and we'll turn around. We're not getting out of the car until you go 100."

So I did, it took me a long time and a lot of convincing from Charlie, but I knew he was somehow adamant about it, so 100 miles an hour it was. I took so long that Tom and Janet thought we might have gone to visit a neighboring country. Good lord. 100 miles an hour!

Being married to an Army officer involves a fair amount of socializing, and a formal ball or three a year. Janet and I went shopping for dresses in a German department store one time, and I think my gown needed some kind of minor alteration, hemming or something, and Janet offered to do it for me, as she knew how to sew. So I'm over at her apartment, just the two of us there, and we decide we want a beer, or a glass of wine, I forget which now. Doesn't matter. She's busy sewing and she said, "Go put the wine in the freezer, it's not cold, and by the time we're done with this it will be cold." 

So I go back to her kitchen, put the wine in the freezer, close it up tight, and go back to join her. Janet loves birds, and she had, honestly, the most adorable parakeet at the time, Frank. Frank was very social and loved people and attention. He was named Frank after Colonel Henderson. Frank would frequently perch on the head of people visiting Janet and Charlie, and I remember more than one time Colonel Henderson rocking in Janet and Charlie's rocking chair, Frank on his head, bobbing away in time. I loved Frank as well.

A short time after I return from the kitchen, Janet realizes, Frank, who had been in the living room with us, is missing. We look around, call him. Nothing. Where could he be? Janet asks me, "When or where is the last time you remember seeing him?"  Hmmmmm....I'm thinking. Um, yes. The last time I remember where he was WAS ON MY HEAD, before I went to the kitchen. We run. Not only are the drinks cold, but so is Frank. 

He is alive though, and we take him into the bathroom and turn the hot water in the shower on to warm the room up as quickly as possible. Janet is naturally fussing over him, and I'm as worried as she. The next day, in a twist of irony, Janet made chicken with orange sauce for dinner. Frank had made it through the night, but clearly was not right, because he took a dive in the hot orange sauce and that was it for poor Frank. I felt terrible. I wouldn't hurt anything. Janet got a new bird after that, but he (or she, who knows) just wasn't Frank. 

So Frank is long gone. The BMWs are long gone. Janet's Easter egg hair is (thankfully) gone. Me going 100 miles an hour is gone. But the memories of such a wonderful time with people we are still great friends with will always be with me. And Janet and Charlie, luckily, took all my mishaps in stride. I'm their oldest daughter's God Mother.