charlotte harris

“Pull in that entrance.  I like to always park in the same place.”  I pulled in there and remembered my first trip to this same mall with this same friend about 16 years ago.

It was a legitimate college freshman road trip.  I say legitimate, because it was a contrast to how my girlfriends and I would typically just “steal” cars.  Like the time Lisa and I took Bridget’s car to Blockbuster across town and the battery died.  We got a jump and never told her about it because, well, we weren’t supposed to drive her car.  Or when MB and I took Melissa’s car on a joyride to Richmond just to eat a late night grilled cheese at the 3rd Street Diner where the boys at the table next to us wondered if we could explain a “rasher” of bacon.  We were *hoping* she’d never check the mileage. 

Yeah, I became sullied at age 17 when Heather stole her boyfriend’s Subaru so we could go party-hopping with our math teacher’s daughter.  I think she was the girl who gave me my first cigarette.   That night, we got pulled over by the cops, which evidently did not deter me from a future in grand theft auto.  Whatever, stealing cars is merely impish if you always return the vehicle when you’re through, right? 

But that particular night Pia had borrowed, with permission, a grey Honda  Accord from some guys in the dorm, and we drove to Northern Virginia with the intention of buying lingerie (lin-ger-eee, as she used to teasingly pronounce it) at the Tyson’s Corner mall.  We didn’t yet have fancy panties in the Fred.  I don’t remember much… but I do remember the perfume in the air as we picked out our lacy bras and satiny bikinis and left the store with crisp logo-emblazoned bags.  I wanted to go to Britches too, because “everyone” was wearing the warthog emblem. 

I think we wore those bras the night we celebrated Pia’s birthday.  Of course, to add a little girliness to a night otherwise involving a tin of Skoal (we were experimenting) and a couple gallons of screwdrivers.  I know we did wear baseball caps.  Backwards, as any righteous skoal-dipper in the South would. 

But I left the Skoal and the baseball caps behind in the spring of 1992, and I haven’t ”borrowed” a car in maybe 13 years.  In fact, I am shocked that we did not arrive at the mall in a minivan this time.   But really I am just so happy that my awesome wacky adventurous freshman year roomate is still my awesome interesting and savvy friend after all these years.  And if remembering all the fun times we had means I am also unable to erase the embarrassing memories (like the night we dipped Skoal in our lacy bras or all those cars I borrowed), then so be it.