Firsts

I was thinking about the first time I had a vanilla coke the other day. It was from Lotaburger, a local dive in Snyder. I went there just about everyday after school with my bff and various others. Not only did they make the best vanilla cokes I've ever tasted, but getting a drink from the weird old man that ran Lotaburger was an adventure. After I pondered the vast memories of vanilla cokes, I then thought about driving around town with my bff.

She drove an Isuzu P'up. It was tan and brown with shiny rims. It also had purple tint on the windows and no a/c. It sat pretty low to the ground, but we didn't care. It was our ticket out into the wilds of Snyder. Not that Snyder had many wilds or that we were particularly adept in finding them. We would drive around for a long time, until one of us had to go home. It was great.

My bff lived outside of Snyder, about fifteen minutes away. So, she kept a lot of things in her truck. Make-up, clothes, feminine products, and even candy. Since the truck was a tad on the small side, the objects frequently ended up on the seat or in the glove compartment. She wasn't embarrassed about any of the "items" that happened to be in her truck at any given time, and I really didn't care either since it wasn't my truck. She saved me from having to drive a death trap '72 Bug, so I wasn't going to complain.

Since our high school had open campus, she would take her friends to lunch, and I usually went with her. So lots of people rode in her truck, and they knew that she liked pixie sticks. She would eat them after school, and there was always a bag in the glove compartment. One day after school, we were riding around with a male friend. He wanted a pixie stick, so he reached into the glove compartment. He rooted around and came up with a ...tampon. That's right. He grabbed the infamous feminine product that all men seem to be afraid of. She and I cracked up, and he just sat there with his mouth open. It seemed like forever until he threw it back into the glove compartment and started yelling. So much for getting a pixie stick. It makes me laugh to this day. His red face, gaping mouth, wide eyes, and obvious embarrassment tickled my funny bone. It took a while before he rode with my bff again, and our telling the story to most of our friends really didn't help. It did spread the laughter.