Swan Song of An Aging Stripper (Happy 30th!)

I know that that sounds like the title of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book, but it is actually a chapter of my life.

* Aging Stripper decided at some point that she had a man harem. Her roommate was Haitian and she was dating a countryman. His English was not very strong, and I struggled to understand anything that he said. One day Aging Stripper came home and said, "Guess who I saw today? 'Billy.'" The Haitian, in very heavily accented English, didn't skip a beat, "Is that the guy who wants your trash?" I directed an accusatory stare at Aging Stripper and asked, "Who is teaching this man English?" He later took the phrase "wants your trash" to his English class on idiom day and was cruelly rejected by the instructor.

* One day we had the privilege of travelling to Reynosa, a Mexican border town. In a crowded bathroom she fruitlessly pumped the soap dispenser and exclaimed with anguish, "NO HAY SOPA (THERE ISN'T SOUP)." I guess that she was right.

* Through a stunning turn of events, Aging Stripper was invited to my family reunion in Cancun. My brother, Baby T, even tagged her in the "My Family" application on Facebook. She looked around the hotel and asked, "Is it just me, or do foreigners think that things are super nice and ritzy when we just think that they are ok?" As I am not an imperialist, I just let it go. Then my dad (a foreigner) walked into the room and exclaimed, "This hotel is so sharp! Can you believe it?" He had no idea that he had walked into an ethnocentric trap.

* My weirdo cousin gave me a bottle of clam juice for my 22nd birthday. I was deeply touched by the gesture, but a little uncertain about what to do with it. Luckily Aging Stripper chugged half the bottle, unprovoked. From that day forward, my cousin referred to her as "Clam Juice Girl."

* When I came back to Utah at the end of the summer, she showed up at my house with a prom do' in my honor. I didn't realize that you could get one at a booth in the mall.

* I was eating dinner at our hotel in Cuba and saw a massive crowd of Europeans congregating out in the lobby. They seemed to be enjoying some show of sorts, so we went out to investigate. We soon discovered that Aging Stripper had joined forces with the octogenarian hotel pianist to create a musical variety show.

* However, her greatest talent is her eating prowess, hands down. It has reached such mythic proportions that I don’t even know what the true numbers are, but included are: 5.5 chocolate lava cakes, doused in whipped cream, eight filled Krispy Kreme doughnuts and ten candy bars in a two hour road trip. Feel free to add some to the comments if you know of other feats. I got really frustrated on a road trip with her because she would only stop at Dairy Queen and explained, “I’m going to eat the desserts anyway, why waste calories on real food?”

Happy Birthday, Girl!