To Carrie and Ryan: The kind of toast you can't eat
I spent this weekend in Denver taking part in the wedding of one of my best friends. Lots of people stood up at the rehearsal dinner and made alternately silly and teary toasts. I chickened out because I hadn't thought to write anything and I'm not very good off the cuff. But later that weekend, after the madness of the ceremony and the reception had passed, I couldn't stop rehearsing a now-obsolete toast in my head. I kept digging through my memories and recalling anecdotes from the history of my friendship with Carrie that I wish I had been able to share on Friday night. Many of them involve food. So, without further ado, here are a few.
My most powerful mental snapshots of Carrie involve travelling. We have travelled vast distances together, and I mean that literally, rather than in the sense of emotional growth. In that respect, we have not travelled very far beyond the place where our friendship began: in history class during our junior year of high school, when we'd trade the dumb cartoons that we'd drawn on our notebooks and sing stupid songs under our breath as our teacher droned. We still sing, but now it's to stuffed animals, pets, boyfriends and even husbands. So yeah, there's no growth or maturity here.
In college, we both spent a year studying in England. I saw Carrie frequently during this time because she'd come up to visit me in London on weekends to get her party fix before heading back to the more sedate city of Brighton. We'd often begin our nights of debauchery with dinner at the EuroTandoori, a cheap curry house across the street from the King's Cross Tube stop near my dorm. I'd order a sweet martini (god knows why), Carrie would get a glass of cruddy house white wine, and we'd share a collection of insanely spicy dishes that were guaranteed to create (for me, at least - Carrie has always had a remarkable bounce-back ability from most kinds of excess) a fiery, toxic episode of gut-wrenching pain that somehow never seemed to strike until the next morning. Despite this, our EuroTandoori dates always seemed like the perfect way to commence these nights of clubbing and excessive alcohol consumption.
Later that year, we backpacked through Europe together. One day we took the train from the south of France to Florence. Carrie grew hungry during a stop somewhere in northern Italy, and bought a jar of Barilla pasta sauce and a bag of breadsticks at a little grocery for a snack.
(Incidentally, Carrie is a masterful snacker. Once I came home from work to find that she'd propped a giant watermelon in my sink, hacked into it and eaten most of it using no other utensil than a small fork.)
Anyway, back in Italy, our train arrived, and we squeezed into a car and found seats opposite a group of cute Italian sailors. I'll never forget the way their expressions turned from flirtatiousness to a kind of fearful fascination as Carrie ripped into the bag of breadsticks and began swirling them vigorously in the open jar of sauce. She proceded to defame their national cuisine in this manner without a trace of self-consciousness until the crackers were gone, at which point she sat back contentedly, covered in crumbs from head to toe. I will always admire her gumption in these sorts of situations.
And, finally, a few months ago I had the pleasure of inviting myself along on a trip with Carrie and Ryan to Tulum, Mexico. Lately, Carrie has developed an insatiable affection for all children and small animals, and by the time we departed I think every toddler and dog in the Yucatan had received an approving coo or a pat on the head. Once we stopped for lunch in town at an Argentinian steak place, and while we were eating a mangy stray dog wandered in and began begging for scraps. Carrie slipped him a few pieces of steak and he took up residence beside our table. The staff kicked him out, but he returned a few minutes later. Even I gave him an occasional scratch. He was just so pathetic. Carrie continued feeding him until our waiter came over to reprimand her.
"Please, you cannot feed this dog. He is very sick."
"What's wrong with him?" she asked.
"He has a disease. How do you call it? Herpes!" Our hands snapped back from the dog's head like a rubber band.
"See this?" The waiter pointed at the floor, where we noticed a small trail of blood leading out to the street. "It is illegal for us to have him here because it is dirty. I am sorry."
I'd had my fill of canine affection for the day, but even the risk of communicable disease didn't stop Carrie. She wrapped up her meat and fed the dog out in the street after our meal was over, herpes be damned.
I can't really execute a graceful transition from herpes to warm wedding wishes, so I won't even try. Congratulations, Carrie and Ryan!
My most powerful mental snapshots of Carrie involve travelling. We have travelled vast distances together, and I mean that literally, rather than in the sense of emotional growth. In that respect, we have not travelled very far beyond the place where our friendship began: in history class during our junior year of high school, when we'd trade the dumb cartoons that we'd drawn on our notebooks and sing stupid songs under our breath as our teacher droned. We still sing, but now it's to stuffed animals, pets, boyfriends and even husbands. So yeah, there's no growth or maturity here.
In college, we both spent a year studying in England. I saw Carrie frequently during this time because she'd come up to visit me in London on weekends to get her party fix before heading back to the more sedate city of Brighton. We'd often begin our nights of debauchery with dinner at the EuroTandoori, a cheap curry house across the street from the King's Cross Tube stop near my dorm. I'd order a sweet martini (god knows why), Carrie would get a glass of cruddy house white wine, and we'd share a collection of insanely spicy dishes that were guaranteed to create (for me, at least - Carrie has always had a remarkable bounce-back ability from most kinds of excess) a fiery, toxic episode of gut-wrenching pain that somehow never seemed to strike until the next morning. Despite this, our EuroTandoori dates always seemed like the perfect way to commence these nights of clubbing and excessive alcohol consumption.
Later that year, we backpacked through Europe together. One day we took the train from the south of France to Florence. Carrie grew hungry during a stop somewhere in northern Italy, and bought a jar of Barilla pasta sauce and a bag of breadsticks at a little grocery for a snack.
(Incidentally, Carrie is a masterful snacker. Once I came home from work to find that she'd propped a giant watermelon in my sink, hacked into it and eaten most of it using no other utensil than a small fork.)
Anyway, back in Italy, our train arrived, and we squeezed into a car and found seats opposite a group of cute Italian sailors. I'll never forget the way their expressions turned from flirtatiousness to a kind of fearful fascination as Carrie ripped into the bag of breadsticks and began swirling them vigorously in the open jar of sauce. She proceded to defame their national cuisine in this manner without a trace of self-consciousness until the crackers were gone, at which point she sat back contentedly, covered in crumbs from head to toe. I will always admire her gumption in these sorts of situations.
And, finally, a few months ago I had the pleasure of inviting myself along on a trip with Carrie and Ryan to Tulum, Mexico. Lately, Carrie has developed an insatiable affection for all children and small animals, and by the time we departed I think every toddler and dog in the Yucatan had received an approving coo or a pat on the head. Once we stopped for lunch in town at an Argentinian steak place, and while we were eating a mangy stray dog wandered in and began begging for scraps. Carrie slipped him a few pieces of steak and he took up residence beside our table. The staff kicked him out, but he returned a few minutes later. Even I gave him an occasional scratch. He was just so pathetic. Carrie continued feeding him until our waiter came over to reprimand her.
"Please, you cannot feed this dog. He is very sick."
"What's wrong with him?" she asked.
"He has a disease. How do you call it? Herpes!" Our hands snapped back from the dog's head like a rubber band.
"See this?" The waiter pointed at the floor, where we noticed a small trail of blood leading out to the street. "It is illegal for us to have him here because it is dirty. I am sorry."
I'd had my fill of canine affection for the day, but even the risk of communicable disease didn't stop Carrie. She wrapped up her meat and fed the dog out in the street after our meal was over, herpes be damned.
I can't really execute a graceful transition from herpes to warm wedding wishes, so I won't even try. Congratulations, Carrie and Ryan!
posted by cindym at 8:50 PM
1 Comments:
You didn't happen to have Mitch Jones for junior year history class, did you? He gave me a B- on every single writing assignment that year. I know I'm not a good writer, so I wasn't expecting A's, but surely I must have deserved a C once or twice.
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