Bringing in a New Year With Cim

It's New Year's Eve. 1977...almost 1978.

Cim and I are celebrating it together at her her house, a brick bungalow, on the East Side of Chicago.

It's a frigid, icy, snowy, wicked, winter's night.

Cim's mom is out with friends, her little brother away with a sitter, and her older brother out partying it up somewhere.

What are we doing? How are we bringing in the New Year?

Eating boxes of Life cereal, watching old Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies, making prank calls and tape recording every conversation we have and call we make.

It is such a fun night. (I still have the tapes to prove it!) I wish I had video tapes of the two of us acting out Fred and Ginger. Cim trying to lead me in the waltz, while I do steps to the Polka.

At one point in the evening, Cim and I get into a stupid fight about something I can't remember.

I am so pissed off that I tell her "I'm calling my Mother to come pick me up and take me home."

I grab the phone and take it into a bedroom and crouch in a corner. The phone extention cord is pulled so tight it might break! I dial...and dial....and dial....

Why wasn't it ringing? I yell into the phone, "Helllooooooooo, Hellooooooooo, I want to go HOME cuz Cim's being a biiiiiiiiiiitch!"

Finally I give up on the call. I assume the lines are down due to the winter storm that's been brewing for the last 3 hours.

I go to hang up the phone and there , leaned against the kitchen wall, is Cimmy holding the un-plugged end of the phone-jack in her hand!

She's laughing her ass off!!

Knowing I was talking into a dead phone suddenly seems funny to me too and my anger disappates. Cim is laughing so hard that she slides down the wall to the floor.

Before I know it, I am on the floor with her! We laugh and laugh and laugh! Jesus, how we laugh!

When our laughter subsides we proceed to taste test every condiment in her Grandma's fridge. We freeze her brothers underwear and eat a few more bowls of cereal - LIFE cereal cuz that is her favorite!

At 11:59 we are squeezed together on the couch, bellies full and content as best friends can be.
Content in our little world as a storm rages outside.

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-----1!!!!

"HAPPY NEW YEAR!" , I say to Cim.

"HAPPY NEW YEAR ", Cim says to me . And then...she picks up a bowl of warm, left-over milk and dumps it over my head!

We laugh again. And then we sleep.