a twenty for your thoughts

... a nickel for a kiss ... a diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime ... oh wait. not the point.

it was a happy day in february 2010. rina was throwing her best friend gailey a bridal shower at nail tropics in serendra and my sister and i were invited. apple and i were a bit early but decided to check out the place. on our way there, we saw rina and gailey unloading the food for the shower from their car. there was a whole truckload (fine, 'carload') of food, and we all grabbed a few bags and trays and bottles so it would take just one trip from the car to the venue.

so picture four relatively well-dressed, well-bred (ahem) women with fingers and hands nearly bleeding from holding overstuffed plastic bags (sorry, earth). and then picture that one of them saw a twenty-peso bill on the ground.

'uy! twenty pesos!'

for some reason we all stood around it, like a strangely hypnotized, bag-wielding coven around a magic brew. except the magic brew was a filthy, dirt-encrusted, wrinkly, folded twenty-peso bill that we were just staring at because no one had a free hand. i was seriously contemplating kneeling on the ground to pick up the bill (along with a few dozen microorganisms) with my lips.

i don't know why twenty pesos was so attractive at the time. i doubt that anyone in that group was greedy or hungry. and yet, for what felt like a very long time, we stared. and stood there. still holding the food (and vodka!).

after minutes of nothingness, a man who saw our helpless state picked up the twenty and held it out to us. as if it weren't embarrassing enough, the man looked slightly distracted and tired, like he just came from a full day's worth of manual labor and had no time for silly girls longing for twenty pesos. we insisted that he take the money instead but he said nothing and just inserted the bill in one of our clutched hands.

there was nothing to do after that except to laugh at our own absurdity. and to start drinking, of course. vodka waits for no one.