Vindication blog

Last night at 10pm I arrived home from work, checked email and was startled by the following comment posted to Ronckytonk:

"anonymous: the kid was funny. you know what isn't funny? when you forget your so-called best friend's birthday. yeah, not funny. guess fucking who?"

I began guessing fucking who by wondering who could call herself my so-called best friend and who had had a birthday recently. The obvious answer was Sunny, who celebrated 31 years of life on February 21. I called Sunny's house and cell and left a voice message:

"Bunny. This is your so-called best friend Jessica calling about your so-called birthd...I mean, your real birthday. Did you leave a mean comment on Ronckytonk? I'm confused. I didn't forget your birthday. (Here my voice weakens and trails off) And I'm obviously distraught. Call me back."

NOTE: I am disreputable when it comes to birthdays. I do not excel at either remembering or celebrating. I forgot my own 24th birthday and only realized so midday when I crossed a national border and had to fill out the date on a migration form. Sunny's birthday, however, is one that I always remember because I've known Sunny since we were babies and Feb 21 is seared into my brain along with dates associated with immediate family members.

Sunny calls me back and admits that she is the anonymously pissed off birthday commenter. I remind her that I had a half-hour-long conversation with her on Tuesday, February 21 while I was on the patio of Q Bar having a vodka tonic with Bova and Rem. I remind her that she was about to go have steak dinner with her husband and friends in Chicago.

I remind her that we laughed about about the fact that on February 21, 2005 she was in a swank Las Vegas lounge and that friends kept showing up from different cities, one by one, to surprise her by being in Las Vegas too. Each time another friend appeared, she hollered and jumped over the barrier separating the lounge from the casino and flung herself on us, wrapping her legs around our waists like a little monkey.

As I'm saying all of this, Sunny starts having flashbacks. I ask her if she was drunk on the afternoon of February 21, the afternoon that we spoke on the phone.

"Yes," she admits.

"What time did you start drinking?" I ask.

"As soon as I got home from school."

"I thought you and Shane don't like drinking," I say.

"We don't. We decided again that we hate it."

"UM-HM," I say.

As we continued to talk and I continued to suggest that she needs to put the bottle down and think about what she was saying, Sunny observed that my voice was dripping with vindication, guessed that a retaliation blog might happen, and called me haterblogger.

Sunny, I think it's great that you were wasted on the afternoon of your birthday. And I don't think that when my mom reads this she'll think that you have a problem or call your mom to talk about an intervention. And if we do have an intervention I'm bringing a flask.