My Forever Friend, Leti.

Have you ever met someone that you knew you’d always be friends with?

I did.

Her name is Leticia.

I was 19 when I first met her. She was 17. I met the tall skinny, half White, half Mexican girl when we were both cashiers at Wal Mart in Oceanside, California. I remember the first day I actually talked to her. I thought she was a bitch because she totally ignored me. The day was cloudy outside and it seemed to suit her mood because man was she bitchy. I was asked by one of the CSM’s to collect the go backs from each register and I came up to her register and waited until she was finished talking to her customer and then asked her if she had any go backs. She looked at me and didnt say anything and then she walked away. She walked away from her register without even a good bye. She walked straight to the red line to wait for another customer, leaving me to pick up her go backs without comment. And being the hot headed Polynesian sister that I am, I got mad. I even remember what I said while I gathered up her go backs.

I said, “Stupid bitch!”

LOL.

It was after our first actual conversation that I knew we were going to be forever friends. I asked her if she had a crush on one of our fellow cashiers, named Anthony. He was a Marine and a couple of years older than I was and he was a hottie for sure. It was a talk about how cute we thought Anthony was that sealed her fate.

She was going to be good and stuck with me for the next three years.

And she was.

We were both transferred to the Layaway department where our friendship blossomed. We were inseperable and then we got very close to the one guy that brought us together. Anthony. He was transferred to Layaway and he became our lover boy. Not in the literal sense or anything, because he was married with a little girl, but it didn’t stop me and Leti from drooling and talking about how hot we thought Anthony was. When he was transferred he confessed that he was glad he was transferred back with us because he knew we were both fun girls. So, we became the three amigo’s until one of the slutty CSM’s started coming around the back a lot…because of Anthony.

Yeah, we all thought Anthony was having a flaming affair with the slutty CSM, but after finally getting enough courage to ask him, he denied it. He even promised me that he would never do that, so I was happy.

*shakes head*

Anyway, enough about Anthony, I’ll save that for another post. This post is about Leticia. She was such a good friend to me, she always had my back, no matter what kind of crap I got us into and I got us into a bunch of weird crap. She was one of the very few people that actually stuck with me. There isn’t a good memory that I have from my time in San Diego that doesn’t have Leti in it.

We helped each other grow up.

Actually, she helped ME grow up and I helped her loosen up.

I mean, we were still the goofy young ladies that all the old people loved at Wal Mart, but after my time with Leti in San Diego, she taught me a whole lot about life and the real world. Being the cultured and sheltered young Mormon girl from L.A. in San Diego, I was really naive about a lot of things…but Leti wasn’t. She was 2 years younger than me, but she might have been 4 years older than me for all she knew. You see, she grew up a lot different from the way I was brought up. I was brought up in cute dresses for Church and big families. She was brought up with a Single Mom who was taking care of her sister’s 2 children while her sister served time in jail for whatever felon she committed when she got out from the last time she was in jail. Leti dropped out of high school because she had to watch her niece and her nephew and then she had to get a job so that she can help her Mom with bills around the house.

She was actually the first person to show me a different way of life I was blind too. She was NOT spoiled, she worked hard for the clothes on her back, the shoes on her feet and the food in her belly. She started working as soon as she was able to and buying and making her way in life at such an early age.

When I was17, I was living the life, living off my parents, wearing the clothes they bought me, eating the food they bought me and just living a great and spoiled life. I had no worries about where I was going to find money for the movies that weekend, I didn’t have to worry about who was going to pay my pager bill because I could always sucker my parents or one of my siblings to pay my bills, it rocked being the youngest sister.

But Leti didn’t have that luxury, she was forced to grow up way too soon and yet she wasn’t bitter about it. She knew that she had to do what she had to do and it was what it was. I admire all of the things she’s been able to accomplish in her life. And I love her for the friendship she’s shown me while I lived in San Diego.

She helped me through my break up with the evil Assistant Manager, Mike and I helped her cope with the betrayal of her boy toy, Franklin.

We’ve both come such a long way and talking to her last night made me realize just how much I miss her. I haven’t seen her in the last 3 years but we talk every once in awhile. She called me last night and we talked long into the night, reminiscing about this event and that event. I swear I had forgotten a lot of what we’d been through together, but talking to her last night brought it all back and I just HAD to blog about it and her.

I’ll probably share stories of me and Leti’s escapades sooner or later, but I just wanted to blog about her since I miss her.

Do you guys have a forever friend? If so, who and how did you meet them? Got any interesting stories to share with the class?

A Walk Down Memory Lane with American Idol…

So last night, as I stood in my living room dancing around with my brush in hand, entertaining my little “audience” made up of my daughter and 4 nieces and nephews, singing along to the guys on American Idol, making them laugh and what not. I was taken back in time when Ace came on to sing his version of Butterflies by Michael Jackson.

Back to when I was dancing my way down the isles of the local Wal Mart, singing along to the music in my head and to the utter delight of my fellow co workers.

You see when I worked at Wal Mart, I was known in the store as the Dancing Queen or the Music Diva, because you could always catch me dancing at my register or up and down the aisles, I was a favorite of the older cashiers and floor workers because, they loved to hear me singing an old favorite of theirs and the young popular kids would always groove along with me, either at our registers or just mucking around in the back.

It was funny, how Wal Mart functioned too. There seemed to be a neverending supply of gossip to run the rounds and you can bet your bottom dollar that by the time your next shift started, there was a fresh batch of gossip to be readily handed down to you. Such and such softlines associate was sleeping with this unloader and this cashier was cheating on her husband (who was stationed overseas) with such and such TLE Associate, it was shameless if you ask me, but like clockwork, the rumors flew wicked wild across the store, which really, is the same everywhere.

I hung out with two girls while I worked at Wal Mart, they became my “sisters”. One’s name was Leti, the other’s name was Sasha. We were pretty popular too, because there was always some kind of gossip going around about one of us, most of the time it was ALL of us. Now mind you, I probably would have never found out about any of these rumors, had my brother in law not worked there, because it’s amazing that you hear gossip about everyone else and their mother but the gossip concerning you, seemed to reach to the undersides of the store, but always avoided making its vicious way to your ears.

I remember one time, someone was spreading a nasty rumor about Leti, saying she was having an affair with one of the Assistant Managers (which is a big no no by itself, but the Asst. Manager was married with three kids) and she was incensed over it. So, after she heard it, she called me on the phone and asked me to take a break, she was seriously pissed off about this and so I did.

Now, the rumors about me didn’t get out of hand like that, the worst the rumors about me did was Dylan has a crush on so and so guy in Shoes or Dylan was seen dancing buck wild on the table of such and such bar, but that was it. So, we’re walking to the break room and we sit down and then she tells me all about the latest rumor about her and I go through the normal reactions, first shock that they would dare say such horrible things about my friend and then anger, I want someone’s head for hurting my friend so and then I went about cheering my friend up.

Now while I’m making Leti laugh, my crush, Derek walks into the break room, listening to his cd player. Leti’s eyes glaze over and I know she’s planniing on embarassing me. So I shrug my shoulders and turn to greet him.

We mess around with him for a little bit and then ask what he’s listening to and turns out, he’s listening to a slow jam cd that he made. Now, Grace can attest to my love of slow jams. R&B songs in particular and when he handed over his cd player for me to listen to, I began singing along to, Bliss by Mariah Carey and Derek smiled and told me that he approved of my taste in music. I laughed and I guess while I was singing along to the song, Leti and Derek were having a conversation about me, I heard bits and pieces of it, but was engulfed in my favorite songs, pouring from the head phones, into my ear.

I dont’ remember what we were talking about, but Derek took the headphones away from me and then started laughing, he turned the song and Leti and I went back to talking about girl things and then out of nowhere, Derek starts singing.

I’ve never heard him sing before, but he started singing, Butterflies by Michael Jackson, I turned to him with a big smile on my face and he was looking right at me, singing it. He even winked at me and like the giddy young adult that I was, I was enamoured all the more.

I had completely forgotten about that song and moment, but when Ace sang it last night, my phone rang and it was Leti, screeching into the phone, “ITS YOUR SONG!”

I thought Ace did a great job singing that song and it was crazy how hearing a certain song could trigger a long lost memory, a memory that I had totally forgotten had happened in the first place.

Has this ever happened to you?