35). The brown paper lunch bag.....

I think all kids growing up notice different things about different people. We noticed something about one of our friends that we would hang out with in Jr. High School... She just needed a little bit of help.......

So we decided to place a brown paper bag on her front porch and run for our lives so she would not know who had placed this special brown paper bag there. We never wanted to really hurt her feelings we just wanted her to smell better........

So in the paper bag we left toothpaste, deodorant, samples that we took from my Mom's huge collection of perfume. They were just those little square little sample things that you would peel open and throw away. We also had feminine products in there, a toothbrush, a hair brush and a Bar of Soap. I'm really not sure what else there was. That's what I remember...
All the years of knowing her not one of us was brave enough to tell her she needed to brush her teeth more, brush her hair more...... She just needed a little bit of secret help I guess. We took it upon our selves to give her the message with our brown paper bag that we left on her porch.

I did not want to mean or cruel about it and neither did my other friends that were in on it... We all contributed something...

We really had tons of fun with this girl..... We would hang out at her house after school and pick up the phone line and listen to PIPE LINE......... There used to be this thing on the phones back in the day, that if you picked up the phone at any time of the day you could hear other peoples phone conversations. You would hear people screaming and singing and telling strange stories and we just had a riot listening to crazy stuff on the phone when her Mom was at work... Then we also gave some prank phone calls.... There was no such thing as Caller ID back in the day so we knew we could not get into any trouble. We were just young silly kids with silly things to keep us occupied. We also would listen to Carol King and Carly Simon on her phonograph that played Albums. We would sing thru her house like we were Carol and Carly. It was fun stuff....

Well, one day....... She moved away. I had no idea where. She just never came to school again. So we all just basically went on with our lives and made new friends and had some really fun times at the Roller Rink, at the Ice Rink, at the Park, at the Pool.... We had tons of stuff to do growing up. It was a great place for us to live. Everything was in walking distance or riding our bike distance....

Well, I swear it had been about 25-30 years that went by and every time I would get together with my friends that helped with the brown paper bag way back in the day we would always wonder. Where the heck did so and so move to... No one ever heard from her, I always wondered how she turned out.... If she got married, if she had kids blah, blah, blah....

For some strange reason.... I rememberd her Mother's name. My little detective work.... I look in Obituaries and typed in her Mother's name and up came the Death announcement.. It stated her name and her sisters name and her Uncle..... I looked up the Uncle and found a telephone number. I called it and left a message and wondered if that was the relative of this person I was searching for........ Low and behold he called me back........ Told me Yes, he was the Uncle of the person I was looking for that I went to high school with, but he did not have a phone number for the person I was looking for. He was so kind and just wanted to talk to me.. He told me he was a professor and he he would have been there the day JFK passed away but he had a meeting he had to attend and he said things happen for a reason and he was so glad I was looking for his neice becaue she had a rough life and needed an old friend. The way he said, it..... I knew something was just not right.... He found her number and called me back later that week.

I called her..
Left a message...
She called me back...
She lived about 20 miles from me.. Never moved out of Michigan. But had a really rough life..
She wanted to see me.. So We set up a date the following week and she gave me directions to where she was living. I had no idea what she was going to look like. The last time I saw her she had braces......

OMG...... I was not prepared.... She looked so much older and she had no teeth and her belly looked like she was pregnant and her hair was so thin and not healthy looking and it really freaked me out for a minute. but.... I over looked that. I was the one that wanted to see what she had been doing the past 30 something years. WE never told her who put the brown paper bag on her porch back in the day. So...... I told her..... She laughed and said, She did not even remember that happening to her.
I cracked up... All these years I could not believe we did such a thing and then here she says she did not even remember it. It was just really funny.....

Well........ She did not have a checking account and asked me if I would cash a check for her that her Uncle had sent her. I rememberd talking to him on the phone and he was a professor at one time so I just trusted him I guess.. I remember taking her to the bank and withdrawing the money out of my account to give to her for the check and then depositing the check into our account. I was praying it was going to clear. It was alot of money! It did........ Then she asked me again...... But this time she wanted me to hold onto the money and slowly give it to her when she would call and need it.
So I did......
then in the middle of the night one night at about 4 in the morning the phone rang. It was so cold outside and snowing and I hate those middle of the night phone calls..... She was calling me to see if I would go to the ATM to get some of her money. I said, what in the world do you need money for at 4 in the morning, can't it wait until the morning so I don't have to get out of bed in the middle of the night. She, said, Please- My furnace is broke I really need to have money for the Furnace Repair man in the morning. So I did... I got up and went to the bank and waited for her to come to my house to pick up her money.
Then...... something hit me..... She was pulling up with some guy...... A creepy looking guy. I went to the back door and said, Here's your money...... I had a bad feeling... She said, Thank you and left.

Then......... 2 hours later the phone rings. She tells me I need to go to the bank again and get some more money. She thinks it's going to cost more for the Furnace guy and she wanted to make sure her furnace was fixed and she could cover the bill. I was not happy! So I went to the bank again...... It was not my money..... I knew how cold it was...... I did not want her to freeze to death....So here I am on my way to the bank again in the middle of the night! I could not believe what this girl was all about, I was so confused!

She comes to the back door to collect her money again and I just am looking at her with this puzzled look... I give her the money when she shows me her hands. They had burn marks on her fingers. I thought why are you showing me that, I want to go back to bed! I was not happy....
She said, Kathy, " I'm doing drugs and I need help".............
Holy Shit.........
I literally freaked out on the insides.... I begged her to not do the drugs, I told her she was such a sweet girl and I looked for her for 30 years plus, I did not want to lose her again. I did not know what to say!
I begged her to stay strong and that if she was doing drugs we could not be friends........

She left........ I went to bed..... 3 days later at 6 a.m. the phone rang. It was her. She was telling me that she was getting on a bus that morning and going to re-hab!

She's been clean and sober for 1 1/2 years now. I only really talk to her on the phone every once in awhile... I don't see her as she's in Re hab still..... I think that's what ya call it.... She lives with other women that are trying to stay clean and sober.

She called last week to tell me it's been a year and a half that she's been clean and she wants to go and do lunch!

I think we can!!
It's the least I can do for being so mean and putting a brown paper lunch bag of stuff on her porch.

© Kiki LaFleur-Wilson