She Wanted To Have A Party.
After staying out all night with Larry, my parents wanted to talk.
At 20, anything my parents said to me was irrelevant. I knew everything and they knew nothing. I am not sure how they even got me as a daughter, since we were so completely different in our core values.
Health and safety, for example, were completely unnecessary in real life.
Still, they tried. They calmly sat me down and said: “You are our daughter, and we love you. We would do anything for you. But we need you to follow the rules we’ve set, and you haven’t been doing that. Your curfew is midnight; we think that is reasonable while you’re home for the summer. If you need to stay out a little later, we can discuss that. But there are other people living in this house who need to get some sleep and you are not setting a good example for your sisters.”
“Okay,” I said with an eye roll and an imaginary “whatever.”
“We are very serious,” they said. “If you can’t follow the rules and be home by midnight, you will need to move out.”
“Okay,” I said. “Is that it?”
They sighed and leaned back. “Sure,” they said. “But the next time you don’t follow the rules, you are out.”
“OKAY!” I said, and stomped up to my room.
A few days passed and I went out with Larry again. I came home sometime well after sunrise.
My mom came to talk to me. “Where were you?”
“Out.”
“We thought you were dead.”
“Well I’m not.” I was throwing stuff around in my room.
“Kirsten, this has to be the last time. You can’t keep breaking our rules. We told you if you broke the rules again, you would need to move out.”
“Fine, I’ll move out!” I screamed. My immediate follow-up thought: If I’m moving out now anyway, I should have just gone to Massachusetts with The Firm!
My mom was still trying to keep me home: “You can’t just come home when we ask?”
“I guess not!” I bellowed.
“Then I guess you’ve made your choice.”
“Fine!” I started throwing stuff into a bag.
My mother, suddenly quiet, watched. She knew this was real. I did not.
“I didn’t think it would be like this,” she said.
“Oh really?” I snapped. “How did you think it would be?”
“I don’t know,” she said, errant tears appearing as she spoke. “I thought we might have a party or something.”
A party, I thought. Why would I want a stupid party?
I’ve thought about my mom’s comment a million times since that day: she wanted to have a party. She wanted to celebrate my independence, help me to move forward in my life, reward me for becoming a successful adult and set a festive tone for my transition to a new residence.
I just wanted to get out.
“Well I guess you’ll have to have a party without me,” I said. “I’m outta here.”
And I took my stuff – whatever I had shoved into my purple duffel – and walked out the door.
I had absolutely nowhere to go, no money, and no plan. So I walked to the nearest pay phone, next to Sweet William a mile away.
“Can you come get me?” I asked, without a “hello.”
“Sure!” Larry said. He didn’t even ask why.
He just showed up, tied down my purple bag, and roared off with me and my bag on the back of the bike.
He didn’t even notice I was crying back there.