What’s Your Stripper Name?

My first inkling as to how cruel a month April was to be came early. As many of you know, I celebrated a milestone birthday in January. My best friend from childhood celebrated the same milestone, albeit with class and flair.

I, on the other hand, just wanted to fly like Superman with fist outstretched to the sky, fast enough to turn the world backwards a day or two. Barring that, I wanted to spend about a week in a drunken stupor until I could get used to the idea. I did neither, but option two held a certain appeal as neither of my parents are from the planet Krypton and the only power the yellow sun above ever gave me was the power to burn a brilliant red and blister.

I decided to knit something special for my friend for her birthday. It took a while to pick out the yarn and then the pattern. Once I got the pattern, it took three different swatches to determine what combination of yarn, needle and lace would be the best.

As I knit on the project, I thought about the fact that my friend is a lot that I am not. She is tall, beautiful and possesses the grace of a genteel Southern woman. My friend has a good job, is married to a successful husband, has two great children, and lives in the same small town where we met so very long ago. The project itself did not progress well. I am still knitting on it and hope to get it finished soon.

To celebrate her birthday, my friend asked several of her friends out to dinner at a unique restaurant in Louisville. I sat at the dinner table with people I didn’t know feeling incredibly out of place. I work with some of the poorest, disenfranchised people in society. A lot of what I see each day calls into question how we get the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the perfect lawns, and all the other tasks performed by invisible people that makes life in the US what it is for the rest of us. Yet, here I sat with people who lived where they were born, in a small town with the invisible ugliness of free school lunchers and the other vagaries of urban life hiding in plain sight. Part of me burned with envy at my inability to choose that life long, long ago.

Mainly I wished that I had stories that could be told in polite company, but when most of your time is spent talking about sex, avoiding pregnancy, STI’s and how to get baby formula, it just isn’t possible. The same stories that kill with amazing frequency at knit night die on the tongue around this table.

I struggle to think of something banal and lose. At this point all I can think to do is to play that wonderful party game “What’s Your Stripper Name?”

There are various ways to play, but my favorite is to pair your first pet’s name with the street you lived on as a child. My stripper name is BB Glendale. One of the guys’ stripper name was Blackie Longview. We had one Lucky Something and a Fluffy Something else. It was at this point during the game that it occurred to me that my mother-in-law had often talked about their pet Trixie. So, I asked Hubby what street he lived on and said that his stripper name was Trixie Oak.

Hubby was all au contraire his stripper name was Sherman Oak, which he observed sounded more like a nursing home or grave yard. His mom had the dog, Trixie. Then Hubby got this strange look on his face and said, “My mom’s stripper name is Trixie Dixie.” You just can’t recover from that.