***HAPPY BIRTHDAY LADYTEE!!!***

My Girl…

The girl that has held me down for the past 25 years. Through thick and thin, through all the highs and lows…

LadyTee!

She has been there for me all the way…

And today is her birthday, so….

Happy Birthday, LadyTee!!!

LadyTee and I have been best friends since 1981, when we started highschool, if I am remembering correctly. I have known her since 1978, when we were in summer camp and elementary school together, but she was always the young lanky girl on the side lines, watching everything go down…

Always quick to talk a bunch of sh**.

And she is STILL like that…

She turns 38 today!

But she is quick to deny that!

“I’m 29.95 and holding, babes,” she’s been yelling these past few years. “You’re 36, Ladylee. You passed me a long time ago, girl!”

Okay, LadyTee, I’ll let you go head on and yell that you’re “29.95”. I’ll give you that…

But in celebration of her birthday, I thought that I would list my top LadyTee moments over the last 25 years. I have around 30 crazy moments, but this post would be waaaay to long (and ya’ll know how long-winded I can be)… So I am narrowing it down to crazy moments of the early years of our friendship.

...Moments that we STILL go off on each other about. Moments we STILL laugh real hard about.

(Note: be forewarned, may contain language and/or subject matter offensive to some)

So without further adieu, my top Ladytee moments.

The Fresh Tour. Way back in 1988. I think that’s the name of it. Dougie Fresh, Ice-T, KRS-1, Eric B and Rakim..All I know it was the best concert I’ve gone to date. We caught Ice-T’s towel when he threw it out into the crowd (almost fought with some random chick standing next to us over that towel!) Me, LadyTee, and another friend, AJ, somehow made it backstage, and almost got dragged onto a tour bus (and you know what that means!). We almost got manhandled by Rakim’s bodyguard. (I had a slight bruise on my arm after being whacked for trying to grab Rakim’s butt.) I convinced one of Rakim’s crew to tell us the name of the hotel where they were staying, and we met them there. We convinced someone to let us know which room Dougie Fresh was staying in, and we sat outside of his door for over two hours waiting for an autograph. Some dude kept sticking his head out of the door saying that Dougie was in a meeting. (A meeting at 1 in the morning… uh, yeah right). Around two in the morning, some skanky gal came prancing out of the room, fixing her clothes. I had to keep LadyTee from snapping on her. Dougie stuck his head out of the hotel room door and signed autographs and let us run our fingers through his hair…

Then we had to go hunt down our friend AJ, who was held up in a room with a roadie… I think we lost a little respect for AJ that night.

Party Time. Back in 1983, my mother and stepfather were taking the baby (my sister) out to his brother’s house on a Saturday evening for a visit. The brother lived way up in Marietta somewhere, really far from College Park. Ladytee was spending the weekend with me, and they wanted to take us with them. We asked if we could stay home. My mother said okay, but we were sternly warned not to go anywhere. We agreed to that. They said they would be home at midnight. Well, about 15 minutes after they left, we went to the party of a classmate who lived a couple of blocks away.

We had so much fun. They played all our favorite music, and they had a lot of food. I mean all of our friends were there! That was the first time I had slow dragged with a boy. That had to be one of the best parties I have attended to date. Well anyway, we decided that we would leave around 11:30 p.m. so we could make it home before midnight.

We were walking along, giggling about the evening.

We were one house away from home, when a car slowed down next to us.

“What cha’ll doing out here!? I told ya’ll not to leave the house!” my stepfather yelled.,

It was my mother and stepfather.

Damn we got in trouble that night!!

Ladytee stepped up and took the blame (even though I was the one to convince her to go to the party!) My mother stayed pissed at LadyTee for 20 years. LadyTee is still skittish around my mother to this very day, afraid that the woman is going to have a flashback and cuss her out again!!

“I’m pregnant!”. Ladytee told me late one night in 1988 that she had missed her period, and we were thinking, trying to figure out what to do, and hoping she wasn’t pregnant. She was scared, so I told her I would go with her to Planned Parenthood. Well, I was in college then, and I skipped classes that next day, went and picked her up, and we caught the train downtown and went to Planned Parenthood so she could take a test.

Well, I sat in the waiting room looking out one of the 15th floor windows, waiting for her to come out of the exam room. She finally came out, looking sad…

“What they say, Tee?”
She sat down in a chair and stared out the window. “I’m pregnant.”
I just sat down next to her, and looked out the window.
“What you gonna do, Tee?”
“I’m gonna keep it.”
She started crying.
I started crying.
We both started wailing like we had lost our minds.
A nurse came over to calm us both down. She was finally able to get out of us that Tee was pregnant. The nurse looked at me like I was crazy.
“You’re not pregnant?”
“No,” I said between sobs.
“Then why are you crying?” The nurse asked.
“’Cause she’s crying!” I said before wailing along with Tee.

We managed to compose ourselves and leave. LadyTee had a baby boy in August of 1989.

LadyTee steps up to defend my honor. LadyTee and I had an English class together back in the eleventh grade (1985). I was fifteen at the time and she was seventeen. We sat near each other, so we use to pass notes in class. I’d been twerking a boy, initials “TB”, that lived up the street from me, and she didn’t know it. Somehow we got on the subject in our note passing antics, and I pretty much confessed in the note that I’d been sexing TB. I think I was angry that day, because the night before, TB refused to rendezvous at my house that evening (I think he had a test or something) and wanted to meet up later that week. SOMEHOW, Ladytee got it all twisted and misread the note. She thought TB was taking advantage of me, forcing me to have sex with him or something. (I still to this day don’t know HOW she came up with THAT). I just remember the scowl on her face when I turned around in class to look at her periodically.

Ladytee was plotting something. I just didn’t know what…

The next day, she was mad at me.

“Girl, I went off on your boy yesterday, when we got off the bus.”
“Who?”
“TB!”
I looked at her like she was crazy. I was hoping that she wasn’t messing up my action. “What did you say to him?”
She went on about how she had gotten off the bus and was gonna run up and swing on him for forcing me to have sex with him. I told her she was mistaken, and that there was definitely no force involved. I was very much down for it.
“That’s what he said,” she yelled. “He said you were the main one calling him up.”
“Yep! We got a schedule going” I said.
“Girl, you got me out there embarrassing myself!”
“I didn’t tell you to run up on him. That’s your fault.”
She dogged me out about the whole situation for a whole week.

I talked to TB later on the phone. He warned me to get my girl under control, because she talk a lot of sh**, acting like she was gonna jump on him, or something.

That let me know that LadyTee was truly down for me. She weighed ninety-five pounds soaking wet back in those days, but she wasn’t a fighter. Ladytee is real good at threatening folks and talking sh**.” And for that, at least, and especially since I determined that she didn’t mess up my action, I am truly grateful.

Ladytee snaps on me to this very day, over 20 years later, whenever she thinks about the whole situation, though.

Here, doggie, doggie. I was knocked out sleep one Friday night back in 1991, when my phone started ringing off the hook. My mother never answered the phone that late at night, as she knew it was for me. All I know I was sleeping good… you know, that good sleep, when you think the ringing phone is a part of your dreams… THAT kind of sleep.I knocked the phone off of the nightstand trying to answer it, and I remember having to feel around on the floor and grabbing the phone up by the curly cord so I could answer it. I caught a glimpse of clock on the nightstand. It was a little after two in the morning.

“Hello?”
“Lee…” she whispered.
“Tee?”
“Yeah, Lee.”
“What girl?”
“I got something to tell you,” she whispered.
“What’s wrong?”
“I got something to tell you,” she whispered again.
“Girl, what?”
“I just did it doggie-style.”

*Crickets*

I remember laying there, staring up at the ceiling, which was all prickly and illuminated by the streetlight near our driveway. I didn’t say anything.

*Crickets*

“Lee? You still there?”
“Man, I know you didn’t just call and wake me up to tell me that!!"
“I just had to call somebody. Whoooo, it was so good. I had to call you.”
“So what, Tee? Who cares?”
She hesitated. “So have you done that before?”
“Yeah. Duuuh.” I said sarcastically.
“Oh, why you didn’t tell me, girl?”
“Look girl, I just didn’t. Look, call me in the morning.”
“Oh… alright then. I’ll call you back.”
“Bye.” I hung up on her.

I think I hurt her feelings that night. I didn’t care, because there have been several times that I have called her and awaken her by mistake, and she has completely snapped on me and/or cussed me out.

I heard many unwanted details that next day. That’s got to be something, you know, when the loving was so good that you had to make a phone call right after the act, while dude is laying there right next to you sleep. Shoot, I can’t remember being that elated before…

She still calls me and awakens me, though not for those reasons… I think she has learned the lesson of keeping that ish to herself.

We're older now, and our antics are a little less wild... And like I said, Ladytee has always been there for me. She's always been a good listener, allowing me to cry on her shoulder when I needed someone to listen and just let me cry. She was a pillar of strength throughout my marriage woes and divorce. When I was away doing post-doc work in New Orleans, she stepped in and took care of my sisters needs, like getting her ready for prom, etc. I remember a time, back in the early 90's, when I was in college and I got jealous because her and a group of our friends partied so much and convienently forgot about me. We talked about that last year. She said that her was her doing. The others wanted to come get me, but she always told them that I had a test or something.

"You didn't need to be partying with us, Lee. We were up to no good. You needed to get your lesson. So I told them you were busy. You didn't need to hang with us while concentrating on your schoolwork."

Now that's a true friend...

Just want you to know, LadyTee... on the occasion of your turning "29.95"...

You've been such a great friend... Hope I've been the same for you, girl!!

I love you, I love you, I love you!!!!

Have a Happy Happy Birthday, Girl!!!!

Love Ladylee :)