Miranda

I could never tell my story without including my friends. Names have been changed for all the typical reasons, innocence or guilt notwithstanding . This is *Miranda's story.

What you should know about Miranda: She has one of the best laughs I've ever heard on a human being, the contagious kind. And she literally gets a sparkle in her eyes when she's truly happy, an honest-to-God, twinkle. Her smile is her best feature. Her boobs are pretty awesome too, but I'm still going with the smile. I'm not a guy, so I can.

She is the Claree to my Ouiser. She is my, hopefully, one day, we will be those two old Southern women sitting on the front porch drinking sweet tea spiked with Jack Daniels, friend. She is also one of my best champions. She is my strength and courage, when I have none. When I doubt myself, she kicks my ass in gear. She probably knows as much, if not more, about my love life and relationships than the men who have actually been involved in them.

My best Miranda story? There's so many. Nothing, however, could top the epic and legendary story of her 29th birthday:


Two things you need to know before I proceed.


1. Miranda loves Jack Daniels. It is her drink of choice. And she is no lightweight, on the rocks with a lime, please.

2. A few months prior to this event I performed my version of the Tawny Kitaen stripper crawl at a girls' only night at a friend's house, much to the amusement of my girlfriends, and that crawl became, well, somewhat legendary in its own right. 

So let's begin.

We started the birthday night having dinner, and Miranda had a few JD drinks to celebrate. Now, in no way, am I blaming what happened later on the whiskey. But, I will say, where whiskey is concerned, it does make a pretty good scapegoat. After dinner, we decided to take the party to a nearby club, where they had a band playing and we could enjoy some dancing. Naturally, someone alerted the band it was Miranda's birthday. So they call Miranda to the center of the dance floor and she is instructed to sit in a bar chair while her friends "dance" for her.  A friend of ours pushes me out into the dance floor and says "Do your stripper crawl!". Now, under normal circumstances I would not be caught dead doing a stripper crawl, on a dance floor, in a club, in public. But, it was Miranda's birthday, several birthday shots had been consumed, and I was basically being double dog dared. So, off I crawled. And crawl I did, all the way to Miranda's chair where I stood up in front of her; we hug each other, laugh, I wish her a happy birthday, and, well, this is where things went downhill. What happened next is subject to debate and depends on who you ask. All that is certain, is the next thing I know, I am lying flat on my back on the dance floor and Miranda is face down on top of me. I get up, shrug it off, and go about finding my drink. Miranda heads to the ladies' room. She exits the bathroom, walking toward our table with her hand over her mouth, shaking her head. Naturally, we assumed she must have bitten her lip in the crash, but she refuses to show us the damage. We persist, out of genuine concern and morbid curiosity. Miranda slowly pulls her hand away and smiles. HOLYSHITBALLSBATMAN, Miranda's two front teeth have been knocked out!!! I mean, gone. For real. I can not in any effective way, explain to you the complex emotion of the complete shock and horror I felt while simultaneously laughing harder than I may ever have before or since. But let me try to explain, that on the one hand there are few times that I have ever felt worse for a friend of mine but at the same time I have rarely seen anything as hilarious as my best friend smiling at me with no front teeth - on her birthday! To make matters worse, it wasn't a clean break, so there were in fact, two tiny slivers on both the outside edges that gave the appearance of small vampire fangs. I tried hard to get a photograph, but she refused to smile for the camera. And right now, I bet you wish I had that photo to share. I know I certainly do.

Bless her heart, she was trying hard not to cry and all we could do was tell her how sorry we were while simultaneously wiping away our own tears of laughter. We bought her shots as condolences and sang a boisterous rendition of "All I Want For Christmas" all the way home that night. 

Thanks to the miracle of dental procedures, her teeth were soon thereafter restored, using whatever technology allows dentists to provide fake teeth, and none who ever see her would ever be the wiser. As I said before, her smile was and still is one of her best features. It is also the source of one of my very best memories of her, and certainly one of the funniest. If I live to be a hundred and am completely senile, I don't think I will forget that night or the image of my toothless friend. It, like so many other great stories is one of both tragedy and comedy. 

As Truvy Jones said, "Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion."