I have been writing for the
Ewing Observer
since 2004. In that time,
my family, our dog and other random stuff that has happened. I have mentioned my two friends Kim and Pam in columns before, but I’ve never dedicated one solely to them and our friendship.
So, in the month of November, the month of thankfulness, I am going to tell you about Kim and Pam and me and our 40 years of friendship. Brace yourselves.
I met Kim and Pam in 1977. We all had gotten jobs at Ormond’s in Quaker-Bridge Mall. This was when the only things that were open in the mall were Bamberger’s (now Macy’s), Arthur Treacher’s Fish and Chips and a few other weird stores.
We immediately hit it off. We were roughly the same age (one of us is a year older but I’m not saying who, because Kim would never speak to me again) and Kim grew up in Ewing like I did. Pam was from far-away Lawrence Township.
Kim and Pam were chosen to be cashiers. I was not. Perhaps my ingrained immaturity showed itself too clearly. From the very beginning, our differences were what made us the triumvirate.
Kim was soft-spoken, brilliant, gorgeous, and had the driest sense of humor of anyone I’ve ever met. Pam was a ball of energy, smiling, cute, laughing, bubbly, with the biggest heart. And then there was me. The one who was silly, dramatic, outgoing and basically the instigator of everything we ever got in trouble for.
There were intercoms all over Ormond’s. There was one in the dressing room, one in the front of the store, one behind the cash stand, and unfortunately one in the stockroom near the managers’ office. My favorite thing to do when I was bored was to scratch my fingernail over the dressing room speaker, thus making a loud “passing gas” sound. I mean LOUD! I especially liked to do this when Kim or Pam had a long line of people waiting to pay. I scared many a customer in the front of the store by doing this. I also got my first warning from the managers, after they figured out what that noise was.
One time Pam and I were going to a fellow Ormond employee’s house for dinner. It was in the middle of summer and about 175 degrees. We decided to dress in winter coats, hats, gloves, scarves and boots. We held a snowball scraped from one of our freezers and we dragged a sled to Laura’s door.
Another time Kim and I were driving home from Long Beach Island in her prized white Mustang, which she had named Etta. Route 539 had just been “oiled,” so the sign said. All these black pebbles began to hit her car as she drove. It was LOUD! She flipped out, yelling about her car being potentially damaged. I began to laugh. She threatened to pull over and throw me out of the car. (She didn’t.)
We called each other’s parents Mom and Dad. We were in each other’s weddings. We helped each other move several times. We spent many a Saturday night at Kim’s house watching Saturday Night Live and sleeping on the living room floor.
Whenever they would pick me up at my house to go out for an evening, one of them had the task of fishing out from under my bed a matching pair of shoes.
All three of us each had two sons. Kim calls my eldest son Georgie our “practice baby” since he was the first child born to the triumvirate. He in turn calls us the Ya-Ya’s.
There is so much more I could write. But the important thing is that these two women were my sisters long before I knew I had any. Ironically, my actual sisters are named…. Kim and Pam. How great is that!
So in this season of thankfulness, I am grateful for Kim and Pam for putting up with me for 40 years. We have gone through everything that life has thrown at us. Together. And will continue to do so. If I don’t get thrown out of their cars.
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