October 19, 1993

Dear Badge,

Happy Anniversary!  It's been one whole week since you told me that
the encyclopedia salesman that came to your house thought that you
and me were married and had three kids.  If I ever get a chance,
I'm gonna kick your buddy Sylvester for playing that trick.  And
listen here, Badge, I don't know what the future holds in store for
us, but you can bet your rat-hole ten dollar bill that you'll never
get the chance to call me your ex-wife for real.  I'm glad you
enjoyed our play-like marriage for the fifteen minutes that the
salesman was there, and I'm glad you kicked his butt for saying
that we're not good parents just because you wouldn't buy his
books.  He deserved that footprint on his pocket.  

You were telling me about how you hadn't written me back because
you had been out of town and Sylvester had lost my letter to you
and so you didn't know I had written.  Well, Mister Smarty-pants,
you're not the only one who travels.  I went on a trip, too, and
you'll never guess in a million years who I went with.  (I bet THAT
makes you jealous!)

You remember I told you about Momma's neighbor Sharon Sheralack who
I went to the court house to testify for when she had that fuss
with the undercover cop?  Well, Sharon must have really appreciated
what I tried to do for her during her court date because she came
over here about the first week in September and said she had won
this trip by calling some radio program with the right answer to
some trivia question, and did I want to go with her?   Well, Badge,
you know how impulsive I am, and before I thought to ask her any
more about it, I said I'd love to go on an all-expense paid trip to
anywhere.  She told me we would be leaving on the airplane on the
next Saturday morning at 7:00, and to bring enough clothes for
plenty of fun.

I was telling Momma about it later, and Momma asked me where we
were off to, and I said I didn't know yet, and Momma said it might
be a good idea to find out if we were going to Alaska or to Florida
because my bikini might be a little chilly in Fairbanks.  So I
walked across the front yard over to Sharon's house, but her Daddy
said that Sharon was "out" and wouldn't be back until late on
Friday night.  I asked him if he knew where she had won the trip
to, and he said he didn't know anything about it other than he
heard her telling her mother that she'd be gone again over the
weekend.

Anyway, I worked my extra shift at the diner on Thursday night so
I could take off on Saturday night, and then I packed heavy and
light on Friday night and got up real early on Saturday morning and
waited until I saw the bathroom light come on over at the
Sheralack's house, and then I picked up my suitcase and went over
there.  Mr. Sheralack wasn't too happy with me for making him put
on his bath robe to see who was at the door, but he said he would
go wake Sharon up and tell her I was there.

Well, Sharon was just as talkative as she could be all the while we
were making some coffee and loading our junk into the car and
driving to the airport and going through the walk-through jewelry
detector, but she wouldn't tell me a word about where we were going
on our weekend jaunt.  She just said she wanted it to be a big
surprise and she was so glad she had found some way to repay me for
being so nice to her when she got in trouble that time.  After we
got into the long hallway in the airport where you wait for your
plane to be late, she told me don't look now, and walked over to
where a guy was handing out plastic cards with numbers on them.  I
got a twelve and Sharon got a thirteen.  I'd never been in this
part of the airport before, and I thought maybe the little cards
were for some kind of a raffle or bingo game or something, but
Sharon told me they were boarding passes to get us on the airplane. 
I always thought you only needed a ticket, but Sharon said that she
had traded the tickets for the little plastic cards because that
was really what you needed to get on the plane.  She couldn't
explain to me why you can't just buy the little cards.

Badge, have you ever been in an airport?  I really think you'd like
it because those folks give you all the coffee you want to drink
early in the morning, and I know how much you like your early
morning coffee.  Sharon and I got ourselves a cup apiece and we
also got some sort of a doughnut, but I didn't much care for mine
so Sharon had two, and we sat down until we could get on the plane. 
After a while some lady screamed something over the intercom, but
it was so loud and the feedback was so bad that I couldn't
understand a word she said.  Sharon got up and picked up her tote
bag and said that the lady had announced that our flight was ready
for boarding.  I got a little worried because I know that the only
time you board up a house is when it's not fit for folks to live in
it any more and I wasn't about to get on an airplane that was ready
for boarding, but Sharon said it just meant that it was time to get
on the plane and not to fret about it.

We squeezed ourselves into the very back seats on the plane because
Sharon wanted to be close to the toilet on account of her coffee
and doughnuts.  (Sharon had to squeeze a little more than I did.) 
In a little while, some cutesy little snip in a suit with a tie
stood up in the aisle and began telling us about how to get out of
the plane when it crashed into the ocean.  When she started talking
about "water evacuation", Sharon started squirming and eyeing the
bathroom door.  The snip droned on for a few minutes, but she
didn't sound very enthusiastic about her drivel, and eventually she
sat down and shut up and the plane started moving.

Now, Badge, I know how much you think of your old Roland Trash-heap
pickup, but when that pilot showered down on the gas pedal to get
that plane off the ground, it beat anything I ever saw you do with
Roland.  Man, we had the letters moving and we were particularly
hauling "S".  And later on, when we landed, it was about like the
time that Momma stopped so quick when she saw that sign that said
"WIGS 75% OFF" in that shop on Main Street.  I guess she believed
the sign, because after she helped me get up off the floorboard,
she adjusted her own wig to get it back on all the way.

It's a good thing that they have seat belts in those planes, or I
would have ended up on top of the guy in the seat in front of me
when we landed.  There was this one guy, though, who had got stuck
in one of the seats that was turned around facing the wrong way on
the plane, who apparently was too fat to get his strap to buckle up
right.  When the plane was taking off, we heard this whooping and
hollering, and this guy was standing up (sort of) in the aisle, and
he was holding on to the seat back beside him for all he was worth. 
I really thought he was going to beat Sharon to the bathroom, and
he would have if he'd turned loose of that seat.  Pretty soon,
though, the plane leveled out, and the guy sat back down.

I was looking at the little comic book that shows the pictures of
all the life vests and scuba gear that they have on the plane and
someone came walking down the aisle from the front of the plane. 
I looked up to see who it was, and I about dropped my jaw when it
was Sparkle and she was wearing the outfit with the twinkly lights
that you told me about when you had seen her that last time but the
lights on her hair ribbon weren't working.  "Well, hello, Sharon"
she said when she looked straight at me.  "I sure want to thank you
for inviting me to go on this trip with you, and I'm sorry I didn't
get to the airport soon enough to sit back here at the back with
you, because I need to go to the john pretty regular."  And then
she did just that and the little light above the door glowed red
which I thought was appropriate in Sparkle's case.

"What in the name of perdition is SHE doing here?" I asked Sharon.

"Well, this trip I won was for four people, and since I knew you
and Sparkle to be friends, I thought it would be a nice surprise
for both of you if neither one of you knew about the other one
coming until we all got together at the airport," she said.

I was just flabbergasted.  I don't know how Sharon could have EVER
thought that I was still friends with Sparkle, but apparently she
did, and Sharon had been nice enough to invite me to go on this
mystery trip with her, and was spunky enough to try to arrange what
she thought would be a nice surprise by inviting Sparkle, too, so
what could I say to her without hurting her feelings?  I just kind
of sat there and wished that Sharon could have thought of another
couple of friends instead of Sparkle, (like maybe you, Badge), but
that hussy wasn't going to spoil MY good time.

That's when the excitement started.  The light above the bathroom door
started blinking, and a siren started blaring, and about five of the
snips in suits came running back toward us.  I was afraid we had been
hijacked, but that wasn't it at all.  The snips jerked open the
bathroom door and we could hear Sparkle screeching in there.  Somebody
squelched the siren, and amid all the shouting and squealing and
confusion and uproar, me and Sharon was able to figure out what was
going on.

Sparkle had been fiddling around with the twinkly lights on her hair
ribbon and trying to get them to work, and had somehow shorted one of
them out and the spark ignited some of the fumes from her hair spray
or perfume or something and caught her hair on fire.  Well, the smoke
from her hair set off the alarm in the bathroom, and that triggered
the siren and the blinking light on the door.  Sparkle had tried to
put the fire out by sticking her head in the little sink and dousing
it with water, but the sink was too little, so she stuck her head in
the commode and reached up and pulled the trigger.  The stuff that
came out wasn't water, though, and when they led Sparkle back past us
to the front of the plane, her hair was dripping this greenish junk,
and she smelled even stronger than usual.

I couldn't help myself...especially with it being Sparkle...I started
laughing and pretty soon I was wiping the tears from my face I was
laughing so hard.  Sparkle's story and my laughter made it to the
front of the plane before she did, and by the time she sat down again,
the whole bunch of us on the plane was laughing and hooting to beat
the band.

That was the last laugh for a while though, because the pilot started
talking on the loudspeaker and said that because of the smoke alarm
incident, he would have to turn the plane around and land right back
where we started from, and that the airline company would "either
reimburse us for our tickets or arrange alternative flights to our
respective destinations."

Sharon yelled "Yippee!!", and I asked her what for, and she said that
she would really have rather had the money than the plane tickets to
start with.  Anyway, when we got back to the airport, I waited around
for her while she got her reimbursement for her tickets, and then I
took us home.  She invited me to go out to eat with her that night,
her treat, but the only reason I took her up on it was that she told
me she wasn't going to invite Sparkle to go ANYWHERE until she got
that smelly green stuff washed out of her hair.  I enjoyed my steak
very much, especially every time I thought about Sparkle's green hair
being the thing that paved the way to getting it.  Me and Sharon had
quite a crowd of waiters around our table trying to figure out what
we kept laughing about, and the service we got was GREAT!  I left a
tip, even though it was supposed to be Sharon's treat, because I
didn't want to miss the opportunity of being the one to GIVE a tip for
a change.

Please let me know if we get married again.

Love,

Queenie