Guess Who Found Wi-Fi In A Cornfield In Minnehaha County, South Dakota?

Me, enough to post what I've written so far......


I left Maryland for Chicago early Friday morning. My plan was to surprise David and it worked. But along the way I encountered some pretty interesting stuff....

One, when I crossed the border from Ohio to Indiana, I was accosted by 10, literally 10, billboards in a row, five on one side of the highway and five on the other, for Tom Raper RV’s. The first one said, "WELCOME! YOU’VE JUST ENTERED RAPER COUNTRY!" Another one said, "TOM RAPER - FREE SODAS, FREE HOT DOGS, FREE SMILES!" I am not making this up. I had seen the same signs on the way out of Indiana coming home from Chicago but I thought it was just my mind playing tricks on me since it was dark and I was tired.

But no, sure enough, there in the hot August sunlight, was good ol’ Tom Raper. And his phone number. 1-800-RAPER-RV. Try it sometime. I got a recording of a woman’s voice saying, "It’s great day at Tom Raper RV!" I almost ran off the road I was laughing so hard. My service cut out so I don’t know what other praises this woman was gonna sing about Tom Raper, but both Max and Amanda called the number at my behest and got a live person. Max said he had the wrong number and the operator said, "Yeah, okay." I guess a lot of people call Tom Raper not for RV’s, but to see if his name really is Raper. And yeah, it totally is.

Saturday night, on my own while David was working, I had The Greatest Crepe In The World - chicken, tomato and goat cheese in a buckwheat crepe - at a little place called Le Creperie in Lincoln Park. As I was sitting next to a table of annoying teenage girls and wondering why teenage girls annoy me so much (because I know my friends and I are just as annoying when we go out), a pretty black woman in a lavender Nike outfit sat at the table next to me. Her hair was curly, with gorgeous twisted finger waves on her forehead. She was expecting someone.

A while later a tall, muscular gentleman joined her. She gave him a look that said, "It’s about damn time." I got my crepe around the time they were ordering. The man said, "She gets whatever she wants, she’s the birthday girl." As I said, my food was fantastic. She pointed to my plate and asked the waiter, "Is that good?"
I cut in. "It’s excellent! Do you want to try it?"
All three of them looked at me like I was insane.
"No, really, use your fork and break a piece off!" I insisted.
"Um, okay," and she did. "I’ll take that!" she said.

This broke the ice a little - it’s always a little strange when you go to a restaurant where the tables are so close together you may as well be sitting on a stranger’s lap - and we three got to talking. Their names were Nikki and Erique (not Er-eek, but regular Eric) and they were both originally from the south side of Chicago.
"Oh, I love the south side!" I said, my eyes getting big.
For the second time during the meal, they looked at me like I was insane.
"You do?" Nikki asked.
"Totally." The irony didn’t escape me. Here I was, a blonde white girl telling a black couple I love the ghetto. I quickly explained. "See, all this out here, this whole area, and this place right here, it’s nice. It’s really trendy and there’s lots of money being thrown around. Hooray, hooray, we’re all really cool for being in Lincoln Park, right?" I leaned in and whispered, "But guess what, it’s not real! It’s all based on shoes and sunglasses."

Nikki got it. "You like the down-to-earth side, don’t you?"
"Exactly. If I was going to move to Chicago, I’d want to move to the south side - if I didn’t think I would get beat up."
Erique spoke up. "They wouldn’t do nothing to you. They might verbally harass you, but shoot, they verbally harass us!"
"Really?" I asked.
"Yeah, that’s just how people are down there."

Nikki and Erique live in Indiana now, to get away from the city. They are newlyweds; they just got married in June. Nikki had pictures of the wedding in her purse that I gushed over like any girl would.
"We met through roller skating," Erique told me. "We were both known at all the skating rinks in town. We’ve known each other about ten years and been together for three." I thought that was so cute.

When I asked if I could take their picture, Nikki stood up and got behind Erique. It was only when she sat back down that I noticed a little pudge on her belly. I asked if she was pregnant in that slow, whispery way that says, "You’re-Small-Enough-That-I-Can’t-Tell-If-You’re-Pregnant-Or-Just-Have-A-Beer-Belly-So-I’ll-Ask-Very-Slowly-Like-That-Will-Somehow-Make-A-Difference-If-You-Get-Offended". She laughed.
"Yeah, that’s why I can’t have any fun this year on my birthday!"
"Well, tell me about your best birthday, then."

"That would have to be last year." She pointed at Erique. "He always got something up his sleeve! I went to the nail shop and came home thinking we were gonna get dressed to go out. Instead, he hands me a bag with some gym clothes in it. Sneakers and stuff. I was like, ‘What?’ So he’s rushing me, right? ‘Come on, get ready and come outside, hurry up!’ So I get out to the stoop and there’s rose petals all over it. I thought it was blood at first, I got scared! Then I see there’s rose petals all the way down the drive, leading to a limo! And he had it all hooked up, he had champagne in the limo and whatnot. And we went to Millennium Park, you been there yet? Well, we walked around there, then we went to pick the kids up in the limo. They was like, ‘Oh my god, Mom, wow!’ And we just drove around, it was so nice. The next day we had a barbeque
with all our roller skating friends and got drunk. It was real fun."

Nikki has three kids and Erique has two. This baby will make six. "We’re gonna be like the Brady Bunch!" she said.
"But more fun!" I said.
She looked at Erique and said, "Wow. You never know who you’re gonna meet."
"That’s why I do this," I said.

We promised to keep in touch before I jetted off to meet up with some friends.

Later on that night, David said something interesting, yet completely unrelated to Erique and Nikki. "Low self esteem is a very comfortable couch."

You think about that one. Make it your own.