I have had a favorite Aunt for as long as I can remember. When I was a little girl, I remember spending a weekend with my Aunt, and she bought me a little stuffed lamb. Her name is Telullah. She’s not the typical stuffed lamb you’d picture, rather she’s kind of…artsy. In my early thirties, Tellulah sits in my office at home, and I always think of my Aunt. I digress.

However, this is not about Telullah, rather about my Aunt and her three best friends. Over the past couple of years, I’ve somehow become an unlikely tag-a-long to this foursome. I believe it began when I was living in NYC, and my dear Aunt was in town with her friends on their annual schlep to the city, and she invited me to join them for lunch at Le Bonne Soupe. We ate well, drank too much, laughed hard….and I remember thinking “this is going to be ME in thirty years – and I love it”. Invitations to hang out with the girls became regular after that, taking me to the beach with them in the middle of August, to random dinner and movie dates, and now on the annual NYC trip.

I. Have. Arrived. And I’m still in my 30’s!!

(Unfortunately, my invitation this weekend came because my Aunt couldn’t make it, despite having planned for months. She’s instead sitting at my Uncle’s hospital bedside, and she graciously donated her Broadway tickets to me for filling in for her. Thank you!)

We caught a train into Penn Station around 8am, and spent the day eating AMAZING Mexican food and window shopping. Then, before our 7pm showing of Fun Home, we decided to relax in our room, snack on chocolate and cookies, and get off of our feet. It was then that I heard the best thing I’ve heard all day. We somehow found ourselves talking about the community pool where my mother, Aunt, and two other AARP members spent their adolescent summers when RM piped up:

“You know, Julie, that’s where I saw my first penis.”

The room, which a moment before had been full of chatter, fell silent. 

me: “Oh, PLEASE tell me that story!”

RM: “Well, I was 7 years old, and we were taking swimming lessons. We had all laid our towels on the concrete, and we laid down on the concrete on our sides on our towels so we could practice our scissor kicks. The line of girls faced the line of boys, and as Norman P. lifted his leg to practice his scissor kick, there it was, just hanging out of his little bathingsuit. I had never seen one before – but I knew what it was! – and I was so interested that I just stared at it, between scissor kicks.”

The best part of our early-evening break was not the regaling of RM’s first penis sighting, rather the conversation that stemmed from it. One memory led to another shared memory, which led to another story, and so on. We laughed until we coughed and snorted and I can’t wait for the rest of this weekend to play out…