"Shtephenie Shtephenson"

As I mentioned before, I was a sheltered youth from the bible belt, so when my beach house pals went out drinking it was my job to make sure no one "acted a fool" or drove home intoxicated.  To accomplish this task I had a fake ID.  Amanda Celeste Jones was her name (One of the perks of working at a gas station, where apparently people forget their id's a lot? Who knew).  Anyway, these outings to the bar can be pretty boring when you're the only one not drinking.  I did get some great stories by staying sober, for example:
        "At least I'm not bein' crazy buying a FORTY or somethin'" -compliments of a drunk friend on their 21st birthday, in front of a sketchy looking man who WAS, in fact, buying a forty of Old English.  Lovely.
        I was also privy to the embarrassing hook ups, finger sucking in the front seat, and Off Duty Rescues in the ocean... but that's another story.

So here I am, poor Mimi, sitting alone in a bar full of drunken beach dwellers.  What am I going to do?  Now, at the time I was fairly attractive and there were more than a few inebriated guys floating around the bar so I got hit on quite often.  While flattering, it got really old to turn away drunk guys who were mostly a huge bother to me, so I made a game out of it.  What interesting ways can I turn them down...
    The game starts like this
Random Dude:  "Hey, can I buy you a drink?"

1. "Sure, but make sure you don't drink after me, I just got my test results back and I have herpes."
2. "Um, could you make it a sarsaparilla?  I'm pregnant..."
3. "Oh yea, my boyfriend was just saying he was thirsty..."
4. *point at ear* *shake head as though deaf*

But my FAVORITE of all time is Shtephenie Shtephenson.  I know it reads strange, but think Stephenie, with a lisp and a lot of built up saliva.  So it goes like this (and I did get some really interesting responses)

Dude:  Can I buy you a drink?
Shtephenie: Oh that would be SSSSHUPER!

Dude 1: uh, oh, uh... what would you like?
Shtephenie: Schome Schprite would be Schuperb!  (I really tried to use every possible S word I could come up with)

Dude 2: woah...
Shtephenie: You're SCHEXY.  I mean, SCHUPER SCHEXY!  Wanna Schwap schome Schpit?

and a few just got that "Deer in the headlight look" and ran for the hills. 
Francois found Schtephenie SO funny that he made me call a friend of his one night, who had come into town and was planning on hanging out with us that evening.
"PLEEEEEEEEASE do Shtephenie ALL NIGHT. PLEASE!"  so eh, why not.  He calls the guy and puts me on the phone (His nickname was L'il Wayne btw.) 

Shtephenie:  Hey Wayne, Schup?  I've heard SCHO much about you!  I'm Schuper Exschited to schee you!
L'il Wayne: Yea yea, I've heard a lot about you too!  It should be fun! 

So he shows up, and I'm still doing the spit slurred speech.  Occasionally I would slip in a word that I DIDN'T butcher, just to see if he was paying attention.  Also, my cousin thought it was so funny that she started slurring some words too, at which point "L'il Wayne" got really upset with her and told her it wasn't polite to make fun.  Of course I jumped on this and pretended to get REALLY upset and slurred EVEN more saying out it wasn't my fault God "deschided" to give me a "schpeech impediment."  Later on in the evening Francois was approached by "L'il Wayne" who told him, "Man, your friend is hot."  to which he answered, "Which one?  I have a few."  response:  "The one with the speech."  We did eventually let him in on the joke, but it was muuuuuuuuch later in the evening.

Shtephenie rarely surfaces during our social climbing escapades, but she has made an appearance or two at a fast food restaurant, answering the phone at work, or when there is a weirdo or two that need to be frightened away.

Day One: Where it all began.

For me (Mimi), It all began the day I turned 18, and got approved for a $10,000 credit card. Amazing how much damage a little piece of plastic can do to the hopes and ambitions of a young girl. One day I was a small town girl from Indiana, wearing hand-me-downs and the latest sale items from Maurices, and the next I was living in North Carolina in a beach house coming home with eight bags of new clothing I had just purchased on my most recent shopping spree.

Nevermind that I couldn't afford to eat, we had it figured that if we all split one salad between four of us... not only could we fit into smaller clothes, but we could also afford these new clothes we were going to fit in to. This is where it started, the compulsive social climbing.

In those days we weren't serving food, we were slinging gasoline and snacks. This is where I met François, my social climbing partner. S&E #4, that was our home base. Maybe it was boredom, maybe it was a creative outlet, whatever the reason I can tell you with absolute certainty THIS is where the delusions began. In reality, we were just lowly gas station attendants, but to our customers... my father owned the station. François and I were engaged, and my father (who had longed for a son he never got) preferred François over his own daughter, so my "fiancé" got all of the choice shifts while I was stuck working the graveyard (at 19 years old mind you). His plan was to turn the gas station chain over to François when we were married, and I was somewhat of an afterthought in all of this. Our customers ate our stories up; hook, line and sinker. They sympathized with me, and I milked it for all it was worth. There was one man who would bring me fresh shrimp and fish that he caught on his boat even though I was clueless as to how to gut a fish, and the shrimp sat in the freezer for months because they were still looking at me (when I say fresh, I mean FRESH).

Maybe the success of our initial forays into the world of delusions fed the flames of our dysfunction. I could blame our gas station customers for supporting our habits, but where does that really get you...