>Chell and Bren
Chell and Brenda snuggle together for a picture (July 2003)
This is kind of an amusing story. I started working at the Walmart in Lakewood, NY and met a girl named Melissa my first night. (You're probably wondering where this Melissa came from...but I'm getting there..) Of course, I think Melissa and I both realized right away that we were "family" and she introduced herself. Later on in the evening one of the ladies that I was working with mentioned that Melissa is a triplet (or dykelet as Chell calls her and her sisters...triplets who are all lesbians) and that her sister, Michelle, works at Walmart too, but was out with shoulder surgery. I also noticed, Brenda, my first night there and we exchanged hellos and what not, chatted once in a while, joked around off and on, etc... I noticed that she was "family" too. A few weeks later I'd returned to work after my days off and was getting a form to fill out when Missy (or so I thought) came out of the Training Room and asked if she could have one too. I did kind of a double take and realized that girl wasn't Missy. Missy has silver glasses and a tattoo on her left shoulder, this girl had black glasses and a tattoo on her right shoulder, but the same exact haircuts. I figured it had to be one her sisters, Michelle.
Over the next week or so Michelle and I chatted more and more. It was made known that Brenda and Michelle are a couple (for 4 years now...congrats, gals!) and Michelle has a little girl, Kristal, who's eight. There's a picture of the happy family below. Over the course of several weeks, the four of us (Kathy, Chell, Bren and myself) became pretty good friends. (Missy too!) They helped SO MUCH with our move to Jamestown and we'd only known them for about 2 weeks at the time. They didn't have to do that for us, but we really appreciated their help and only hope that someday we can pay them back. They are really great people, who I know I'm glad to call friends. It's not every day you met people that you can hit it off with right away. I hope that we'll be friends for a long time.
Oh, I have to mention that I've already given them nicknames. We have Pokey, who is Chell. This came about because she's always lagging behind everyone, is the last person to get her coffee made and the last person to get outside...basically, she's the caboose! :) She's just Pokey Schmo. (The Schmo was her added part to the nickname) Then there's Gabby, who's obviously Brenda. This is because every time I run into her she's either already yapping away to someone or she starts gabbing to me. We'll page her for lunch and it'll take her forever to show up because she says people stopped her along the way and talked to her. Yeah, right Brenda. :P One of the guys that works with us wanted to know who Gabby Jones was one night after Chell had paged for Gabby from Maintenance to call her. So, she's Gabby Jones, apparently. And Kristal, is the Drama Queen...because she's eight, first of all and also because she's forever blowing everything out of the water, so to speak. She has the funniest facial expressions and will give you the hands on the hips pose every once in a while. As Chell would say, "She's such a girl!" ... and that she is. They've done an excellent job in raising her...I can only hope that Kathy and I will be that lucky someday.
Chell, Kristal and Brenda at Sky Jam 2003 (Aug 2003)
Kristal riding the pony at Sky Jam (Aug 2003)
Myself, a picture of Melissa Ferrick and Chell at my old place in Erie (July 2003)
Chell with her "son", Harley (Aug 2003)
Back