Dirty Little Secrets OR a Really Sappy Post About Friendship

We all have some dirty little secrets. Well, at least I did until I started this blog. Now it seems everyone knows everything about me, including my mother, who I am sure was just fine not knowing every little detail of my sex life. Sorry to ruin that for you mom.

With everything I have put out there for the world to read, there is one thing that I haven’t mentioned. Perhaps I have kept this dirty little secret for so long because I am slightly embarrassed. Maybe it is because I was afraid of being judged. It’s possible I haven’t said anything because I am not the same person I was during the time the dirty little secret took place.

In any case, I am ready to divulge.

I was a pageant girl.

You read that correctly. When I was 16 I participated in the Miss Woodstock pageant in my town.

At that age, I was much more open to things like that. I was a cheerleader after all.

Everything people say about pageants are absolutely true. Of course, no one involved calls them beauty pageants. They are scholarship pageants.

Even back then I didn’t believe that bullshit. No one traipses on stage, competing against other girls to win $1000. We did it because we wanted to wear the crown and move on to the county-wide pageant which would then hopefully take us to the state pageant.

I think there were 16 girls competing the year I ran. I could lie and say they were all really sweet and we became lifelong friends like most pageant girls do, but you all know how I like to be honest.

They were not sweet girls. Of course they were nice to my face but at one time or another they all came to me to complain about other girls. Yes, I was a pageant girl, but I was not stupid.

There was one girl in the group who wasn’t bitchy though. Amy was fun and outgoing and would rather laugh than be mean to someone. Somehow in the midst of the madness that was pageant rehearsals, we managed to become friends. After rehearsals we would go out for pie and laugh at the ridiculousness of the whole thing. Yes, we even gossiped about the other girls (I never said I was perfect). Eventually Amy started picking me up on her way to practice and dropping me off after. We exchanged phone numbers and soon started spending time together outside of pageant rehearsals.

It has been 12 years since our pageant days and we are still friends. Every once in a while we’ll reflect on those days and shake our heads in shame. But as much as we like to laugh about it, we never forget that it was the pageant that brought us together. We had lived in the same town our whole lives, we had several mutual friends, we went to several of the same parties and she had friends that lived around the corner from me, but we never met.

After the pageant she went away to college and I stayed home and started senior year of high school. We talked nearly every day and I went to visit her as often as I could. I was the made-of-honor in her wedding and she was a bridesmaid in mine.

Now that we are older, it’s hard for us to see each other as much as we would like. She now lives an hour away and has her own family. Though I don’t talk to Amy as much as I would like, I know she is there and will be there whenever I need her. We play really epic games of phone tag, but when we connect it is as though not a day has gone by.

Last week Amy turned 30 and I was lucky enough to see her twice in one week. I don’t think that has happened since the year she lived in Woodstock after college, which had to be at least 8 years ago. I don’t know when I will be seeing her again, but I know I am in her heart, just as she is in mine.

Oh, and since I know you are all DYING to know, neither Amy or I won the pageant. The title of Miss Woodstock 1998 went to one of the bitchy girls.