One Crazy-Ass Type-A Mommy Blogger

Some things never change. And some things change a lot.
Her name is Kerry Ferguson, but I will forever think of her as Kerry Mulvaney. Meg and I met her in the first grade in 1982 and watched with pity as her Mom dragged her down the hall and into Ms. Carter's classroom as she wailed and screamed and cried and clung for dear life. That child did NOT want to go to school in the morning and EVERYONE heard about it. Meg and I felt sorry for her, I guess, and somehow we all ended up friends pretty quick. One thing that has not changed: Kerry is still very expressive and maybe a tiny bit dramatic. One thing that has changed: Kerry is OK walking into a classroom without her mother (she is a college professor now).

Over the years, Kerry and Meg and I grew up together, being our weird selves and collecting all sorts of weird memories, such as chair dances for traffic in the middle of Queens Road West, Andreas Bolanos following Kerry home from school in 2nd grade, The Meg and Kerry Show, the Small and Brown club (don't even comment on that one), trips to BB Jamz where we actually saw Andreas Bolanos as a White Night dancing for himself in a studio mirror (and we almost got the shit kicked out of us for mocking all the White Nights' dancing), Meg doing the bloody finger in a box trick at Kerry's school's football games, raps about Phil Kornhauser, and the list goes on. One time when we were young, the three of us tried out at the Charlotte Children's Theater to be in the play Peter Pan. Kerry and Meg were both cast. I was not.
One thing that has not changed: Kerry and Meg are both still officially artists (in fact Kerry is both a writer of plays and a director of them) and I am officially not. One thing that has changed: We don't see Andreas Bolanos anywhere anymore (sadly).

Last weekend Kerry was in town for a Type A Mommy Blogger conference. One thing that has not changed: Kerry is a Type A personality. One thing that has changed: Kerry is a mommy. We got together twice during her weekend in town and one thing that is very major that has not changed is that Kerry is a most dynamic story teller and dancer at a party. Please notice her captivating expressions as she tells me a story about a Mr. Willie Williams III, who was a young black man from New Orleans back in 1988 when his car broke down in front of the Mulvaney's house in Charlotte.


The story is that he knocked on the the Mulvaney's door to get some help. Well Kerry's dad, Mr. Mulvaney (you'd have to know him to get the full effect) invited Willie Williams III in, sat him down, gave him advice and money and told him to call. This was the beginning of what would be be a life long relationship between two unlikely men (Mr. Mulvaney seems to specialize in unlikely relationships, come to think of it.) The latest news in that friendship is that, 2 years after Willie Williams III successfully started a golf club for disadvantaged youth in Houston (inspired by Mr. Mulvaney's love of golf), Willie has been selected as a player on the next season of "The Biggest Loser," a reality show about weight loss. He is going to dedicate his weight loss on the show to his angel and mentor, Mr. Michael Mulvaney.
One thing that has not changed: interesting and bizarre things happen to the Mulvaney's. One thing that has changed: we are old enough to have the life perspective to realize just HOW interesting and bizarre some of these things are.

Saturday night Kerry and I went to the roller derby and then she talked me into going to an art party at the Phil Mechanic building in West Asheville by the river. A poetry teacher of hers was a host of the event. I said I was only staying a half hour. Yeah, right. Not if Kerry's in there telling some stranger to call her Chauncey after my childhood pet, a hermaphrodite schnauzer, and the stranger proceeds to casually refer to her as "Chaunce" for the rest of the night. And when she is in there bustin it on that dude's theramone with her little striped hoody and shit eating grin.

And then she's bustin some old school moves on the dance floor and playing with her shadow and laughing her head off and not giving a shit. Some things really never change. And then again some things do, because at the end of the weekend Kerry went home to her husband and children in Spartanburg to return to her role as one bad ass type-A mommy (who blogs something fierce- but sorry, her blog is private members only...). I love her. And that will never change.