A Crazy Pandora Life

There were several friends and family members who were unable to make it our informal engagement party and therefore had Pandora beads to give me when I would see them.  We received several well wishes after the party and the beads I received reminded me of our upcoming joyous occasion.

One friend of mine, who now lives in Phoenix, Arizona, who I grew up with sent me the rose bead in the mail.  She knows how much I like roses and have always liked them.  We would always hope our name would be called in high school saying we had a package in the office because most of the time it would be flowers from our current boyfriend.  My boyfriend used to always send me yellow roses because he knew those were one of my favorite flowers.  Once when we were about eleven years old I thought it would be funny to push my friend into the rose bush while she was smelling the roses at my parents house.  She was not very happy with me and ended up having several scratches on her body from this incident.  She didn’t speak to me for a few weeks after this but finally she was able to forgive me and forget about it.  We laugh about it now.  This bead will remind me of our silly side and how people change over time.  I am so thankful to have her friendship.  The bead is also fitting from her because her middle name is Rose.  She was named after her great grandmother on her father’s side.  I know some of her family even call her Rose.  So the bead has a double meaning to me.

A friend of my Fiancée, and now my friend also, gave me the pig bead.  My boyfriend and he have been friends for a long time and he knows the farm life of my fiancée.  He grew up on a pig and chicken farm.  His family raised pigs and then would slaughter them when they were large enough.  They would then sell the meat.  His friend had several stories to tell me about these days with my fiancé.  One of them was when they were about ten.  It was a day when his friend was staying over at his house because his parents were out of town.  So they got off the bus at his house and noticed the pigs were out of their pens.  When they got to the pens they noticed the gate was open.  They didn’t even go into the house to get any help but started chasing pigs around the yard.  It was raining, of course to make it worse, so was very muddy in the yard.  He said it took about three hours to round the pigs up, which is probably a tall tale, because this is how his stories seem to be told.  But anyway, they finally got them back into the pen and tied the gate shut with rope.  On their way to the house his mother came out and told them to hose off in the back yard because they looked like one of the pigs.  Since they were already very dirty they decided to enjoy their “pig day” by sliding down a side of a hill by their house in the mud.  They slid arms first down the hill into and out of puddles.  I guess they refer to this day as the “pig day” because they must have felt at one with the pigs.  His friend said it was one of the best days of his childhood and most memorable.  He said he would never have been able to do it at his house.  His parents wouldn’t have allowed it.  So this bead will remind me of my fiancée and his good ‘ol days on his farm with his friends.

One of my friends from college gave me the ghost bead.  She didn’t have to tell me why she picked out this bead because I knew the story behind it right away.  We used to love to go out on Halloween and dress up.  Our first Halloween at college though we didn’t have cars at school so we were unable to go shopping for our costumes.  We also were poor college students who couldn’t afford a fancy costume either.  So when Halloween came, we thought we would just stay at the dorms and hand out candy to the children that came trick or treating.  We didn’t plan on dressing up or going out.  On Halloween we heard about a Halloween party going on at one of our friend’s houses and decided we needed to go but didn’t know what to dress as.  We knew we had to find something quick.  The first thought we had was to be ghosts and use extra bed sheets we had.  So we cut out holes for our eyes and then wore sunglasses to dress them up a bit.  We carried a marker with us so people could sign our costumes.  When we got back from the party we took pictures of ourselves because we looked so ridiculous.  Our ghost costumes looked nothing like ghosts because people drew faces, pictures and names all over them.  Even though it was a generic costume we still had fun with it and made the most out of our poor man’s costume.  This was one of the most memorable times in college.

-Judy H.