Chili Cheese Fries and Jack!e

When I started at Macy's in Albuquerque 5 years ago, Thanksgiving, I met someone that would become a friend for life.

While completing my paperwork for the job, I was in a small room with a couple of computers all by myself. The door was open to the hallway to the executive offices and a woman flew in, the door slammed and she ran past me into the store manager, Erika's office. She said (to Erika), "GUESS WHAT HAPPENED, GUESS." I couldn't hear anyone else in the conversation. Then she said, "Don't let the door hitcha where the good Lord splitcha!" and then Erika walked her in to introduce to me, "Kaline, this is Lisa Reeder, she is an MTM here." She said, "OH- sorry, I didn't know anyone else was here." I said, "It's okay, I can tell we are going to get along great." I stared at her gigantic hair and her manicured nails with glitter. I figured I would make her my best friend and I hadn't even started work yet.

And fast friends we became. Shortly after I started, I acquired the Juniors Department and Lisa was my MTM. Then she became the MTM for the Men's Department and that was my department too. We worked our little behinds off in order to fix the business and we were quite a successful team. However, there were days when one of us just fell off track and we needed a little break. Lisa would grab me by the arm and say, "Food Court- NOW!" and we would turn off our walkies, turn off our phones and go on break.

We ended up at Del Taco where we would split the large order of Chili Cheese Fries with extra cheese (per Lisa's request) and no sour cream (per Lisa's request). We would take our entire hour-long lunch chowing down on the fries and a soda. She would talk me down or I would talk her down and we went back to work as the incredible team we always were.

Later on, after I had to leave Albuquerque to head on to Las Vegas, I missed Lisa dearly. She ended up getting promoted to Vegas and we lived in the same apartment complex. Our time didn't overlap very long- I then had to go on to California and she ended up in El Paso. During our time together in Las Vegas, John showed us the funniest video on You Tube. It is called Jackie and Debra. They are BFF's and they get in a fight and stop talking. This video made us laugh so much, we shared it with everyone around us. Lots of friends now refer to the video. Lisa and I ended up calling each other Jackie. She is even listed in my cell phone as Jackie. We tried to keep it on the down low when I moved to Albuquerque because the other MTM in my store is named Jackie and I didn't want her to think we were talking about her when using the nickname. Lisa ended up finding some fun stationery products by the name Jack!e Designs and we decided that is how we would distinguish between us being Jack!e and someone really named Jackie. We now have an exclamation point in our names.

I keep seeing Jack!e while she is home here in Albuquerque, but she hasn't had the time to come have chili cheese fries with me at the Coronado Del Taco. This upsets me. She is no longer my BFF and I'm writing this to let her know.

Just kidding- I miss my Jack!e and hope that we can have the fries together soon. Perhaps I will be having a bad day and she will arrive just in time.