It is with ballsy swagger (because I assume you will continue reading this blog after this train wreck of a post) that I announce my new series. Damn it! I feel so authoritative right now.

I will call the series: “My Top Five Girlfriend Commandments”. Actually, they’re in no particular order and I can alter or amend them at any time as the situation arises or experience is gained. You could liken me to God, telling Moses what to tap out on those huge stone tablets except I’m not God and now I just really pissed Him off and instead of carving in stone, I’m typing this blog post with black glittered fingertips on my crappy laptop.

I should have also forewarned you about my run-on sentence problem. I’m so sorry but please trust this will be far from the last time I let you down.

GIRLFRIEND COMMANDMENT #1: If you are not totally prepared to inspect my cooter in an emergency, keep movin’, sister.

My first real initiation with true adult female friendship happened when I was around 25 years old, which admittedly was a bit old to still have my sacrificial female friendship cherry intact but I have an innate lack of trust in most women. Little did I know when I met Aimee at work that she’d be the one to break my sacrificial female friendship cherry. Boy, did she ever.

Aimee’s husband worked a lot of night shifts, mine worked days but was a young engineer, working long hours and some weekends. We became inseparable and laughed constantly. What follows is how Aimee proved her weight in girlfriend gold and taught me a valuable Girlfriend Commandment.

One day, my cooter started itching like a redneck’s trigger finger on a shotgun and burned with a hellfire I had never felt before. Oh, calm down, Sister Christian. Keep reading, it’s not what you think.

It was way back in the days when a Major Bath Shit Retailer didn’t realize some cooters were very sensitive (nor did I apparently) and I’m pretty sure they put battery acid in their bubble bath shit at that time. I took a long soak and the next day, my cooter became angry. It wasn’t just regular old angry, it was Rambo-thrown-back-into-the-Vietnam-jungle-for-the-third-fucking-time angry.

I didn’t make the connection between Major Bath Shit Retailer and what I’m now sure was their intentional and malicious use of battery acid in products that were guaranteed to come into contact with my flower blossom. I confided my cooter woes to Aimee, desperately wanting to hear a completely harmless explanation. I did not get a completely harmless explanation.

I sat and listened in horror while Aimee guessed that I probably had a yeast infection (I did not but hindsight is 20/20 and I just said “hindsight” in a blog post about my cooter, HA!). I didn’t want to believe this horrific scenario so I came up with other, easier culprits like maybe my husband had branded my cooter when I was asleep. Maybe the last sex I had was so hot that my cooter’s internal temperature regulator had a complete meltdown. Maybe Bill Clinton (who was in office then) had my cooter under surveillance with some sort of laser thingy that had malfunctioned. That one makes no sense but I blamed Clinton for everything back then.

Aimee was skeptical of those explanations so she volunteered to not only drive me to Wal Mart, which just so happened to stock Cooter Goop, but to actually purchase the Cooter Goop on my behalf.  This may seem like no big deal to you but it was huge to me. Huge.

We lived in a very small town and I was mortified at the thought of actually putting Cooter Goop in my buggy and then onto the little conveyor belt to purchase (side note: If you don’t know what a buggy is, you are not Southern. I’m so sorry).

I can sense your intense and sudden love for Aimee and your pure joy that a woman such as this could exist. She did! She does! Aimee’s offer to buy my Cooter Goop was selfless enough but reign it in, sisters! Put down that VHS copy of Steel Magnolias and continue reading. This is like a trail mix of Girlfriend Wisdom right here. When you think you’ve got nothin’ left but the shitty raisins at the bottom of the bag, you find not one but two more bonus M&Ms.

Here is the first of those precious M&Ms. I put on my big girl panties and bought the Cooter Goop myself that fateful day but not before Aimee dropped this nuclear bomb of wisdom on me: The highly skilled and precise art of Checkout Deception by Camoflauge. Basically, just toss all your horrifically embarrassing shit in with a huge heaping pile of random boring shit you really don’t even need and pray to the Cooter Gods that the nice elderly man you go to church with in line behind you does not notice your Cooter Goop in amongst the boring retail shit potpourri. The boring retail shit potpourri is the only thing saving you and your itchy, inflamed cooter from being added to the Over 60 Men’s Prayer Request Phone Chain.

Do you feel the full weight of the knowledge I just dropped on you, sisters? If not, have a shot of whiskey, go back and read it again. We’ll wait.

If you think you’re ready, I will now reveal to you how Commandment #1 was born, aka the last M&M. Aimee offered, in my time of severe distress, to take a close gander at my cooter to determine what the hell kind of mutiny was going on down there. I declined her offer but her kindness and complete lack of selfishness lives on in my heart and cooter and also firmly instilled in me a rare friendship trait to this day: I will totally look at your cooter in an emergency.