Medical Bling: A Nonsequitor

I was just setting up a bootleg download of this week's Californication (a show which I only started watching about a week ago and now LOVE. I will write more about this later, probably. How did I not know about Californication, mainly that it was good?) and an ad pops up for some nonsense advertising "Medical Billing." But I read it as "Medical BLING," which is instantly hilarious and also reminded me of one of my more favored anecdotes:

When I was about 3 or 4 I went to daycare with a girl who was a compulsive liar. I knew she was a dirty liar even before I could spell my (albeit long, consonant heavy, and Polish) last name. Looking back, I'm not sure if her lying was so much a compulsion as a desperate cry for attention, but that is neither here nor there. I'm sure she's a stripper now, at the very least.

One day this girl and I are on the swings, and I guess I was wearing a bracelet made of plastic Little Mermaid charms or some other early-90s kid crap, and she stops swinging and is all, "I have a bracelet too, and MINE is SILVER!" And she whips out her wrist like she's about to show off a corsage made of rubies and shark teeth, and there, sparkling in the sun, is one of these:

That's right, a medical alert ID bracelet. Granted, I had no idea what one of these was at the time, nor did I know that compulsive liars needed to wear alert bracelets (in case of fib-induced seizures). Note: She was a huge liar, but I don't think she was wearing the bracelet as part of some elaborate lie. She was probably diabetic. Just in case you thought she was a big fat liar instead of just a liar. My curious nature began at a young age, and so I stepped a little closer to get a good look at what my playmate thought to be a stunning piece of "medical bling." The front looked just like the picture above, and on the back there were just some printed numbers. I asked, "What are those numbers for?" And here's where it gets great:

She looks me dead in the eye and says, "That's Michael Jackson's phone number."

Remember, this is like 1991, and Michael Jackson is bigger than Jesus. I knew she had to be full of shit, so I was like, "First off, why do you have a bracelet with Michael Jackson's phone number engraved on it, and second, if those are his digits, why aren't we calling him right now?" And Little Liar refuses to give up! She responds, "Because I've already called him like, twice today and he's starting to get annoyed with me."

I didn't call her out on her blatant lies, because I knew then and there that I would tell the story of that day to everyone I met. Especially those who wore medical alert ID bracelets.