My Friend Anna

by Rachel DeLoache Williams

Anna was frequently giving me an education in popular culture references. At this meal, for instance, she was surprised to learn that I knew nothing about Danielle Bregoli, a young teenager who’d recently become famous for coining the phrase “Cash me outside, how ’bout dat” on an episode of Dr. Phil. Anna played me the segment, entitled “I Want to Give Up My Car-Stealing, Knife-Wielding, Twerking 13-Year-Old Daughter Who Tried to Frame Me for a Crime.” While we waited for our food, she showed me the YouTube clip, in which Bregoli, a baby-faced teenager with flat-ironed hair and huge hoop earrings, described her bad behavior without an ounce of remorse. When she noticed members of the talk show audience laughing at her, Bregoli smugly called them “hoes” and dared them to catch her outside. When Dr. Phil asked what she meant by that, Bregoli’s mother chimed in to clarify: it “means she’ll go outside and do what she has to do.” I guess Bregoli’s bravado, and her self-proclaimed “street” talk, made the scene funny. I watched as Anna laughed.