Friends

I'm getting high with my friends right now. I haven't been stoned with them in a long time. The room in which i type this blog is a few feet away from where they eat and talk and giggle. FunGuy has the His Dark Materials trilogy on his bookshelf. Please read that.

FunGuy is telling his story about how he had an allergic reaction to aspirin on a plane. His lungs felt itchy and he broke out in hives.

I feel the pull of my friends. What can i tell you about them so you'll understand the brevity and perhaps bad punctuation of my post? They are intelligent, compassionate, creative, genuine people. Honest and loyal. They're my saviors and my angels. I've known them for almost the whole time i've been in NYC. I don't often imagine what my life would be like without them.

When i was in the third grade, they transferred me away from my friends to a school on the other side of town. I had been smart and well-liked and had a lot of playmates from kindergarten to the second grade. I was on the fast track to popularity. At my new school, the popular girls were bitchy, upper-middle class girls. They were snobby and rude and they cut you in half if you threatened to be smarter or prettier or more noticed than you. I didn't know that at the time; i simply believed them when they tolf me i wasn't ugly, but not that pretty. I remember sending notes like:

List in order of who you like best:
Kirsten
Julia
Sarah
Me

In return, i received:

Julia
Kirsten
Me
Sarah

At least i wasn't last. I didn't like these girls, but they were popular and that's what i was used to. So i broke into their clique by teasing girls less popular than me and thus worked up the third-grade food chain.

But i didn't like anyone else, either. Popular, non-popular, smart, dumb: these weren't my friends. After that year was over and i was returned to my original school, i vowed to choose solitude over bad company.

Thank God i don't have to make that choice now.

SG