Skip to main content

Highschool Best Friends

Once again I find life fails the ability to be explained. How caterpillars turn into butterflies, why the sky turns perfect pink at dusk, and why the jelly side of bread always falls face-down when dropped. In addition, describing how friendships form also has always posed difficult for me. I guess I just never can understand how two girls find themselves in the perfect place, at the perfect time, and strike up the perfect conversation that entices us both. I remember the first moment I met you in the Cor Jesu gym, I know we both remember it. I didn’t even want to try out for cheerleading, but I knew I would be no success at any other sport in the fall and I was desperate for new friends in high school. I was tall; too skinny, had no curves, was dreadfully awkward, and had black braces. You were shorter, had jet black hair, pink braces, and always seemed to be dressed cooler than me – even in your Columbia, Illinois t-shirt. In 8th grade, I thought meeting my perfect best friend would take me a couple months, little did I know I would meet her the first week in May, months before my high school quest began.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Stop Shoulding all over yourself

Yesterday I went on Cor Jesu's Vivare "young alumni" retreat. My friend from high school Katie posted it on my wall a few weeks ago and tagged a couple other CJ sisters to the post and it struck my interest. I haven't done a single thing with CJ since I graduated and somewhere between moving to Boston and joining the triathlon team my Catholic past was put on the backburner. I figured I had nothing to lose except a Saturday and at the very least I'd get to hang out with my friends so I signed up and sent in my $25 without much thought.  I've never been the most devout Catholic. Most times in church I'm scanning the crowd for familiar faces, zoning out, and making Target lists- and that's if I go at all. Sunday is usually run-day...or ski day. Or sleep in day. Or study day. Or vacuum day. Whatever day it is...it's rarely church day. Despite being raised by two Catholic parents, going to a Catholic grade school and a Catholic high school, going o...

A Near Miss

I may have spoken too soon when I said that Kirkwood library was my spot. Here I am comfortably doing my speech-pathology work when out of nowhere: We took the square route of this and put it here and here and put it there and there.  My ears tuned in and I raised my head. I sniffed the air and suspiciously scanned the area. Yep. Math. Immediately I broke out in a sweat. Hands started shaking. Eyes twitched. Jaw clenched and neck twisted. Vomit literally came up my esophagus. Pavlov conditioning in it's purest form.  So this times this gives you this and this times this gives you that.  Focus, Katie. Hmm....a 2 year old with hearing loss who is struggling with some final consonant deletion, some stopping of fricatives, some devoicing? Now that, I am good at.... Now do you see inside your parenthesis that there is a difference of squares? No I don't see, lady. That past is long behind me and I'm never going back.  Right now I'm transcribing, identifying ...
First mountain bike ride = SUCCESS! Rex and I rode 18 miles this morning. We did the Logan river trail for about 14 then we rode around town stopping into some bike shops looking at pedals and mountain biking shoes. It'll be a few weeks before I actually buy a pair but I want to get an idea of what's out there - just like road cycling, clipless pedals change everything. With regular pedals, the rider can only get movement forward by pushing down. With clipless pedals, the rider's foot is attached to the bike so you can push down and pull up, which makes climbing and accelerating completely different. I absolutely love my pedals on Mr. Mac so Rex should have a pair, too. The ride was awesome though. The thing I like about mountain biking is that it's a nice blend between trail running and road cycling. You get to the distance of cycling but you get to be close with nature like you do running. It's absolutely perfect. I even had my very first crash today! I w...