day 1

I created a 10-day writing challenge, inspired by a friend's.

1. Which girl means the most to you?
2. Which boy means the most to you?
3. Which five words have the most interesting origins?
4. What is the one thing in your life right now that you wish you could get rid of?
5. What is something you can’t live without?
6. If you could do anything tomorrow, what would it be?
7. Describe an ideal room in your future house.
8. Where do you feel most comfortable?
9. If you could give yourself three more abilities, what would they be?
10. What are three things you don’t think you’ll ever do?

Which girl means the most to you?

Well, there are many of my girl friends that mean a lot to me, but I’d have to go with my best friend, Alice. Alice and I have been friends since 4th grade, and I’m positive we will always be friends. Even though we are both on opposite coasts now and talk 1/20th of the amount we used to, our closeness hasn’t faded. We may not know absolutely everything that happens to each other every day, but if we had time to tell each other everything, we still would. And I’m sure breaks and summer will help us catch up.

Even though I joke that Alice should never be a psychologist because I think she’s crazy, she honestly is my free, on-call therapist when I need her, and she actually has really good advice (she just doesn’t always follow it for herself ;) ). Despite the fact that she’s a devout follower of Jesus and I’m essentially an atheist, we somehow get along really well. We can drive each other crazy, but we rarely get into actual arguments. When we do, we feel bad about them and apologize to each other right away. 

I admire a lot about Alice. She’s fearless, really smart, very faithful as a friend, and she is convicted about what she sets out to do. Some of those qualities are absent in myself. I say I’m going to do the 365 day project (which involves taking a photo every day for a year), and I stop on the 20th day. I say I’m going to get my act together and start flossing every day for the rest of my life, and I then I end up just flossing every night for the two weeks before my next dental appointment. Alice says she wants to be a heart surgeon, and as long as she still wants to be a heart surgeon, she will be one. She also listens to her heart, as cheesy as that sounds. But what I mean by that is that she isn’t inhibited by logic. For example, if I fell in love with a guy in Italy, I would be worried about visiting him because I’d have to fly there, and I’d be alone, and all these other useless thoughts that would probably prevent me from going. But Alice would go because her heart would allow her to. I guess that’s not always a good thing, but I’d say she follows her heart in moderation. She’s also not a person who worries or gets easily upset by things. I think we look up to each other in different ways, but I look up to her for how brave she is and how little gets in her way.

Here are some of my favorite memories with Alice:

1. The first summer we were friends, I invited her and her dad to the boat. We sat on the back of the boat and “princess-braided” each other’s hair. I think there might have been a tropical storm that weekend, and we sledded nonstop and laughed about the fact that her dad landed on top of her while sledding and knocked the wind out of her (even though she was crying about it at the time).

2. When we were in 4th or 5th grade, we had a sleepover at her house and tried to make a movie about her winning a million dollars or something on America’s Funniest Videos. The value of that movie turned out only in its bloopers.

3. Sometimes when we went to the snack bar after school on the lower school campus, the lady there always asked if we were twins, which we never understood.

4. The neon hula hoop dance. Nothing more needs to be said. I think this may have been one of our first bonding experiences.

5. The one time we both liked the same boy...

6. The time we were listening to some song and arguing about the lyrics to the point that I got really angry that she didn’t think the one word was what I thought it was. Then we blasted it on the surround sound speakers downstairs and tried to figure out what it actually was, while I yelled at her because I thought I was right. I think she ended up being right. 

7. The time we decided to cross-dress in fake stubble and my dad’s suits (with black tights on our heads), and my mom got mad because we didn’t hang the suits up when we were done.

8. When we decided to show up at the Bye Bye, Birdie cast party with wigs and crazy clothing for a reason we now can’t remember, if there even was a reason. This happened at the public venue of Bucca di Beppo.

9. The time a boy in our 4th grade English class threw up on a dictionary behind us. Catch phrases of this incident are “creamy and chunky” and “my poor dictionary.”

10. Bunking together in Marin Headlands and laughing hysterically about Ms. Blanqia (?) and Ms. Veil (our principal) having their hair put into many little pigtails. 

11. Discussing the choice between “Wood” and “Syrup” (codenames) on the bus on the Grand Canyon trip.

12. Karaoke to “Music” by Madonna.

13. Standing outside of Petco in Carson City, holding a bag of dogbones,  while a creepy old man rode by on a bike and shouted, “you girls got some BONES!”

14. Bathroom graffiti incidents: 1.) being in the San Francisco Nordstrom bathroom and laughing about the graffiti that said, “LESBIAN STONER UNDERGROUND” with an arrow pointing down, and 2.) Alice went to the bathroom in Zion National Park and didn’t know that Ms. Garcia (our Spanish teacher) had come into the bathroom, and Alice read the graffiti, “I love Billy” aloud, and Ms. Garcia said, “Me too!” and we started laughing, and she said, “No really, I do!”

15. When Alice and I decided to ask Ms. Garcia at the end of 7th grade how to say “hot” to describe a person because we thought we’d never have her again (and of course, we had her for 2 more years). And I think Alice also started talking about her crushes and their code names, and Ms. Garcia wished her luck with “chocolate.”

16. “I. need. a muffin.”

17. “What kind of tape?” “Scotch...TAPE.”

18. Prank-calling 1-800-MATTRESS and asking for an immediate mattress delivery to the garbage can we lived in on the street. That same night there was an earthquake at Araby’s house and Alice jumped on top of me because she thought there was a burglar walking up the stairs. 

19. “Who’s Alice talking to in the closet?” “Oh, just Isaac!” And the whole memory of that lovely character in our lives, Stephen. On the note of things my mom has said, “What kinda movie are you makin’?” in response to when she walked in and saw me standing in my underwear laughing about the fact that I forgot to turn off the camera while Alice and I were changing.

20. Sledding at the lake and having the “Jesus Walks” Rishi S. vision

21. Throwing grapes off the top of the boat with Kie and staying up til 5am just laughing about various things.

22. “Studying” for finals in 7th grade and making an E-Harmony advertisement.

23. Deciding to go to a middle school dance in awful outfits...which we thought were great at the time. The black and red goth look was not for us. Also, Joey M. dancing with Erica to “We Belong Together” by Mariah Carey, which upset me.

24. Lunch at California Pizza Kitchen with a long-lost friend, and dinner at CPK in 6th grade at the Ms. S sleepover. I remember when we were leaving, we walked into the parking lot and almost got hit by a car because we were just non-stop talking, and Ms. S had to hold us back. 

25. Filming "Jade Green."

26. Going to a Giants game in 7th or 8th grade. I was being a stupid middle schooler trying to scout out boys instead of paying attention to the game. Lisa bought us Giants caps, and I remember we went to the bookstore afterwards and looked for self-help books. LOL. We took CalTrain there and back, which was really fun. Speaking of SF, I also remember our annual SF trip that was only annual for 2-ish years, but still. It was fun hanging off the sides of cable cars and having to wait for the pizza guy to move his car out of the track, and how some guy jumped off the cable car and went and knocked on the door. 

27. One of our first hang-out sessions ever, which consisted of baking cookies with the jelly in the center and drinking root beer (possibly eating pizza).

28. Hiking up Lovers' Leap with David and being confused about why David always insisted on having his headphones in while around us. "I don't think I could ever do what you do without doing something else." The natural water slide, the long walk that he said wouldn't take very long...

29. Watching "In Her Shoes" with Alice's mom and my aunt.

30. Going to Super Taquería with Alice and her family in Morgan Hill and talking about how Alice found one of the Latino workers there cute. 

31. The impromptu music session with Joe at my house to record Alice's song (about Josh, I think).

There are obviously many more, but I've been writing this for a while now...and I'm at the special number of 31 ;)

Ugh, one more....

32.) Playing "Falling Slowly" at Coffeehouse when Daniel knocked over the sheet music onto the piano.