December 29, 2011
Arlington, Virginia
with: Julie Anne
Well, yeah...last year was one of THOSE years. We have them. We've had them before and we'll have them again. No one is immune to one of those years. So, how to end the year of all years?
I did the Junior year abroad thing. Academic year 1995-1996 was spent in a beautiful haze of bliss with my American and Spanish friends.
About five months before departure we had to fill out rooming assignment personality forms. I wasn’t the witty goddess then that I am now, but I remember filling out the form and happily mailing it back to an office at Chapel-Hill. Carolina-a school I was too afraid to apply to, but was good enough to study abroad with.
I remember filling it out like this:
I am a studious person. I need my quiet time and I need to hit the books when it is time to hit the books. However, I love to party when it is time to party but I don’t like living with a drunk that is going to throw up all the time. I also don’t have a lot of tolerance for ditsy girls-give me someone a little more intelligent.
Whoever got that form must have decided the rooming situation was a no brainer. I was giving to Julie Anne.
Julie already had a degree in Politics and came back to school for Spanish. She was old, I mean really OLD!!! She was 25-born in 1970! Even her brother was old-23! Ironically, her parents were younger than mine. Is this what happens when you say you don’t want to room with a drunk ditz? They give you the old lady?
That old lady turned out to be one of the best friends I have ever had in my life! I remember one night we were on our beds studying and I said, “You know, one day, four years age difference isn’t going to matter-like when we are thirty six and forty-who is going to care?” We had a good laugh that night…
Until last year, when we indeed were thirty-six and forty.
Over Christmas I was thinking about it-I owed her a visit for her 40th birthday, even though it was a year late.
It all happened over two texts.
Can I come up?
Yes-meet me and my parents at the hockey arena around 10:15.
So I found her amidst the Caps jerseys and we took the metro back to her house.
She is one of those friends that time stands still for. I walked into the guest bedroom in her house and put my stuff down like I had just gone to the Costa del Sol for the weekend and was coming back to hear about her ski trip in Granada.
Tomorrow? Her sentences can be short.
Doesn't matter-can we bake cookies and watch movies on Netflix? Maybe that was a bit of a red flag to her.
Sushi and a movie in a theater. Movies are for the big screen.
She is right-she knows it, I know it, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, and James Cameron know it. I needed a big screen.
She took me to a place where you pick sushi dishes off a conveyer belt as they go round and round. That is what I did for about five minutes. Watched the sushi go by....
We decided on Young Adult.
I had already seen Charlize Theron go crazy once before in The Devil's Advocate, but this was a completely different crazy. This was what I'll call possible crazy and not entertaining Devil crazy...The fact that it could actually happen to you or one of your girlfriends makes it worse to watch.
Charlize is playing a divorced young adult novelist named Mavis who gets a photo in an email of an ex's new baby. The ex boyfriend's wife sent the email. This triggers a decision to go home and try to get her high school life back.
Anyone anywhere will watch this and say, "Nah...I'll skip the reunion this year...who cares about those people...I'm normal."
It really was like watching a train wreck. Now I get that expression. The crazier she acted the more nauseated I got sitting in the theater watching it happen. I wanted to pull out a notebook and take notes on how not to behave.
When we get to the root of what really upsets her, I don't know what that other woman was thinking sending the picture. Then again, we all have good intentions and make horrible mistakes and we can't be held too responsible for the choice someone else makes.
Diablo Cody wrote a brilliant screenplay and nobody does crazy like Charlize. It was sad and it is on my list of movies that certain friends are not allowed to see. What really resonated with me was that the main character did change a little, but not dramatically. It doesn't happen within one trip home.
I left the theater feeling very normal.
The next day I ran about twelve miles through the Washington Monuments with Julie's mom and felt even better.
So when you fill out the roommate forms...factor in who will still be around for your seventeen years later- in an adult way, not a young adult one...



