Without further ado, my words and barf.
Not gonna lie, I tried to spell that further adieu.
I just want you all to know, firstly and foremostly, that I am
completely and totally stealing this idea from Sarah, whose lovely blog about
her life (and past experiences in the Tenderloin of San Francisco) can be seen
here. The reason that I don’t feel bad about this is that if you look back on
what smart people have said over the years, really no idea is original. “There
is nothing new under the sun.” So this is my twist on that. Really, none of
this blog is original, as many of you who are familiar with Dave Barry probably
know. (Dave Barry makes fun of things professionally, in a very smart way, and there
is a chance that some individuals could consider some things that I have
written in the past plagiarism of his style, but we’re going to call it
flattery, because that sounds a lot nicer.) However, I do want to give Sarah
credit for this, and for those who understand and are interested, hers is way
better. It's like I took it and ruined it. So just…yeah no one worry about it.
On another level of introduction, this type of enthusiastic
encouragement posting may end up being a thing. It won’t be scheduled. It won’t
be formatted. It won’t always be enthralling, as hard as that is to believe. But
if it does continue, then, well, what the heck.
Seriously, though, it may only happen once.
No one get excited.
What the crud, Lydia!? WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN.
This post is going to be vaguely similar to a letter of
appreciation (of sorts) that I am writing publicly for a few very good reasons:
1. Because writing this all as a Facebook post would be too
awkwardly long.
2. Because writing this all as a text would give me carpal tunnel.
Carpal tenal? Carpal…tunal. UGH.
3. Because writing this all as a message or email or letter is
just too dang personal and I want everyone to hear it. And I don’t know her
address.
4. Because the person in consideration is fly as pie and people
should know about her.
5. Because it’s not really even in letter format and is really
just going to be like an announcement of awesome.
ANYWAY.
This introduction will probably be longer than the actual
post. What is my freaking problem.
for Jenessa.(pic stolen from her Facebook, for reasons involving my lack of photographic skills and this sweet moose.)
So I have this friend named Jenessa, and as mentioned
before, she is pretty fly. I met her in an emergency small group my freshman
year of college, emergency meaning I was added to it at the tail end of things
to increase its legitimacy, and small meaning there were four of us until
one moved back to Arkansas. Which is too bad, because she was really cool and I
liked bragging about knowing her, but I guess she looks happy enough in her pictures. Jenessa is a biology major, as am I, which is funny, because until my
second small group meaning (she wasn’t there the first time), I had never seen
her. Ever. She also commutes and never had any classes with me, so that added
to her mysterious aura. Sometime during the first semester of last year, we
realized that we were going to have Organic Chemistry and Cell Biology together
the semester afterward, and it was a loud and joyous occasion. The semester itself was not as loud or joyous, but does that really matter?
No.
My baby little brother just threw a tater tot at me and now I
have friend potato all on my shirt. What the crud. Also I just spelled that as
friend potato and am so amused that I’m going to leave it.
One thing I have always appreciated about Jenessa is that
she is the undercover bio major. This has in part to do with how sneaky she is.
Also, she is sort of short, so the tall people may not always see her. This is
a lot of fun, because she is quite good at school. There was a point last year
when I asked her how she did on some test or something, and she told me, and it
wasn’t surprise as much as the happy realization of, “Hey. Jenessa can get A’s.
A’s are good things.* Jenessa is a good thing. This is almost too much of a
good thing but I think we’re going to be alright.” This really never impacted
our friendship, but I just thought it was interesting.
She also happens to be intelligent.* And it’s because I know
that Jenessa puts thought into her decisions and opinions that she is so easy
to respect. It’s nice to be able to talk to her about things that I haven’t really
thought through and only speculate on, because when I am wrong, it’s easy to
understand why, and whenever she agrees with me, I feel so validated I can’t
even stand it. So conversationally, she’s pretty much the best, for several
reasons, the most important of those reasons being that we both are usually
upset about the same things at the exact same time, and when we meet with our small
group leader, we just rant about these things for hours, and our leader just
kind of laughs at us.
*This isn’t necessary to the story, but I wanted to draw
attention to the fact that Jenessa getting good grades and Jenessa being
intelligent are separate categories. There are a lot of idiots who do very well
in school and a lot of brilliant individuals who failed out of college.
Furthermore, too much of the environment that the she and I are in so often
(namely, a major that really only has value when tacked onto the end of a
graduate degree) place a whole heaping pile of stress onto the grades you get
and the academic valor you have. (Is academic valor a phrase? It so should be.)
There really is no personal value attached to your grades. It is important to
work hard and be dedicated to what you pursue, but if you happen to fail a
class, that’s really not something that takes away from your identity. :) I know that I say that
a lot, but I meet a lot of people who need to hear it, as well as happen to be
one of them.
This last paragraph is really
just to sum everything up and say that she is just pretty dang loyal. A lot of
people consider that being mean to the same people, which is not actulaly what that
means. Jenessa is loyal because the first time we went to coffee I was horribly
awkward and had to pee like six times, but we still hung out after that. She
listens to me for all the obscene amount of time it takes for me to get over my
problems, and she lets me eat all the candy in her house, and she tries to get
her cat to like me (even though it is just a very aloof cat), and she sends me
pictures of cacti, and she studies with me even though all I do is talk, and
she visits me in the research cave. She is just a good friend. And it’s not
just me. Literally, right now, you could go on her profile and there is ANOTHER
person talking about how kind and supportive she is. Right under the picture of the cookie dough. LOOK.
Okay, don’t. Don’t be a creep. But REALLY. She is a gem.
Naturally, the least I could do would be to write a thousand
word essay on how cool she is.
Nessa, they don't make friends like you. Like
they couldn't if they tried. Like if they had a friend factory with all the
good stuff piled up and they picked through it to find the best of the best of
all of the niceness, they wouldn’t get you. They would get some weird teddy
bear person who just sits and spews out compliments and hugs everyone, which
isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you're still way better, probably because
you’re really funny when you aren't being as nice as you almost always are and because any of us who have been on
Splash Mountain know that talking teddy bears aren’t all they’re cracked up to
be. And either way, thanks to our various shared experiences, you will always remind me of pandas, and they're way better than really anything.
Well, that’s...that. This may never happen again, this may
happen again many times; I have a lot of cool friends, but before this
continues I obviously will need to learn how to condense my ideas on them. Obviously all of them deserve to be appreciated in every way possible.
In
the meantime, have a great Sunday, and if anyone needs to borrow any
eggs, they really should come to our house, because my mom bought seventy-two
this week.
Fin.
