Not-so-Unknown Mami and Friends

It seems to me that a good way to get to know a person is to ask their friends about them. I’ve invited my very good friend Michele to stop by and tell you a little bit about me and a little about our friendship. Here’s what Michele wrote…

Unknown Mami and I went to the same junior high school. I didn’t really know her until our last year, when we had some classes together, including World History and gym. U.M. tells the story of how we really became pals in gym class, when we decided we needed to go out for some banana cream pie. What first made me want to be better friends with U.M. was that I discovered that she was hilarious and smart, and I love people who make me laugh and think. It didn’t take too long for me to also realize that U.M. was a great person and an amazing friend.

Our years in junior high and high school (though we didn’t attend the same high school) were full of capers, and when we are together now with new folks, we tend to retell and retell the same tales from that time. We really can’t help it: These stories are still, well, hilarious.

For our history class, we partnered on a big project where everyone had to make a timeline of world history. It was a preposterous assignment. There was no Google or Wikipedia then to help us. We got together after school to work on it plenty of times, and, of course, we found all sorts of other fun things to do until the weekend before the timeline was due. U.M. and I must have stayed up for 48 hours straight, pasting and cobbling this crazy timeline together. My dad cut a roll of paper for us with an electric saw. We half-typed in random world events into the DOS computer and printed them out on the dot-matrix, hastily cutting and pasting the pieces onto our surely crooked timeline. We ate pizza all weekend. All night, all day.

We sort of finished on time. We loved our history teacher, who was a hard-ass we were eager to please (though not so eager that we actually started our homework in advance). That Monday, we crawled into class with our giant, disheveled timeline, exhausted though triumphant. Then, as if on cue, both of us passed out cold on our desks. Any hopes of pleasing our teacher were gone in a matter of seconds, when he publicly called us out for sleeping in class! We sort of deserved it, I have to say.

There are so many other stories I could tell you about my friendship with U.M., whom I have now known for more than 25 years. Like how sometimes I would go pick her up from her house to go to the movies or midnight bowling or what have you (we were such dorky teenagers with what we thought were very important things to do sometimes), and she would get into the passenger seat with a piece of her hair sticking straight up, or wearing something we would usually not be caught dead in (such as a baby-blue shirt adorned with panda bears—not a hip look for a 17-year-old who normally preferred heavy eyeliner, thick red bangs, and black clothing). And she would wait for me to say something while she barely kept a straight face.

(I could also tell you about the time she kissed my college boyfriend in the back seat of my car after they both had had a wee bit too much vodka. I was the designated driver who witnessed it from the driver’s seat. What of it? We were like 19. What can you do? She apologized profusely the next day, but of course we laughed about it.)

U.M. still really knows how to make me laugh. But she also has always made me think, hard, as well. She’s one of the most sensitive and thoughtful people I have ever met, and she cares fiercely and deeply for everyone she loves. I was very happy when she married the wonderful Unknown Papi, and I swell with pride like an auntie whenever I see her beautiful children. No one forgets U.M.: She’s like no one else you will ever meet. If you’re her friend, you are unbearably lucky, because she will love you forever and she will always make you laugh.

Thank you Michele, that was beautiful and it is absolutely true that I will love you forever.

This post is part of a series celebrating friendship. Stop by tomorrow to read what I have to say about Michele and don’t forget to nurture the friendships in your life.