I was discussing a friend of mine with Natalie Standiford, a YA author on twitter, and she commented that it sounded like an "epic" friendship. I had never really thought of it that way, but once I had the thought, I couldn't really unthink it. Being the word geek I am, I looked epic up in the dictionary. I found the following definitions:
Of unusually great size or majestic and impressively great? Yeah, I've been blessed with a few friendships that I would call epic.
Growing up I had one of those idyllic sort of childhoods. I went to school with the same 19 kids for 9 years. I still can't go back to church with my parents without running into a grandparent of one of my former classmates. One would think that this would have led to one of those friendships you find in books and movies. The best friend you've known since you were little, tell everything to, and turn to for relationship advice. But that's not where my story starts. I think seeing the same kids 19 for 9 years allowed or even required us all to be "friends" of some sort. But up on entering high school and jumping from 19 to 410 students in our class, we got a chance to be who we really were not just who we'd always been. Let's just say we grew apart, and I found myself sort of friendless toward the end of freshman year. I don't know if you remember high school, but friendless is not a place you want to find yourself ever, much less after everyone's had 7 months to make friends.
But that's where I found the first of my epic friendships with a girl who hated me. I adored Shanna. She was a girl who wore Superman capes and Burger King crowns to school, could sing, had a hell of an attitude, and didn't give a crap what anyone thought of her. She was someone I aspired to be. And in my mind, we were going to be great friends. Little did I know that she didn't like me. But fate and I were about to intervene. Sophomore year we ended up the only 2 sophomore sopranos in the acapella choir. I decided this clearly meant we needed to be music partners and thus friends. It was the beginning of one crazy friendship. She learned to like me...mostly because I refused to go away, and when I didn't, she christened me Beckstah. We had some fun times. She wrote a novel; I edited it. She mouthed off to the seniors in the choir; I attempted to keep her from getting hurt. She kept a Kiss/Kill list. We bonded over our dislike of the "choir favorites." We riled people up in English bringing cereal to eat in class. And tangentially managed to get in trouble for calling some of our classmates wenches. (I didn't do it, but I certainly agreed with the person who did!) We'd hang out at Perkins where she knew all the servers. And my parents adopted her when she'd call asking for the phone number to the DMV and never identify herself or when she'd show up unannounced at the front door at 10:30 at night. When we graduated, she asked for a picture with my parents before she got one with me. We both went off to college and like most people sort of lost touch. But that's not the end of the story. We reconnected the summer after I graduated. Since then she's been married and had 2 of the cutest kids I've met. She and her hubby and kids come over during Thanksgiving weekend every year. They stay for the whole day; sometimes even for two. My parents babysit occasionally. And her kids call me Aunt Ducky (apparently Becky is difficult). Sometimes it's hard to imagine it's been 11 years since I watched her walk into the lunchroom with her Burger King crown on her head, deciding right there and then we'd be friends.
My second epic friendship is one that actually started about the same time. I'm pretty sure I had classes with Kyle freshman year, but he didn't really show up on my radar much at all until the summer before my junior year. I played tennis and that year I'd taken it upon myself to sort of mother the new freshmen and make them feel at home before classes actually started. One of those freshmen became my doubles partner. We clicked on so many levels. We got talking at a tournament, only for me to realize not only did she have an older brother...I knew him. Yep. I was better friends with his little sister first. I spent a lot of time with that family. I was Brooke's ride during the tennis season, and Kyle was the editor of the school newspaper that I'd joined that fall, getting roped into copy editing. By junior year there were only some many students on the accelerated track for academics so those 40 or so of us tended to have mostly the same classes. We got to know each other that year. And somehow by the next year Kyle was part of our group, and I was helping set my friend up with him. Of course she was super shy so this meant I had to get to know him so I could get them together. That fall we spent a lot of time together between classes, newspaper, and him crashing tennis matches after cross country practice. Oh, and he was my escort for Homecoming Court that fall. We were both so anti-Homecoming ridiculousness. I'll never forget him threatening to trip me as we walked across the football field, and me promising to take him down with me and reminding him that his mother would never forgive him for that. I did manage to get them together. He tried to set me up with our mutual best friend. (Neither ended well.) We spent lots of late nights chatting and playing midnight tennis the summer before college. Somewhere in the process he became my best and closest friend. We gave each other nicknames that only the 2 of used. And after we both went off to college, he continued to be a great friend, emotional rock, and reality check. We did a little bit of the phone call thing, but emails were really our forte. We would have epicly long strings of emails (We still do... in January we had 34 email string, and we're 7 into one this week.) Or commenting on each other's OpenDiary (remember when those were cool?) reminding each other we could get through whatever it was we were dealing with . Like you do in college, we got busy. Our emails got further and further apart, but everytime we started up again it was like no time had passed. Then he went to Australia for a semester. And I had a super stressful semester. So I'd email him just to vent knowing that whatever I was feeling was out there, not expecting him to read them, but I got a thoughtful reply every time. Gretchen and I roadtripped down to see him senior year. (Never let your 2 best friends get to know each other...they tend to gang up on you. This has happened to me too many times!) Any time we both happened to be home at the same time we'd find a way to hang out. Then we graduated and before I knew it, he was accepting a job in Florida. We got really good at the going months with out talking again. After 3 years he was back in our hometown, and recently took a job in northern WI. But I got a chance to see him a few times this fall, and will again this February. Now this doesn't seem too epic, but if you know our relationship you know why. There's just this level of comfort. Can you go months without emailing or over a year without seeing a close friend and then just pick right back up, no awkward moments? I mean we spent a whole day together the summer I was in grad school. We played tennis with Brooke and his mom, chilled at the house for a while, had a 'family' dinner, and chatted around a campfire. It just felt like it fit. And when I had a week this fall where I was close to breaking down and I ran away to my parents place to escape, it was him that made me feel normal again. Just chilling and talking with him brought back a sense of calm.
So there it is, two epic friendships. (I've got 2 more, but those I'll save for another day!) There's a lot more mystery, intrigue, and craziness with these 2, but it's too hard to explain well without revealing some awkward and embarrassing stories. Just trust me on this one ;)
epic. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved January 22, 2011,
from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/epic
Of unusually great size or majestic and impressively great? Yeah, I've been blessed with a few friendships that I would call epic.
Growing up I had one of those idyllic sort of childhoods. I went to school with the same 19 kids for 9 years. I still can't go back to church with my parents without running into a grandparent of one of my former classmates. One would think that this would have led to one of those friendships you find in books and movies. The best friend you've known since you were little, tell everything to, and turn to for relationship advice. But that's not where my story starts. I think seeing the same kids 19 for 9 years allowed or even required us all to be "friends" of some sort. But up on entering high school and jumping from 19 to 410 students in our class, we got a chance to be who we really were not just who we'd always been. Let's just say we grew apart, and I found myself sort of friendless toward the end of freshman year. I don't know if you remember high school, but friendless is not a place you want to find yourself ever, much less after everyone's had 7 months to make friends.
But that's where I found the first of my epic friendships with a girl who hated me. I adored Shanna. She was a girl who wore Superman capes and Burger King crowns to school, could sing, had a hell of an attitude, and didn't give a crap what anyone thought of her. She was someone I aspired to be. And in my mind, we were going to be great friends. Little did I know that she didn't like me. But fate and I were about to intervene. Sophomore year we ended up the only 2 sophomore sopranos in the acapella choir. I decided this clearly meant we needed to be music partners and thus friends. It was the beginning of one crazy friendship. She learned to like me...mostly because I refused to go away, and when I didn't, she christened me Beckstah. We had some fun times. She wrote a novel; I edited it. She mouthed off to the seniors in the choir; I attempted to keep her from getting hurt. She kept a Kiss/Kill list. We bonded over our dislike of the "choir favorites." We riled people up in English bringing cereal to eat in class. And tangentially managed to get in trouble for calling some of our classmates wenches. (I didn't do it, but I certainly agreed with the person who did!) We'd hang out at Perkins where she knew all the servers. And my parents adopted her when she'd call asking for the phone number to the DMV and never identify herself or when she'd show up unannounced at the front door at 10:30 at night. When we graduated, she asked for a picture with my parents before she got one with me. We both went off to college and like most people sort of lost touch. But that's not the end of the story. We reconnected the summer after I graduated. Since then she's been married and had 2 of the cutest kids I've met. She and her hubby and kids come over during Thanksgiving weekend every year. They stay for the whole day; sometimes even for two. My parents babysit occasionally. And her kids call me Aunt Ducky (apparently Becky is difficult). Sometimes it's hard to imagine it's been 11 years since I watched her walk into the lunchroom with her Burger King crown on her head, deciding right there and then we'd be friends.
My second epic friendship is one that actually started about the same time. I'm pretty sure I had classes with Kyle freshman year, but he didn't really show up on my radar much at all until the summer before my junior year. I played tennis and that year I'd taken it upon myself to sort of mother the new freshmen and make them feel at home before classes actually started. One of those freshmen became my doubles partner. We clicked on so many levels. We got talking at a tournament, only for me to realize not only did she have an older brother...I knew him. Yep. I was better friends with his little sister first. I spent a lot of time with that family. I was Brooke's ride during the tennis season, and Kyle was the editor of the school newspaper that I'd joined that fall, getting roped into copy editing. By junior year there were only some many students on the accelerated track for academics so those 40 or so of us tended to have mostly the same classes. We got to know each other that year. And somehow by the next year Kyle was part of our group, and I was helping set my friend up with him. Of course she was super shy so this meant I had to get to know him so I could get them together. That fall we spent a lot of time together between classes, newspaper, and him crashing tennis matches after cross country practice. Oh, and he was my escort for Homecoming Court that fall. We were both so anti-Homecoming ridiculousness. I'll never forget him threatening to trip me as we walked across the football field, and me promising to take him down with me and reminding him that his mother would never forgive him for that. I did manage to get them together. He tried to set me up with our mutual best friend. (Neither ended well.) We spent lots of late nights chatting and playing midnight tennis the summer before college. Somewhere in the process he became my best and closest friend. We gave each other nicknames that only the 2 of used. And after we both went off to college, he continued to be a great friend, emotional rock, and reality check. We did a little bit of the phone call thing, but emails were really our forte. We would have epicly long strings of emails (We still do... in January we had 34 email string, and we're 7 into one this week.) Or commenting on each other's OpenDiary (remember when those were cool?) reminding each other we could get through whatever it was we were dealing with . Like you do in college, we got busy. Our emails got further and further apart, but everytime we started up again it was like no time had passed. Then he went to Australia for a semester. And I had a super stressful semester. So I'd email him just to vent knowing that whatever I was feeling was out there, not expecting him to read them, but I got a thoughtful reply every time. Gretchen and I roadtripped down to see him senior year. (Never let your 2 best friends get to know each other...they tend to gang up on you. This has happened to me too many times!) Any time we both happened to be home at the same time we'd find a way to hang out. Then we graduated and before I knew it, he was accepting a job in Florida. We got really good at the going months with out talking again. After 3 years he was back in our hometown, and recently took a job in northern WI. But I got a chance to see him a few times this fall, and will again this February. Now this doesn't seem too epic, but if you know our relationship you know why. There's just this level of comfort. Can you go months without emailing or over a year without seeing a close friend and then just pick right back up, no awkward moments? I mean we spent a whole day together the summer I was in grad school. We played tennis with Brooke and his mom, chilled at the house for a while, had a 'family' dinner, and chatted around a campfire. It just felt like it fit. And when I had a week this fall where I was close to breaking down and I ran away to my parents place to escape, it was him that made me feel normal again. Just chilling and talking with him brought back a sense of calm.
So there it is, two epic friendships. (I've got 2 more, but those I'll save for another day!) There's a lot more mystery, intrigue, and craziness with these 2, but it's too hard to explain well without revealing some awkward and embarrassing stories. Just trust me on this one ;)
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