happy anniversary.

July 7, 2008 marks the 3 year anniversary of this little event. I wrote it up for my application to NYU about 2 years ago. reading this again, i am reminded of the time and space limits which restricted the story, cheating it of its true hysteria. perhaps it's time for revisions. though i'm certain i could not capture the happenings as accurately as it replays in my memory. thought I would share.

For a 15 year old girl, a friend with a drivers’ license is all-important. Megan was, of course, more than just a drivers’ license—but it did grant us a summer of freedom. We had just taken our first road trip to a neighboring town about 45 miles away. We pulled into town with a newly-burned country mix in the stereo. My mom asked for a favor of dropping a gift off at a friend’s house and we found the address with ease. As we pulled up, Megan peered up the nearly vertical driveway. It curved around with a case of cement stairs lining it. Megan and I looked at each other and instantly grinned. “Oh yeah,” Megan said, not sarcastically, “I can’t wait to go up this thing!” We drove up, and I returned to the car after dropping the item off. Megan switched into reverse and backed down. Suddenly without warning, we hit the stairs. Megan instinctively put the car in drive and attempted to drive forward, realizing that she hadn’t turned her steering wheel soon enough. As she accelerated the gas pedal, we remained stationary and knowingly shrugged our shoulders in unison. We had begun laughing when we first hit the stairs and continued to laugh---as we always did---in complete silence. Megan looked at me quizzically as to what her next move should be. “Just keep going! Who cares?” I said---sustained in giggling. She took my advice and we gradually made our way down the stairs, backwards, in a car. We clunked down each stair, laughing a stomach-clenching, violently-shaking, unrelenting laughter that requires you to draw deep breaths of hysterical heaving that Megan and I were intimately familiar with. We soon discovered that the car could be moved neither backward nor forward. Our wheels spun in futility. The passenger door was smashed up against a bush and could not be opened, the side-mirror nowhere in sight. I exited the driver side door after Megan. We puzzled at our circumstances. Through our sheer entertainment, we had failed to notice the damage continuously done with each step. We were high-centered on a staircase. We didn’t dare tell the residents. Megan called her dad, who arrived, guffawed, and regretted forgetting the video camera. He called her uncle, a mechanic. “You are in quite a pickle, Megan,” he chortled.

This event is typical of the circumstances Megan and I repeatedly find ourselves in. We daily find occasion to admit, “Life is interesting.” This phrase epitomizes Megan. Whatever comes her way, she may reply with a “Just my luck,” but always counters with “Life is interesting.” The hardest years of my life were pacified by a friend who is miraculously always on the same brainwave as me. Her positive and serene attitude balances my chaotically tense personality. The ‘high-centered on a staircase’ instance, so often referred to on double dates and first days of school, reminds me of a soul-mate friendship that seems unexplainably compatible.