JD, I hope you google yourself

Here's some irony: The girl who got me hooked on the internet in grade 11 is now the only person that I cannot find through the magic of google or myspace.

We both had Prodigy accounts, and we had a club that we started called "VANS", (after the skater shoe), which stood for Vengeance Against Non-Skaters. We hated anyone who wasn't open-minded. Ah, the ignorant pretentiousness of the teen years! My first internet "boyfriend" was called Jack. As I wrote that sentence, I googled him and found him and his myspace account. (Seriously Jaime, why are you so difficult to find?) My prodigy life was short-lived, however, because my mother found some hot & heavy emails between Jack & I and printed them out along with the cancellation notice for prodigy which she taped to the computer screen. But, the seed was planted and now thanks to JD, I'm writing a blog entry at 11pm while my husband who I met online is sleeping in the next room.

Jaime and I went to elementary school together. We weren't close friends, but friends nonetheless since there was only one class and we were all in it for 7 years. The only thing I remember about Jaime from Elementary school was that she always had a cream puff pastry in her lunch. Jesus, I'm fat.

I don't remember anything at all about Jaime in Middle School. I think 10th grade was when we became friends because we had Study together. I never really had any friends between grades 7-10. Nancy and I were best friends from kindergarten through 6th grade, until the summer after 6th grade when Lauren K. (the mean one, as opposed to Lauren C., the skinny one) called me multiple times a day to tell me that Nancy wasn't my friend, and that they were best friends now. That was the first time in my life I realized the importance of a back-up plan, and in this case, that meant having other friends. But, I was spoiled because Nancy was the most popular girl in school, and since I was her best friend for like, our entire lives, I felt that I should be popular by default. You can't really be smug AND have no friends, and since I was in all the smart-people classes with a bunch of nerds (Hi Melissa! No offense!), I never made any friends because I felt like I was too good for them, and I never got the chance to socialize with anyone else. So anyway, basically I had 3 or 4 weird years of hanging out with random people, from the slutty druggies to the drama geeks to the academic decathaletes ("WEEEEEEEEED!") and panicking EVERY time I walked into the cafe because I didn't know where I would sit.

Jaime was the social outcast who chose to be a social outcast. Her favorite color was black. She liked Nine Inch Nails (before it was cool.) She smoked cigarettes and failed classes and was voted Class Pessimist. When Jaime and I became friends, I think I was glad to have chosen a friend that was such an outcast because then I could pretend that I was a cool outcast too, instead of a loser that even the nerds didn't like. It didn't matter that we had nothing in common. She wanted to hang out after school and smoke, but I had soccer practice. She wanted to hang out at the pit in Harvard Square on Friday nights, but I was ushering the Masquer's Club production of Kiss Me Kate. But we did have a lot of great times together, like being beach rats on the Hampton Beach strip, hanging out in Harvard Square, and learning to skate late at night in front Pizza Hut with Roger Bagley. (That link is a stretch, but hey, he's sorta famous!) Oh, and of course, finding true love and hating the haters on Prodigy. I ended up quitting soccer my senior year. I remember telling the coach that I quit, and then Jaime & I walked to Ryer's store to buy coke and king-size butterfingers. Jesus, I'm fat.

We remained friends through my junior year of college. That's when I turned into a total snooty bitch. I guess I figured I didn't need her to support my identity anymore. I was a college girl. I pulled all-nighters to write research papers, and I had a slew of artsy friends from Mass Art that I worked with at JP Licks. She was still living at home with her parents, still driving around aimlessly at night with a cigarette in one hand and the volume knob being cranked up by the other. I couldn't take it anymore. I did the most cowardly thing ever and sent her a mean greeting card that I bought at Fly Rabbit. The outside of the card was a black ink drawing of something (a phone? a mosquito? a taco? I forget) and the inside said in small, blunt text, "Please don't call me anymore." To add insult to injury, I also changed my phone number at the same time that I sent the card. I completely cut her off. I haven't spoken to her since. The last I heard was that she told Melissa that if she ever saw me, she would fucking kill me. I'm pretty sure she meant that literally.

I bet if I found her now, she'd still be somewhat the same, and I admire that. It takes guts to stay true to yourself. I am a chameleon that changes color to whatever is around me. I have no sense of self, no identity. I watch primetime TV, I listen to mainstream radio, I have superficial conversations with too many stupid people. Jaime, if you google yourself and find this post, please email me because I'd like to start over, but not if you're really going to kill me.