As my dear friend Paul was kind enough to remind me, it's been sometime since my last post. He updates his Pizzy Proverbs quite frequently (to which I owe him thanks since said proverbs have provided me with hours of entertainment) so I decided to oblige and update this lil blog of mine.
First order of business: the word blog is hereby eradicated from this my...blog. Henceforth the word 'blog' shall be replaced with the word 'thingy' to acquiesce to the word-tastes of my the thingy-author. I hate that word. So let it be written, so let it be done.
Anyway, back to the thingy update. For quite some time, I was at a loss for what I should write about. Turns out I'm kind of boring. But then I connected the dots and come up with the subject of this post. See, Paul was the one who reminded me to update. And Paul's the only one who reads my thingy. And yesterday was - wait for it - Paul's birthday! So here's to you, Paul! This is your life...insofar as it has concerned me, that is.
My family moves a lot. It's a fact of life. Honestly, knowing that is like knowing that sky is blue or that grass is green or that celebrities do drugs. Pure fact. So how is it that Paul and I have known each other since we were six freaking years old? Huh? Answer me that one, Einstein! (To be fair, Paul was probably seven when we met. He's old. Unimportant.) (Paul's not unimportant, that fact was.) So yeah. Long time knowin'. Me and Paul are like this. That's me, that's Paul.
When we met, I was, apparently, wearing a green dress. (See, Paul has a fantastic memory for random details. Just one of his many charming characteristics.) I like think that we were close friends from the start, but we probably thought the other was really weird. We were forced to friendship anyway, mostly because my older brother, Andrew, was less inclined to appearance-based judgement and invited Paul over. Another Paul memory test: ask him to describe my family's basement at the time of our meeting. It's incredible! Of course, no one else remembers what it looked like, so we are all forced to believe him. Huh. What power!
Lacking such memory skills, I myself recall very little from the conception of our friendship at suck young ages. Fast forward to the eighth grade when my family moved back to Paul. At our middle school, each grade was divided into teams that you take all of your classes with and did competitions with and stuff. Eighth grade had the Suns, the Comets, and the Star Trekkies (Go ahead and judge). I took Spanish every morning at the high school so my schedule was all kinds of messed up and my classes were split between two teams: the Comets and the Star Trekkies. My loyalty was split, but I was fortunate enough to reap the benefits from both sides
of the line. (Most unfortunately was the fact that all the over-achievers were Suns. Jerks.) Amazingly enough, the same mistake was made to Paul's schedule and we had all of our classes together. Maybe not all. But several.
That year (and maybe still today) Paul had a thing for Shock Tarts. I enjoyed them myself, so on occasion we would share a roll. Christmas came around and Paul moved from Shock Tarts to candy canes. You should know that Paul is sharey. He loves to share and he is dang good at it. This translated into Paul bringing Alyssa a candy cane every day for probably all of December. January rolled back around and candy canes turned to Shock Tarts. No more did we split a roll between us, but he would bring me my very own roll. On February 13th he brought me an entire case of Shock Tarts for my 13.somethin'somethin' birthday. I was up to my elbows and possibly my ears in Shock Tarts. Luckily, my mother was at the time pregnant with my little brother and Shock Tarts were the only thing that would settle her stomach. So it worked out well all around.
Now, you should know that while I tease Paul a lot for doing this, it was super happy. My day would be made every morning in Algebra when he would zip open his bag and pull out a roll or two for me. Paul's awesome.
Now we move on to high school. Paul and I went to the same school once again, which was a relief since they switched up our wards and we weren't in the same one any more. Paul didn't bring me Shock Tarts any more which was a-okay with me. I was pretty much Shock Tartted out. I don't think we took very many classes together, if any, in the first three years of high school. We went to a lot of stake dances, though, and the highlight of those most definitely involved Paul and NSYNC. See, Paul is a dang good dancer. In every sense of the word (I don't know what that means either). He taught himself and my brother and our other friend Benn three of their dances. They were intense. And awesome. Intensely awesome and awesomely intense. There would be girls screaming, clothes flying, and boys rocking. Stake dances suck. Stake dances with these boys rocked. For the duration of the song anyway.
Senior year, Paul and I took Government together, along with our other friends Adam, Marisa, and Brindy. Mr. Peterson was our teacher and he was just great. We had a fantastic time in that class! As great as he was, however, Mr. Peterson had a bad habit of not noticing when Paul and Adam were bugging me. Paul sat behind me and Adam sat beside me and some of their favorite things to do included poking me and pulling my hair and smacking me and tickling me. Peterson saw none of this. But as soon as retaliation came, he was right there to defend the safety of his students from the likes of me. Freaking Peterson. Freaking Adam. Freaking Paul.
When we graduated, Paul and I both did the Mormon thing to do and came out here to Brigham Young University. We didn't see much of each other the first semester, but we were in the same Biology lecture in Winter. Paul liked to laugh at me every morning when I would get yelled at for reading the newspaper in class. Good times.
After sending in his mission papers, Paul offered a prize for he or she who could correctly guess his call's destination. No one ever does this so he didn't even bother coming up with a prize. Little did he know of my incredible intuition and sense for those kind of things. And also luck. I got it right and I got a dollar. Go ahead. Be amazed.
So Paul went on his mission and now he's back and he comes over to visit all the time. It's wonderful. I may make fun of him a lot, but Paul is one of my best friends. He's always been there for me, even when I said no when he asked me to Homecoming because I thought he was joking. He's one of the best people I know. I am so grateful I've always been able to count on Paul, even when I haven't been a good friend. Just like the time he showed up at my door after going to three different grocery stores until he found a specific kind of ice cream I really wanted. I don't think I ever said thank you for that. Thank you, Paul. I hope we will continue to be friends for the rest of forever.
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