I'm not even a little bit surprised by how fast things flipped.
I am pretty thrown by how much, though.
I'm standing in the kitchen, phone in hand, while grabbing a seltzer from the fridge. It's on speaker-phone, and I'm smiling at the way my friend's laugh is ricocheting around the shelves. Our conversation about this new project he got added to at work quickly devolved into a one-person role-play. Between wheezes of laughter, he's trying to act out how certain of his coworkers understand his humor while others simply can't seem to grasp any of it at all.
I shut the fridge and make my way toward the table, careful not to step on Ava while hitting the lights. She helps by holding perfectly still, right there in the middle of the doorway. The side-eye she gives me sounds unequivocally like a "Look dude, I was here first." I dip my chin and raise my eyebrows, hoping to communicate my best "Fair point."
Placing my seltzer on the table, I slide into the chair while my friend and I start talking over each other. Conversations with us are like being in an improv troupe. While he's talking about his coworkers, it turns into an SNL skit—and I'm in it, too.
We've known each other since the first day of college and it's always been this way. We were roommates after college for a bit, too, and our living room was basically like the writer's room of a sitcom. Our friends certainly played the part. A reference here, a new bit that builds off of it there, scatter a few call-backs in, and repeat.
"Fuck" I say.
"I miss you man."
He moved across the country for a job earlier this year. So we start talking about a visit. And as I'm staring out the window, listening to the static of the seltzer on the table next to me, I'm imagining our old living room. One by one, I'm seeing faces pop up on the couches and double-over in open-mouthed laughter. One friend moved to New York and another to Massachusetts. Someone else to Arizona. A few in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado. Me in Vermont.
I exhale and my chest unbuckles itself.
The seltzer static is still fizzing.
Ava sighs but doesn't move.
Through the phone, my friend says "It's been 84 years." So now, of course, we're playing out an improv scene about running a marketing meeting from the deck of the Titanic. We promptly agree that the string musicians are good, but what the brand really needs is more cowbell. And, yes, of course my friend's coworkers aren't fully on board; so we'll just circle back.
Through the phone, my friend's back to wheezing.
* * *
Whoever you thought of, you should probably call them.
onward.
For more on this daily column, read the backstory here. And if you know someone who'd appreciate this, pass it along.